Leadership & Business Podcast
Leadership & Business is an award-winning podcast series. It features the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Each episode features subject matter experts discussing strategies, tactics and information to help you become a more effective leader, communicator and professional.
Launched in 2015, Leadership & Business is produced by William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Ken White, Associate Dean for MBA & Executive Programs and former award-winning broadcast journalist, hosts the podcast.
![Tatia Granger](images/tatia-granger-225-thumb.jpg)
![Working in Teams](images/tatia-granger-225-thumb.jpg)
Tatia Granger
Episode 225: August 21, 2024
Working in Teams
You look at your calendar, and you see a Team Meeting is up next. How does that make you feel? Love them or hate them, we spend about a third of our work week working in teams. A Stanford University study found effective teamwork is linked to increased productivity. Harvard Business Review says teams make better decisions than individuals 87% of the time. Tatia Granger is a clinical associate professor at William & Mary's School of Business. Among other things, her teaching and research focus on management and organizational behavior. She joins us today to talk about teamwork, purpose, and effective teams.
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TranscriptTatia GrangerThere's a concept in teamwork called process gain, which is simply the notion of getting more as a result of having a collaborative group contribution as opposed to having an individual contribution. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. You look at your calendar, and you see a team meeting is up next. How does that make you feel? Well, love them or hate them, we spend about a third of our work week working in teams. A Stanford University study found effective teamwork is linked to increased productivity. Harvard Business Review says teams make better decisions than individuals 87% of the time. Tatia Granger is a Clinical Associate Professor at William & Mary's School of Business. Among other things, her teaching and research focus on management and organizational behavior. She joins us on the podcast today to talk about teamwork, purpose, and effective teams. Here's our conversation with Professor Tatia Granger. Ken WhiteTatia, thanks so much. This is a busy time, so thank you very much for joining us on the podcast. Great to have you here. Tatia GrangerThank you, Ken. I appreciate the invitation. Ken WhiteTeams, this is your area of expertise. You teach about teams, you work with teams. Why do so many working professionals dislike working on teams? Tatia GrangerThat's an interesting way to think about it, the dislike perspective. I think it comes from a space of not being as comfortable, surprisingly, because the younger generations have done a lot in teams in the way that they have experienced sports so much and collaborative activities, play groups, those kinds of things. And yet, at the same time, I don't know that they always think about those in the same way that they encounter the team structure, which is much more purpose-oriented and driven, requires more intentional focus on what you're bringing in terms of skill sets and your contributions. I think it's just a mindset shift. Once they get into it, I think they begin to see the value as is intended. Ken WhiteHow important is the leader of the team to its success? Tatia GrangerWell, that's another interesting point because sometimes there is no designated leader. That piece is also really challenging because, in a lot of instances, when a group comes together, there's an expectation that someone is going to tell me what to do, provide the guidance, demonstrate, be the role model. Oftentimes, when teams are pulled together, that leader has to come from within. Now, sometimes, when the person is designated, obviously that makes it a lot easier to accommodate the rest of the folks. But getting to a point where that person is not designated and the group has to decide who that person is can also contribute to some of that tension and potential discomfort around this structure. Ken WhiteDo you see that it's often more when the leader when we're not told who's going to lead the team? Is it somebody with the expertise, with the experience? How does that often play out? Tatia GrangerI would say, initially, it is the person who is most willing to step forward. We can take that into a space where we look at their personality traits, those who are more outgoing, not afraid to speak up first. We could make some alignments there. We could also take a minute to consider, again, what's the purpose of this group coming together? As we think about the purpose and how the group processes that purpose, it might be someone who feels like they're an expert or at least has some comfort in that area. Maybe they've done something similar, or it's more familiar than not. That might prompt someone to step forward. It's a variety of reasons. Ken WhiteHave you seen changes on teams? We obviously met in person for the longest time. Now we're not doing that so much. What are the changes you have seen in that shift? Tatia GrangerYeah, Absolutely. I think the research really dove into hybrid teams, remote teams, and the pros and cons in terms of how those structures impact the outcomes or deliverables. I think we're still exploring. I think there was a mixed bag, quite frankly. I think in the beginning, the expectation was that, or at least the belief was, that we might not be able to get as much done or be as productive. I think we've absolutely seen how that is not necessarily the case. And yet we've also seen how important in-person interactions can be, at least initially in that trust-building phase, which is so important for teams. It can happen in a remote setting or in a hybrid setting, but it absolutely takes longer and requires much more intentional focus. And I think this is where we have taken for granted just how much we gain from being in the same physical location. I can see you. I can notice not only your facial features, which I can see in those little boxes, but I can also pay attention to your body features and responses to conversation. I can notice even the kinds of the ways in which you take notes, whether you're using paper or you're using your laptop. I could just notice more things about you, which give me a head start, if you will, on building a relationship. Ken WhiteWhen we work with new MBA students, when they come in and we put them on teams, of course, we always call it a team sport. They do so much in groups, and we have them work out a team contract. Can that work in the work world, a team contract? Tatia GrangerAbsolutely. I would take it back to the purpose. I would say that's probably how a team contract is started. It is the purpose of the group coming together. It might include some oversight or overarching structure, if you will, from the deliverer of the purpose, and yet it's up to the group itself to determine how they're going to get the work done. That's not just about their skill sets; it's also about the way they are going to interact their interpersonal skills as well as their technical skills. Paying attention to those, acknowledging that both the work and the environment make a huge difference in getting things done as a team, and really charting out a way on the front end before things start to go awry so that you'll have something to come back to and fall back on to help you get over the bumpy pieces if you will. Ken WhiteThe answer may be obvious, but what are the advantages of a team working as opposed to an individual on a project? Tatia GrangerObviously, it is that you have access to more. There's a concept in teamwork called process gain, which is simply the notion of getting more as a result of having a collaborative group contribution as opposed to having an individual contribution. One of the things, one of the other aspects that comes into play is this notion of collaborative intellect, intelligence, and it is pulling on all that you have access to, which can really elevate the output in more ways than if you have an individual doing that same task. Ken WhiteMany of us spent some time watching the Olympics recently, right? Everybody I talked to. When you were talking with the new MBA students, you brought that up, and everybody, it seemed, in the room was pretty tied into it. You talked to them about some of the lessons learned from the Olympics in terms of teams. What are some of the highlights from that? Can we pull into teams and our teamwork? Tatia GrangerYeah. It was interesting. The MBAs, as new as they are, they really honed in on some of those lessons. Some of the things that they mentioned were the ways in which they saw these groups support one another in both celebration as well as agony. Sometimes, the teams didn't always turn out the way they expected. And not only their specific team but cohorts across their sport; they celebrated other teams that were doing well or not. There was also some attention call to the fact that these groups became teams for very precise reasons. You think about, I'll just use the men's and women's basketball team from the US. Those are all professionals, but they mostly play on different teams. They're usually competing against one another. Now, we're asking them to come together and put aside their natural inclinations to compete against one another, to come together and become a team that competes against others. In the way we need them to come together, we've also got to consider that we have picked what, by any standard, would be a Hall of Famer in the sports arena. Now, we have all of these quote-unquote experts. To your question earlier about who becomes the leader, well, sometimes if it's about the expertise, that makes it even harder to determine. The work of a team really becomes the focus when individuals with talents, lots of talent, come together. Ken WhiteYeah, you've got to wonder. So many superstars. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Have a seat on the bench. Yes. Wow. Tatia GrangerYou've got to be comfortable with that, right? You've got to know that there's a time and a place for your skillset, and your opportunity will present itself. It may be more in a supportive role, like a cheerleader if you will. I will use this example. Dawn Staley is a coach that everybody recognizes as a result of her success at the University of South Carolina with her women's basketball team. In one of her interviews, she talks about having a need for, obviously, five people on the court at a time. And yet, I think she has maybe 12. I'll just say 12. But she talks about the value of those individuals who may never get any playing time. And yet, the amount of work that they're doing behind the scenes that we as fans or observers don't see, but how important those contributions are to the ultimate output. And I appreciate that she brings that to our attention because sometimes the teams are organized in such a way that individuals have out-front roles, and we take for granted that they may be the leader. Well, they may have the particular skillset that allows them to be out front, and yet there's been a lot of contribution behind the scenes that has made their presentation what it is. I appreciate when we do have the opportunity to remind ourselves that teams do a lot of work before the work product is presented. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Tatia Granger in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Business Week, Princeton Review, and US News & World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Professor Tatia Granger. Ken WhiteWhat advice do you have when someone comes to you and says, our team is just not performing? We're not getting anywhere? Tatia GrangerThat's a great question. One of the points I'd bring up about that is, I'm a member of the International Coach Federation, and that's the organization that certifies professional coaches. Within the last year, maybe 18 months, the organization has also begun to offer advanced certification for team coaching, which is a new type of certification coaching certification. That is mostly because of the reason that you just asked. Organizations, teams recognize that it's not a natural process to become a team and to be effective. There are often bumps in the road if you will. Some intentional focus, professional development for teams is evolving in the way that we've thought about professional development for individuals. If we want to focus on the outputs and the deliverables as a result of these individuals coming together, what we realize now is that we have to work with them together. Coaching individuals on a team is different than coaching the team itself. I use that example just to call to our attention that even as the teams get to work, there are ways in which the teams need to focus on team identity and their team unity and their team process as much as they think about the individuals contributing to this collaborative if that makes sense. Ken WhiteTotally, because you've seen teams that are great. It's almost like they become friends, they buy in, they're excited to meet. Tatia GrangerAbsolutely. They have more of a team identity. Ken WhiteYeah. Tatia GrangerThat's really important for the developmental piece that we pay attention to the team identity as much as any type of individual skills upskilling that we might need as well. Ken WhiteWhat happens if I like a certain role? I like to be the leader. I like to be the one who puts the slides together, whatever, and I have to get out of that role. How do we convince people that that's okay? Tatia GrangerOne of the great things that can and hopefully does happen on a team is this space of psychological safety that allows us to, one, speak up and say, I'm really good at the PowerPoints, or I'm really good at maintaining our check-ins. And yet, I'd like to try something else. So if it's a space where the trust has been developed and now folks feel comfortable trying or at least asking to do something different, they're more likely to do that, and then the group is more likely to support that. I think some things have to happen before folks are willing to raise their hand for something other than, but that's a part of the evolution of the team. That's one of the great things about being a member of a team is that depending on the timeline for the project, you have some time to get to know each other and to really lean into each other's strengths as well as stretch areas. All of that can happen over the course of being a part of a team. Ken WhiteProbably everyone listening, you and I, when we look at our calendar, there's a team meeting coming up. What advice do you give to people when you see that there's so much going on, but you've a team meeting? What can we do in the few minutes prior to get yourselves ready? Tatia GrangerI would say, first of all, think about the opportunity that it presents. One, you're going to have an opportunity to interact with others and maybe others that you don't normally interact with. I can tell you that some of the teams that I've been a part of here in the business school, committees in this instance have really allowed me to connect with my colleagues in other operational functional areas. I don't normally have an opportunity to do that. I've been so grateful that that's been a vehicle through which I've been able to get to know some of my colleagues better. I think, first and foremost, just recognize it as an opportunity to expand your professional network and your professional understanding of what others are doing to contribute to a space that you're a part of. Then, the other thing I think that matters is, again, really thinking about what's the outcome of this team. What have we been called together to do? How do I want to think about how I can contribute and keep that in mind as I begin to interact with my colleagues? Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Tatia Granger, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Tatia Granger, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Cate Faddis](images/cate-faddis-224-thumb.jpg)
![The Leadership Journey](images/cate-faddis-224-thumb.jpg)
Cate Faddis
Episode 224: July 9, 2024
The Leadership Journey
Cate Faddis is in the midst of an interesting career and journey. She has spent over 25 years in investment management and financial services, working as a managing partner at Mason Capital Partners and President and Chief Investment Officer at Grace Capital. Early in her career, she spent time with Deloitte and Putnam Investments. Today she's a portfolio manager for Zevin Asset Management. A William & Mary graduate who went on to earn her MBA at Harvard Business School, Faddis spoke at the annual Women's Stock Pitch, hosted by the William & Mary School of Business and its Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance in April. Before speaking with students, she spoke with us about, among other things, her interesting journey, leadership, and how to build confidence.
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TranscriptCate FaddisTaking a negative and make it into a positive it gives you that confidence of I can do it, and it really helps you down the line when you have real challenges. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Cate Faddis is in the midst of an interesting career and journey. She has spent over 25 years in investment management and financial services, working as a managing partner at Mason Capital Partners and president and chief investment officer at Grace Capital. Early in her career, she spent time with Deloitte and Putman Investments. Today, she's a portfolio manager for Zevin Asset Management. A William & Mary graduate who went on to earn her MBA at Harvard Business School. Faddis spoke at the Annual Women's Stock Pitch hosted by the William & Mary School of Business and its Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance in April. Before speaking with students, she spoke with us about, among other things, her interesting journey, leadership, and how to build confidence. Here's our conversation with Cate Faddis. Ken WhiteWell, Cate, it's such a pleasure to have you here. Welcome to William & Mary and to the Women's Stock Pitch competition. Cate FaddisThank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Ken WhiteAnd you're delivering the keynote this afternoon. We're recording on Saturday morning of the Stock Pitch Competition, and you are this afternoon's keynote address. What are some of the themes you'll be sharing? Cate FaddisWell, they gave me a list of questions, so I'm going to be talking about my time at William & Mary, my career trajectory, entrepreneurship, leadership challenges I faced, and then something that's very near and dear to my heart, which is our firm is sustainable and socially responsible. And so I'll talk a lot about how we look at sustainability, how we look at social responsible investing. Ken WhiteYeah. How'd you get into investment management? What was it that attracted you? Cate FaddisSo, I came to the US from Ghana. My parents are diplomats, had a tough experience in high school. I will say as for the first time in my life, I was a minority. And so, when I got to college, I decided that I never wanted my race or my gender to help me or hurt me. I wanted completely black and white. I was not an accounting type. I was not a business type, but I majored in accounting because it was black and white. First of all, as an immigrant, I wanted to get a job, but more importantly, I wanted something where I never questioned my grade. And believe it or not, that carried me through even after business school because I took a class called self-assessment. And you take all these tests and do different things, and then someone else looks at your answers and tells you about yourself. And that became a very important theme. So I selected asset management because it was a field where it's the closest thing to athletics of, hey, if you can pick a stock and it goes up, no one can take that away from you. So I'm a CPA, I'm a CFA, a Harvard MBA, who's like, I want to have a career that is not impeded by anything. Then I started doing it. I actually enjoy it, and I'm good at it. And as someone from an international background, you're extremely open-minded, so you understand anything is possible. Whereas I think if you grow up in the same place your whole life, you have a lot of blinders that you don't even realize you have. So I was also very good at it. But that's a long answer to your question. Ken WhiteHow much do you like it? Cate FaddisI love it. Ken WhiteHow important is passion to success? Cate FaddisThat's a great question. Ken WhiteI asked that of many guests because I get different answers. Yeah. What do you think? Cate FaddisYou know, I think it helps. It absolutely helps. And anytime I'm asked to give career advice, the first thing I tell people is, don't do the job only because it's a job where you can make a lot of money or you think it's a good job because if you really hate it, it's going to make it very, very difficult. Did I follow my own advice? Absolutely not. My motto was the time and place to do what you love is nights and weekends, okay? If you're working nine to five or nine to whatever time, that's work. So, did I love accounting? Accounting isn't the kind of thing you love. I really did not like being an auditor. I was an auditor right out of business school, and I said, okay, I did it, and I would continue to do it, but I said, I gotta get out. So that's when I decided to go to MBA school. So I think passion certainly helps, but I think discipline probably will carry you because, you know, if you have your own business and you have to go in on Saturday because the carpet guys are coming, there's no passion there. You have to do it. Ken WhiteHow about leadership? Did you see yourself, the younger version of you? Did you say I want to lead someday? Cate FaddisI don't think I saw myself saying that sort of explicitly, but I will say that I am a very confident person. I have strong point of view. And also, I think going through what we went through, which is really very difficult. I mean, my parents lost everything. I got my first job when I was twelve. I have two other sisters. We all have our own businesses because there's something we all have this independent streak, this can do this confidence that says I can do this. And we're not really afraid of anything. And I think so our background really led to that without us even understanding it. Ken WhiteThere are a number of surveys regarding the college generation; the folks in their twenties really concerned about the future. There's a lack of confidence. Cate FaddisYeah. Ken WhiteWhat would you say to them to build confidence? What kind of advice do you have? Cate FaddisYou know, I think you have to go through things to build up your confidence. And, you know, I think with the whole wealth effect, probably they haven't gone through enough. They haven't had enough difficult experiences. And so, as much as it was very difficult, again, after my parents lost everything because we really were elites, I'd only ever flown first class, servants, drivers, the whole nine yards. As much as that experience was very difficult. And then also being in a school which was mostly caucasian, I was very much alone, very much of a minority. Difficult as those experiences are, they really, as one of my mentors would say, with this wonderful Boston accent, they build character. And so, you know, whether you're involved in athletics, sports, anything where you have to build muscle, it just builds up your confidence. I mean, the last thing I'll say on that theme coming to William & Mary in, you know, late eighties, early nineties, the message we got from as a person of color, from both high school and even college, was, oh, you probably just got in on affirmative action, you don't belong here. And at some level, we internalized that. But I said I have to prove to myself that I belong here. So I worked really hard. I worked probably too hard, you know, pull all-nighters. I mean, I, and then I did really well. And I said, oh, I can do this, I can do this, I can do anything. Just needs hard work. Same when I studied for the CPA exam, I applied it again. I got to do your part. I took the review class, got the highest exam score in my office, and got an award. And all those experiences taking a negative and make it to a positive. It gives you that confidence of I can do it, and it really helps you down the line when you have real challenges. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Cate Faddis in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Cate Faddis. Ken WhiteIn terms of leadership, what's important to you? What are some of the, what's your approach to leadership? Cate FaddisI think my approach to leadership is, and I think I'm a pretty good leader. I run my own investment firm where I needed my employees' loyalty. I wasn't paying them as much as they could make elsewhere. I needed them to work late, do things. And so my approach was really that everybody knew that I cared about them. Everybody knew that I saw them for who they are. And I treated everyone with a great deal of respect. And they gave that back to me. They gave that back to me in spades. And I think everyone I've worked with, we are still great friends to this day, no matter what, because I always, I treated them like a human being. And it is so important because people know whether you care or whether you don't care, whether you're sincere or you're not. And so I think that that is my approach. Ken WhiteWho did you look towards? Who were your mentors or role models in terms of leadership and your career? Cate FaddisI had a lot of great mentors. The first one I have to give a shout-out to is Dean Carroll Hardy, who was a dean. It was called minority affairs at the time. I think now it's called multicultural affairs. And, you know, she did not have an easy life, and she didn't even have an easy career as a black woman in William & Mary, but she just took what she had and made the most of it. She had a summer program for people of color. She started a conference very similar to this women's conference. I mean, she did her part every day, never complained of, never said. It's hard. Woe is me. Okay. And I'm watching her because I worked for her for four years, and she also just told me, you can do this. She kind of prophesied my future. She said, I'm going to get emotional, but she said, this is what you're going to do, and this is what you're going to do, and this is what you're going to do. I don't know if she believed in it or not, but I did it. I did everything she told me I was going to do, and I also watched her. And so, with tremendous pride at this school that the first building named after a woman and a person of color was named after Dean Hardy. And I'm just sad that she didn't live to see it happen. Ken WhiteYeah. And isn't it interesting how some mentors see it when you don't? Cate FaddisYeah. Ken WhiteYeah. How important. How important that is when you got into the into the field, when you were a professional? What were some qualities of others you saw that you said I need to emulate that? I like that. Cate FaddisI had my partner, Mason Capital Partners, where he invited me to join. He was, again, someone who. He really believed in me, and he gave me as much rope and said, hey, let's build a business. And it was great. And just watching him, observing him, how he operated, because I think as a woman, you, without realizing it, sometimes you can put your roadblocks in your own way. And so, really watching the guys and say, watching them, and someone would say something negative to them, who do they think they are? I'm the greatest. So I think I got some of that guy energy and said, oh, so this doesn't have to be the end. This doesn't have to be the final word. This is just one person's opinion. What do you say about yourself? Don't believe in yourself. Because I watched how he believed in himself. He wasn't even that good. And I said I see. Yeah, I believe in myself. And who cares what anyone thinks? Just go out there and do it. A roar. Ken WhiteWhat advice are you going to share with these young women at the Stock Pitch Competition? Cate FaddisI think the main advice I'm going to share is, look, would life be easier if I look different? Probably. Having said that, you play the cards you are dealt. And by the way, this is the best time to be a woman. This is the best time to be a woman of color. This is the best time to be just about anything. Can you imagine life 100 years ago in Williamsburg for a black woman? 200 years ago? So I don't feel sorry for myself. I have no reason to feel sorry for myself. First of all, I had a lot of advantages. We all have setbacks. We all have. Oh, that happened to me because, well, I had a lot of times when I had unfair advantages. I remember interviewing for my first job. One of the people, the decision-makers, he saw me. He said you're from Ghana. My sister-in-law is from Ghana. That was it. Yeah, I had the job. And so you do have. We all have lucky breaks. But the point is, stay positive, work hard. You're gonna do far better than you could ever imagine. I just take it from me: if you work hard and you do your part, you will be amazed at how well you'll do. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Cate Faddis, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Cate Faddis, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Annelise Osborne](images/annelise-osborne-223-thumb.jpg)
![From Hoodies to Suits](images/annelise-osborne-223-thumb.jpg)
Annelise Osborne
Episode 223: June 15, 2024
From Hoodies to Suits
The intersection of finance, technology, and the future are the focus of a new book, titled "From Hoodies to Suits: Innovating Digital Assets for Traditional Finance." The book just released this month bridges the gap between the hoodies - who invented the technology behind the digital assets - and the suits who run traditional financial markets. Annelise Osborne is the book's author. A William & Mary graduate who went on to earn her MBA at Columbia, Osborne spoke at the annual Women's Stock Pitch, hosted by the William & Mary School of Business and its Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance in April. After speaking with students, she sat down with us to discuss hoodies, suits, and the future of finance.
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TranscriptAnnelise OsborneThese millennials and the Gen Z will be running the companies. They will expect more efficiencies, but they're also going to be investing the lion's share of capital, and they're looking for alternative investments. And so that is a reason why this technology is so important. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. The intersection of Finance, Technology, and the Future are the focus of a new book titled From Hoodies to Suits: Innovating Digital Assets for Traditional Finance. The book just released this month bridges the gap between the hoodies who invented the technology behind digital assets and the suits who run traditional financial markets. Annelise Osborne is the book's author. A William & Mary graduate who went on to earn her MBA at Columbia, Osborne spoke at the annual Women's Stock Pitch, hosted by the William & Mary School of Business and its Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance in April. After speaking with students, she sat down with us to discuss hoodies, suits, and the future of finance. Here's our conversation with Annelise Osborne. Ken WhiteAnnelise, thanks for being here. It's nice to see you in person. Last time I saw you, you were a guest lecturer in our leadership class. So nice to have you here. Annelise OsborneThank you, Ken. I really appreciate it. Ken WhiteSo you're an author. How exciting. What got you? Why? How did you figure out it's time to write a book? Annelise OsborneWell, I would never have expected I would write a book. I never saw myself as an English person. I'm definitely more math-oriented. But I got into digital assets in 2018. I did traditional finance for most of my career, commercial real estate as well. And in digital assets, there's this great technology blockchain that can help transform finance. One of the issues, it seemed, is understanding an education of what does that blockchain, what can that do for me in capital markets, Wall Street, Main Street? Having worked in it for a few years, people confused crypto and blockchain as the same thing. I wanted to write a book just to share in some entertaining and educational format, not like a textbook. There's really nothing out there that talks about how this works for capital markets. I more or less had this all in my head, and I decided that I was going to put it on paper, and it all happened, and it's coming out in June, and it's called From Hoodies to Suits: Innovating Digital Assets for Traditional Finance. It really is a push on this great technology that was created by the hoodies, as in, obviously, I'm stereotyping here, but really younger techies. Then it's what we really need for this to happen for Wall Street is to combine the hoodies experience with the suits experience, which are the people that have the financial experience, understanding structures and regulation, and compliance to work together to help create these, in essence, automated securities that can benefit more efficiency in the capital market. Ken WhiteWow. That could apply to every industry, the old school, the new school. Yeah, fantastic. Actually, you and I talk, we agree, we'll just talk about a couple of the chapters in the book, and you'll tell us a little bit about it. One of the chapters is blockchain is not Bitcoin. What are you trying to teach us in that chapter? Annelise OsborneThe book is 11 chapters. I feel like each chapter is almost a class in itself, is very specific. I really think to understand the benefits of this technology, even if we don't call it blockchain, you need to understand the difference is that most people lump blockchain and crypto in as the same thing. Cryptocurrencies: would you have Bitcoin ethereum? There's been a lot of volatility. There's been some fraud. There's been a lot of bad press with that. Even Sam Bankman-Fried was, obviously, that's FTX. A lot of money was lost, and even prior to that with hacking. So, I think people associate blockchain technology with Bitcoin. But there's an example. Jamie Dimon, who is the CEO of JPMorgan, came out very negatively against cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin. But at the same time, Jamie Dimon was creating this amazing blockchain internally for J. P. Morgan because he recognizes the benefit that blockchain can bring with transferring information and money. I think that's a prime example. J. P. Morgan is so far ahead of most of these other banks because they put so much money into innovation and creating this, and it's created systems for them. They're doing ridiculous amount of money a day on repo. I'm not sure what the number is today, but it's with lots of zeros. And they're even coming out to say, we're saving this much money by using this technology for repo. They're also allowing their clients. The clients just see an account with balances in it, so they don't recognize they're even using this stablecoin, JPMorgan coin, behind the scenes. But it's true innovation. And so I think people need to understand there's a difference between the cryptocurrencies, which is what there's hedge funds based in cryptocurrencies. It's almost like FX trading. And granted, the cryptocurrencies generally are not backed by reserves or sovereigns, or they aren't backed by reserves or sovereigns, but there's this fantastic technology that can automate finance. Ken WhiteInteresting. Another chapter, institutional digital asset securities. Annelise OsborneFirst, let me go into digital assets. When we look at digital assets, they can be a number of things. One, cryptocurrencies. Another is stablecoin that I mentioned with the JPMorgan coin, for example. Stablecoins are generally tied to a dollar, for example, or a Euro or whatever the basis is. It could even be tied to a ton of soy. There's an agro token that's tied. But the idea is it's very stable. You also have NFTs, which are non-fungible tokens. What that means is a dollar bill, for example, is fungible because one dollar bill is the same amount as another dollar bill. But a house, my house, and your house are very specific. And so they are a non-fungible token, for example, if they were represented by a coin. And then what I'm really focused on is digital asset security, so that's regulated. So how can we do stocks and bonds or equities or fractional shares of alternative investments, which I think is where we're seeing a lot of activity? And so institutions now, one thing I want to highlight is the benefit. So there's a lot of trust, transferability, traceability, are three big highlights of what you have in blockchain. So you can trust it. It's a single source of truth. It's there for everyone to see. It's transferable. I can transfer to you. It's not held within one centralized system, so it's decentralized. And if you think about that, that was really the basis of Bitcoin, which was a paper was written in 2008, which helped create it, so it's been around about 15 years now, was almost an occupy Wall Street movement with the thought process of how can we not have our money in banks? So that's the whole decentralized bit. So we have; I can hold my own money in a wallet. So it's traceable, you know where it's from. Actually, that's tradable. And then transferable, which is the traceable, is that you can see where it's been, which is people talk about a lot being used on the dark web or the Black Market. But there's a great book called Tracers in the Dark, which is actually a university professor had gone through and realized you can actually really just. You leave a fingerprint everywhere it is if it's digital, and so you can actually find where money goes. And so she was able to help track all sorts of money from Silk Road and other things that were negative. But I think where we're going here is that it's very institutional. It's good for regulators in the sense that they can actually track and trace it. They can see where it's coming and going. But if we look at what institutions are doing now, J. P. Morgan obviously has done a lot within this. As I mentioned, a lot of forte-back funds are starting to be digitized. So BlackRock just announced that they were doing a forte back fund backed by US Treasury, so you can buy a digital share. It saves them money in time, over time. It'll prove to be more efficient, and it'll prove to be quicker in trading and quicker in you'll have the processes as more digital, so it can be more automated. Franklin Templeton were one of the first institutions in the space. They also have a forte back fund. Wisdom Tree has forte back funds. If you look into the private equity world, you have KKR, you have Apollo, Hamilton Lane have all tokenized private equity funds. What that is, is the benefit of having it tokenized is there's a lot of paperwork, bring an investor into the fund. There's a lot that needs to be done. But with the tokenization, it becomes much more efficient and it also becomes more tradable, and you can actually get it in smaller quantities, which we're going to go on to because there's a demand for more alternative investments at lower rates. Then there's also the world of NFTs from an institution perspective. If you think about securitization of rights, for example, songs have been securitized. The chain smokers actually gave the ownership of one of their albums out to their favorite fans or their most popular fans. I think there's a lot of different. A Rihanna song was actually securitized as well. I think there's different things that can be done in that sense. And I think there's a utility function that we don't have as much in today's securities. But if you think about Amazon Prime and Amazon Stock, they both benefit Amazon. So the stockholders don't benefit from the usability, which Amazon Prime, I get free shipping. And it makes sense for them to combine, if you think about it because then your most active users are the Amazon Prime users. It would make sense if they were shareholders and benefited from using Amazon. So I feel like there's different ways that that utility can come together. I will say AMC does say that if you are a stockholder of AMC, you can get free popcorn, but there's no way that that actually comes together if that makes sense. But there's a whole world out there when we become more digital that will be applicable, and it'll be exciting to see how the industry moves. Ken WhiteHow incredibly exciting. Wow, what a time. I don't know. Has there ever been a time in history like this with this kind of change? Annelise OsborneThere has. One, everyone. People are afraid of change, generally. There's actually a chapter on change, which talks about how monkeys are better at dealing with change than humans for a study that was done. But if you think about high-frequency trading, it took a while for high-frequency trading to come along, and it came along. If you think about our phones today, from rotary phones, think about dating, right? There's all this now, all this online dating. So much has become digitized. The finance used to be paper stocks, right? Paper bonds. And so I think there's a lot. There are a lot of incremental changes that are benefiting us. But I think it's hard for us to think about changing ways things have always been done. I think about our fax machines and email and how much more efficient our days are. I don't think that it's like people lose jobs because it's more efficient. I think jobs are changed. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Annelise Osborne in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Business Week, Princeton Review, and US News & World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Annalise Osborne. Ken WhiteAnother chapter is the Changing Generations. Wow. Almost everybody I'm talking to, this is right at the top of the list. How do you approach it? Annelise OsborneOkay, so this, I think, is really the root of why all of this technology is so important. If we look at money today, 51% is now in the hands of retail and 49 in institutions. That retail component, if we're looking at investments, if we look at alternative investments right now, the only one in alternative investments really is the corporate sector. It's very little in the retail sector, and it's only at the ultra high networth space. Then, if we go look at public companies, in the '90s, there were 8,000 public companies. Now it's half of that. So, all of the world is becoming more private, and there's so much more in alternative investments. When I studied finance, it was 60, 40 stocks and bonds. Now, if you look at the ultra-high net worth portfolios, this is a BlackRock study. It was 60, 40 traditional and alternative. And so that alternative bucket is really where the opportunity for growth is. You have all these asset managers. For example, you have Apollo, Hamilton, and KKR, like I mentioned. They're all looking to grow their assets under management. Most people will go to the same pension funds, endowments, what have you, to grow their assets under management. But it's not growing at 20%, or the rate a lot of these asset managers would like to grow. The opportunity, if we go back to that wealth diagram, is in the retail segment. It's difficult. Retail segments are generally smaller amounts. They're smaller check sizes, which are hard to deal with going into a fund unless you have technology efficiencies. That is what's happening. If you look at these people are not taking on this new technology because they think it'd be cool to be an innovator. They're taking on because they recognize there will be financial benefits, and they will also hit this new crowd. So going into generations, what this also means. So, if we look at generations right now, half the population, millennials, are now 40. Our millennial, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which is the next generation. Also, there's a great wealth transfer. So wealth over the last 35 years has increased 16% on a straight line basis, 16. And the benefit of that has really been the baby boomers who are now turning around and passing that money down to the millennials and Gen Z. And so millennial, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, half of the population are natively digital. They grew up with a supercomputer in their hand, which is a phone, right? Ken WhiteYeah. Annelise OsborneThat has more horsepower than when we sent a rocket to the moon. So, I feel that this generation expects things differently. They expect things more efficiently, and they want things to do on their phone. Robin Hood, which is a. Actually, let's go back to Gamestop. This is super interesting, I think. If you look at what happened with both Gamestop and then Dogecoin, which is a crypto, social media drove up the prices, and it was a community of people. They investigated this. There's nothing against the law here. It was a community of people that actually, in essence, decided to invest in this, and it drove the prices up all through social media. My 13-year-old was on Wall Street Bets for Reddit, telling me what was happening with Gamestop. So that's really interesting. This trading was all done on Robin Hood. Robin Hood is an alternative. You can get alternative assets on this. You can get stocks and bonds. I'm not sure you can get bonds, actually. But I feel like things like Robin Hood, which are digital, it's an app on your phone, 80% of their users are under the age of 35. So it's just these millennials and the Gen Z will be running the companies. They will expect more efficiencies, but they're also going to be investing the lion's share of capital, and they're looking for alternative investments and so that is a reason why this technology is so important. Ken WhiteHow did you write the book? We've had so many people on who've written books, and there's all kinds of methods. How did you approach it? Annelise OsborneSure. So it was over the holidays a year ago, and I had been thinking about, how do I get this message out? It's more than just a blog post, and I thought I wanted to write a book. And so, every day over the holidays, I sat down and wrote a table of contents to see if I really wanted to do it before I told anyone. Every day, it was the same, and it was really flushed out. And so then I decided, how do we do this? I hired someone to help me put together a book proposal. In doing that, I researched that Wiley was really the only publisher that was publishing in the sector which is really crypto. And all the other books out there were really. This is the other thing. There was nothing out there like it. So there's nothing out there talking about capital markets or Wall Street and this technology. It was really focused on crypto, crypto trading, DeFi, decentralized finance, or digital dollar, which are central bank digital currencies, which are all ideas and all new. And so I put together a book proposal. I had it approved very quickly from Wiley, but then it also publishes or work on a different than the finance or me wanting to get it done right away because I am very now, now, now. So it would take a month for everything. So I got my offer in June, and then I quit my day job, which was at Arca, great Arca Labs. It was fantastic. We were working on creating innovative structures. We had a forte back fund as well and digital treasuries. And then I wrote the book in three months. So, I wrote the first ten chapters in two months. And then the last chapter, it took me a full month because that chapter is where we're going and where I see finance in 2, 5, and 10 years. I feel that that one is much more up for discussion. I just knew what I wanted to say, but did a lot of research to back everything. Ken WhiteIt's coming out in June? Annelise OsborneIt is out in June, yes. Ken WhiteAny place you plan to go just to see it on the shelf? What's your plan, right? Annelise OsborneI feel like it's not as mainstream. I think it's targeted really at executives and finance people, but also it's a huge world for students. I'm also getting a lot of feedback from people that have read it for the technology people to understand why they're building it and why this works for finance. It's interesting that it's very widespread, but it's not. If you don't know who Jamie Dimon is, it's a little. It's harder to understand because that's more of the finance world. I assume that, well, Wiley is very good with distribution. It's on most any site right now online. I will be speaking about it, and I'm happy to talk to people about it who are interested in hearing more. But yes, I'll probably pop into Barnes & Noble and see it there. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Annelise Osborne, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Annelise Osborne, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Lisa Petrelli](images/lisa-petrelli-222-thumb.jpg)
![Leadership & Global Markets](images/lisa-petrelli-222-thumb.jpg)
Lisa Petrelli
Episode 222: May 24, 2024
Leadership & Global Markets
Last month, the William & Mary School of Business and its Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance hosted the annual Women's Stock Pitch competition where 24 teams consisting of undergraduate women from the world's top universities competed, networked, and learned. One of the keynote speakers for the event was Lisa Petrelli, managing director, acting country head, and head of global markets for Canada at UBS. A board member for 100 Women in Finance, Petrelli has 25 years of experience on Wall Street. After delivering her keynote, she sat down with us to talk about a variety of subjects pertaining to Wall Street and leadership. More specifically: the diverse backgrounds of her peers, the markets, and the one constant - change.
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TranscriptLisa PetrelliYou look at benchmarks, whether it's 2008 crisis, whether you look at Y2K, and you always think, wow, that's it. Oh, my gosh. I've never seen anything like it. But the market is humbling, and there's always something interesting, and they are cycles. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, last month, the William & Mary School of Business and its Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance hosted the Annual Women's Stock Pitch Competition. Where 24 teams consisting of undergraduate women from the world's top universities competed, networked, and learned. One of the keynote speakers for the event was Lisa Petrelli, Managing Director, Acting Country Head, and Head of Global Markets for Canada at UBS. A board member for 100 Women in Finance, Petrelli has 25 years of experience on Wall Street. After delivering her keynote, she sat down with us to talk about a variety of subjects pertaining to Wall Street and leadership. More specifically, the diverse backgrounds of her peers, the markets, and the one constant change. Here's our conversation with Lisa Petrelli of UBS. Ken WhiteLisa, thank you very much for sharing your time, and thanks for being here. Have you had fun so far? Lisa PetrelliIt's been fantastic, Ken. I really appreciate it. I love coming here every year. Every year, it's great momentum. Ken WhiteIn this group of students, I mean, wow. Lisa PetrelliYeah. Yeah. Ken WhiteYeah. Wouldn't you like to just buy stock in them? Lisa PetrelliIt's so funny because when we come here as judges or we come here as leaders or professionals, the students, you can see them staring at you with some sense of awe. But the awareness is I'm also coming here to stare at them with some sense of awe. Their awareness, what they look at, what's interesting to them into the markets is something that I learned from. It's a symbiotic relationship between the two. Then also, I think with William & Mary, most recently, and over the last number of years, it's gone global. It's no longer just about being national in the largest national stock pitch competition, but it's also this awareness that all of a sudden, this University of Sydney is here. There's Canadian representation. There's someone from Singapore. There is a groundswell and a commonality to this when you say wow, I say, wow, right back. Ken WhiteYeah. And your keynote last night was interesting because it wasn't a stand behind the podium and deliver a talk. You just said you had a conversation with a friend last night. Lisa PetrelliYeah. I think that's the beautiful part of it, especially when you have these speakers or leaders of the industry come speak. We don't have secret sauce, right? So, I think students like to hear something that's going to make their lives change. And as I just said to you, we're all students of the market. It doesn't matter how long you've been in the industry. It's really a situation that you get humbled by every single day. And to have a conversation and to have a conversation with a friend, I think there's a lot more that resonates out of that than just sitting behind and being like, well, when I was a kid or when I was a student, this is what I did, because no path in this industry is straight. That's for sure. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. Tell us about your job. Lisa PetrelliMy day job I work at UBS, and I work at UBS in Canada. I'm a Canadian by birth. Most of my career has been on Wall Street, though. I've worked across the street at Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, and now UBS. But I sit in Toronto, Canada. I represent the country for UBS. I run the investment bank for UBS in Canada, and similarly, I also oversee the global market. That's my day job in the sense of actually working with UBS specifically. But then I'm also on the global board of 100 Women in Finance. I'm the Treasurer in that role. I've been active in William & Mary, and I've been in a number of advisory roles across some universities in Canada. Ken WhiteYou had a bit of a, not a nontraditional background, but not a real finance background when you first got in. What was it like getting into the industry? Lisa PetrelliPeople ask me that a lot, and I have to say without disclosing age or what year I got into the industry, the industry and the awareness to the roles was not as socialized as when we first started. There was no linear path to say, I'm going to go to university, I'm going to become an investment banker, or I want to become a trader. It just didn't exist like that. That awareness of that market was not the same way. I took political economy for the sole purposes that I was interested in economics and I was interested in geopolitics. How that fed into me becoming a trader and then working across the investment bank and working through my career, you're right. There's no correct correlation to that. I always say that I feel like the industry chose me as opposed to me choosing it. It just fit my mindset along the way. Ironically, though, I would say that most people think that finance is a very linear path. You go to school, you get your business degree, and you end up in this industry. Most people I have worked with have either been want to be doctors or dropped out of medical school, architect. Most hedge fund managers have a philosophy degree. When people ask that question, back at you, I'm like, well, why wouldn't I consider this industry? Because the industry is not just about, I know math, and therefore I must. It's, I'm interested in the world. I'm interested in how structured I'm interested in how things work. I always say this: the natural curiosity is more my mantra as opposed to what my discipline was. Ken WhiteThat's a great answer. What's changed over the course of your career in terms of the industry? What are some of the massive, more important changes that you've seen? Lisa PetrelliI think the ones I would say most specifically, first of all, is the globalization of the marketplace. It's no longer a silo. There's much more of a unity and a conformity across the 24/7 concept of trading or the markets, the impact of that across each marketplace. If you hear about something that's happening in China, it's going to have a co-relation to what happens in the US markets. I would say that is a higher correlation in the awareness of the world. The efficiency of the markets is probably higher. We have more quant modeling. Data becomes much more relevant along the way. Those are pretty pivotal, and I say very structural, in terms of the evolution of the markets. But if you ask me what's really changed is, we were talking this at dinner last night, and I'm sure you know this, Ken, is you look at benchmarks, whether it's 2008 crisis, whether you look at Y2K, and you always think, wow, that's it. Oh, my gosh. I've never seen anything like it. But the market is humbling, and there's always something interesting, and they are cycles. That's where I mean, back at you, do you not look back at your career and also be like, you remember these moments in your career, but yet the career is still going on. There's an evolution still. Ken WhiteYeah. We all know those periods where we learned so much and got through it somehow. Lisa Petrelli100%. There's still an evolution to these. When you ask me that question, I would say more specifically, it's data AI, concepts like that, the efficiencies, globalization. But when you ask me, what are these? There's always something that is going to SVB. There's always a catalyst that you're like, oh, right. Ken WhiteWhat do you think might change things moving forward? We talk so much about AI, digital transformation. What are some of the changes that might affect your industry, your career, people who do what you do? Lisa PetrelliIt's such a good question because when we started in this industry, I swear I thought I was going to be flying to work in my car. We really did think that change was happening tomorrow. We had a dinner last night and we were talking about how quick could the markets adopt to AI. It's always an open question. You, again, Ken, have seen you've seen pockets where crypto became a thing for a while, and then it died away. I will never be the person that can suggest there's an immediacy and time frame to it, but definitely, the ship has turned, if that makes any sense. It has turned to much more of this AI digitization. Now, if you're asking me, does it replace traders? No, I don't think that's going to replace traders. Will it actually refine roles? Will it create more efficiencies in markets? Will investors be able to look at things a little more clear? Does it affect market prices because you have quant models in? Absolutely. But that's the humbling part of this market is: change is for sure concept. Ken WhiteWhat do you like about it? Lisa PetrelliThe markets? Ken WhiteYeah, what you do, what really drives you up? Lisa PetrelliI'm doing it. That's, I think, what it because I think, as I said to you earlier, if you're not naturally curious, it is not the right industry for you. It's less about the discipline and what you became and who you were. If you're not naturally curious, then this is not the right industry for you because the one thing, like I just said, is change is for sure, and it is not a linear path. What I love, even doing this for as long as I've been doing this, is exact that uncertainty. How am I navigating for that? How am I preparing for that? What am I learning from that? I don't think I would be unique in that. Do you feel like the same thing when you wake up in the morning? Ken WhiteYeah, of course. That's why I like my job because no two days are the same. Of course, some people like that, and some don't, though, of course. Some people like a more predictability. What about as a leader? What is your responsibility in terms of leadership? Lisa PetrelliIn terms of the community that I lead or just in terms of how I see leadership in this market? Ken WhiteThe groups you lead in your role, how big, how many? Lisa PetrelliWe have a strong leadership team, and the filter in the food chain is such that there's senior management and then underneath that along the way. When I talk about leadership, I always look at tote at the top, first of all. Where my job is also in working at UBS, culture really, really matters. That is something that take as a huge responsibility because leadership is one thing to say: these are our deliverables, this is what we have to do, et cetera. But if you can't walk the walk and there's no appropriate culture that aligns yourself to it, it's a fractured process and probably set up potentially at some point to fail. Culture matters, how we manage for things matter, and ultimately along the way, in terms of the senior management support that you have down to your teams, that's probably very relevant. The accountability that you have to that is probably, I would say, is probably the strongest remit to how you can actually deliver to the numbers that you serve. I think it's less about numbers at that point. But again, I'm very specific on how culture is led. I know at our organization, we take that very seriously at UBS. Culture matters. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Lisa Petrelli of UBS in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Business Week, Princeton Review, and US News & World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Lisa Petrelli. Ken WhiteHow did you learn how to lead? Lisa PetrelliThat's a really good question. How did I learn how to lead? I think you have to learn through, first of all, there's maturity to the process of it. I'm mature enough to say that at some points I was very immature to my management style or leadership style. There's also an awareness that you do have to leave your past behind because I remember specifically as I evolved out of being this trader and then this head of trading, et cetera, et cetera, and then to the role that I am now, I was always like, when I go back to trading, when I go back to do this, and somebody took me aside and said, no you're only moving forward. That really changed the way I looked at things. Even for students or anybody that looks at leadership in any capacity, there is a forward motion to leadership. The risk is to either look backward as to leadership or, say, stagnant in leadership. I don't think that's healthy. When I learn how to lead, it's because I know there has to be a forward motion to that. We were talking about this also today at breakfast. Actually, is the awareness of context in leadership really matters? Nothing is as one-dimensional as I used to think it was. Why isn't this thing performing? Then, therefore, putting your own judgment on it is not a helpful exercise, at least in terms of the way I look at management. There's context. Again, this natural curiosity, how can we look things a different way? What's spaghetti contest. When I say throw things against the wall, see what sticks, that's where I enjoy being provocative in leadership style. Ken WhiteAll leaders had mentors or people they watched and tried to emulate. What are some of the things you learned from those people that you try to do as a leader? Lisa PetrelliThe one thing we talked about this last night, I would love to give a really good answer, Ken, but the thing that always struck me, and I'm not going to say who this leader was, but it was a very senior leader at an investment bank that I worked with. They said, and this was a. I was like a kid, and I'm staring with stars in my eyes at this person, and they said, I don't know in a meeting. I don't know the answer. It just shocked me because this imposter syndrome to think that we're all supposed to have the answers, go prepared, know the answers, look at someone else. They must have it because I don't have it. This very senior person said I don't know. Will you tell me? He was actually speaking to me, and I was just rocked. I was like, that's the one. That's it. That was it. It's this ability to say, I don't know. That's not a weakness as a leader. That's actually a position of strength to say, tell me what you know. Ken WhiteSure. Lisa PetrelliThat's the thing. How about you? Ken WhiteWell, I remember the day I realized leaders don't know everything and leaders are not perfect. Lisa PetrelliYeah. Ken WhiteYeah, that's an eye-opener. Lisa PetrelliIt really is. Ken WhiteYeah, for sure. Lisa PetrelliIt changes the way you also have the. And your dedication and loyalty towards that, because I think when especially we look at students, they come in, they have this very absolute view of why they're coming into the industry or the job or the company they've chose along the way. It's easy to look at it from that one-dimensional perspective, and then all of a sudden say, I don't know if I like this or it works for me. But I think the awareness to say, again, there is this forward motion, evolution, learning process, and not everyone has it right, is actually the community that we probably all should serve really well. Ken WhiteYeah. Go back in time, your friends growing up, your family, would they have said you'd be where you are in this industry as a leader? They see that coming? Lisa PetrelliI think so. I don't say that with ego. I say that because. Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm giving away my dirty secret. When I was little, I loved being a cashier. When we used to play as kids because I loved counting money, was it five 20s that you wanted, back as 100 is one 100. So the concept of math and the concept of risk management, I was too young to know what that all meant, but I knew that that served my soul in the right way. So would they say that this is what I thought I would come? I would think so. Yeah, I do. And that's why when we talk to students, I always say to them like, what are you passionate about? Because that does align to your job in some way. I hear so many times where people think they're two different people in the industry. Like, oh, here's me, and I'm passionate. I'm a competitive runner, but I don't know if I should be in this industry, but I'm like, you compete. What's the difference between you going into Wall Street on competing in a similar fashion. I think people make this break of themselves that they don't realize is actually helpful in their career. Does that make sense? Ken WhiteAbsolutely. You mentioned passionate. It's one of the questions I've asked so many of our guests who are leaders, our guests on the podcast, is that role passion plays. Is it critical? Is it not critical? Or how important is passion in one's success? Lisa PetrelliI mean, that's 100% a framed question you're asking me, Ken, because if you're not passionate, it's not authentic, and then it doesn't work. It's just a It's just a natural selection where it's not working for you. You've also deselected yourself. If you're coming in here and punching the clock and just knowing that you're churning for whatever end goal, greater glory, that doesn't work out. Passion is the only thing that will resonate with your authenticity and help you succeed more specifically, I think. Ken WhiteWhat advice have you been giving to the young women here? So many have approached you. Lisa PetrelliSpecifically today, for the Stock Pitch event that we're here for, I would say, first of all, have fun. Again, nobody has the right answers. The second thing I would say is look at the network around you. So many times, people come to these events. There's hundreds of people at these events, and they forget to, I always call it, I don't like the word network because it implies you have to walk away with 20 different things and end outcome. I'm always like, what's your three-friend concept? What's your three-friend network? Come away with three contacts along the way. I do think they forget that everyone around them will be somebody and something as they work through the industry. That's a very, very powerful mechanism, especially for the women that are moving forward in this industry. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Lisa Petrelli. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Lisa Petrelli, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Greg Melich](images/greg-melich-221-thumb.jpg)
![Retail in 2024](images/greg-melich-221-thumb.jpg)
Greg Melich
Episode 221: April 27, 2024
Retail in 2024
We interact with it on a regular basis; some of us daily, some weekly. Whatever the frequency, it's a major part of life and spending. Retail. Whether it's discount stores, department stores, online or brick-and-mortar, retail is a massive sector. And for the most part, since the beginning of the pandemic, things have been good for retailers. For much of his career, Greg Melich has studied and analyzed retail. He's partner and Senior Managing Director at Evercore, a global independent investment banking advisory firm. On a recent visit to William & Mary, he sat down with us to discuss the state of retail, the hot topics, and where things are headed.
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TranscriptGreg MelichTo think that you can not have stores and actually have 30% share of retail is, I don't think it's going to happen, which is why Amazon, I think, ultimately will have stores again. They've tried and tested. They have Whole Foods that they own. There's a portion of that experience for the consumer that I think a store is a critical part. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. We interact with it on a regular basis, some of us daily, some weekly. Whatever the frequency, it's a major part of life and spending. Retail. Whether it's discount stores, department stores, online, or brick-and-mortar, retail is a massive sector. And for the most part, since the beginning of the pandemic, things have been good for retailers. For much of his career, Greg Melich has studied and analyzed retail. He's partner and senior managing director at Evercore, a global independent investment banking advisory firm. On a recent visit to William & Mary, he sat down with us to discuss the state of retail, the hot topics, and where things are headed. Here's our conversation with Greg Melich, partner and Senior Managing Director at Evercore. Ken WhiteWell, Greg, thanks for your time. It's great to have you with us on the podcast. Nice to see you here. Greg MelichIt's great to be here, Ken. Ken WhiteWhat have you done? You've been here a couple of days. Greg MelichI'm here almost a week now. I was here for the William & Mary Women's Stock Pitch Competition. I'm on the Boehly Center Board of Advisors, so came down for that and actually stuck around most of this week for the Parents Council meeting that's happening this weekend. Ken WhiteExcellent. Well, it's great to have you on campus. We mentioned what you did a little bit on the introduction to our listeners, but we'll let you say that. What is it you do? What is your role? Greg MelichI'm a partner and Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI, and I cover the retail industry, which means I cover 20 plus retail stocks and have for 20 years. Ken WhiteAll publicly traded, obviously. Greg MelichPublicly traded companies trying to figure out if the stocks are going to go up or down. That's what I do during the day. Ken WhiteWe often hear broad lines, hard lines, hard soft. What are your definitions for that? Greg MelichI like to say soft lines is, think of it, if you pick up something in a store that covers a soft line, and I threw it at you, and it didn't hurt, it's a soft line. So my partner, Michael Banetti, covers Nike and all the Lulu and all those soft lines companies. I do broad lines and Hard Lines. So Broad Lines is covering everything. So think of Walmart, think of Amazon, might have apparel, but might also have everything else. Also Home Depot, Best Buy, O'Reilly automotive. So basically, if it's in the store and I threw it at you and it hurt, it's a hard line. Ken WhiteRetail, what do you like about it? Greg MelichWhat I love is it's always changing. Retailers and the companies that make the products that are sold at retail always have to be changing, being on top of consumer trends, and really trying to service their needs. So to me, that's what's always made an exciting business. It's always changing. Ken WhiteSpeaking of change, how are things overall in retail here as we're recording in April of 2024? How are things going? Greg MelichWe're called at a choppy bottom in the first quarter that is now a choppy bounce into the spring. What that means is we had several years. I mean, COVID was generally good for retailers. Why? Government sent out trillions of checks and then said, but you can only spend these 12 places. Retail sales popped for a couple of years with COVID and then the stimulus. Frankly, with inflation now, it's come back, but retail sales have been growing for the last four years above the long-term trend, which is around three and a half percent. This year, we think we'll grow three percent. We're finally getting back to the long-term trend, but we think the bottom was in the first quarter where we grew about just over, well, almost two percent in the first quarter. Ken WhiteNow, that's US. Is that where most of your Greg MelichThat's defining. Great question. That's defining US retail sales, which is about a $5 trillion market. The way we think about it is consumption is over $20 trillion, and retail is just over 20% of overall US consumption. It's a big, important industry where you're on the cutting edge, and things are always changing. Ken WhiteYeah, very interesting. Yeah, of course. And growing up in that space with a family business it was fun. You learn a lot of things in retail, no question. Lots of people ask, when they read something regarding the mix, what's the percentage pf online sales? What's the percentage of brick and mortar sales? Is there a number? Greg MelichYeah. Using that five trillion market, it's around 21% of it is now transacted on online. And we would estimate about 40% of that now is multi-channel. So you may have bought it online, but then you went and picked it up at Target. Ken WhiteYeah. Greg MelichRight. So to us, it's getting harder to define what is e-commerce, but hopefully that gives you the number. The 21% here online then is maybe 13%, something like that, where you never went to a store, you bought it online. Another way to look at that is that Amazon, depending on how you define it, is roughly 9 or 10% of total US retail sales. And they're a majority of that direct online. Ken WhiteOmnichannel, more retailers getting into that space? Greg MelichYeah. If you're not an omnichannel, you're not in business anymore as a retailer. Because even if you're not selling online, it's just a major customer acquisition port at this point. I was at an auto parts conference earlier this week, and that was one of the things you were talking about is people don't buy a lot of auto parts online, but at least half the people that do look up on the website, well, are you in stock with this ignition coil? Why would you go down to the auto parts store and go make that trip unless you at least knew they had what you needed? And so that's where I think omnichannel is truly. It's the only way of doing retail now. Ken WhiteYou talk about change. It wasn't that long a long ago, you had to go to the store. Now you can, like you said, go online, and it tells you what aisle it's in and if they have it. That's pretty fascinating. Greg MelichIt is. And just seeing how some of these retailers are innovating are always impressive to me. Just like the app on a Home Depot app, where now you can walk around a store, and it tells you which bay to go to. You could tell they're even starting to use artificial intelligence. It's starting to know better than any traditional inventory system or even stock-checking person; wow, are we going to be out of stock or not of coat hangers in aisle three? It's amazing. Ken WhiteYou mentioned AI. How big of a role is that playing right now in retail? Greg MelichIt's playing a huge role, this omnichannel shift, because if you're not ahead of it, then you're going to be behind. And so I think what we're seeing is it was true pre-COVID, but even post. It's those companies that won traffic and won customers during COVID and then found a way to get them to come more frequently, that they're the ones that are really winning. So it's just a huge part of the business. Ken WhiteYou mentioned COVID. What were some of the things we're seeing now that the pandemic caused or the effects the pandemic had on retail here in 2024? Greg MelichThere's so many, but to isolate it down to retail, I think what we're still learning is we're in the wake of certain categories had once in a 100-year spikes in demand. We're seeing: do we need to go all the way back to what pre-COVID demand was, or how much of it's sticking? For example, I think golf rounds played are up 30%. Well, now they're starting to go down again year on year, but they're still over 20% above where they were. That has implications for golf club sales, golf balls, et cetera. I use that as an example. You could go through fishing poles, fire pits. Think of a lot of things that we bought as a society that, okay, will we ever have to buy again? That's where I think a lot of retailers are. It's a challenge, but the best ones get through it. Ken WhiteWe often hear when we read about retail or hear about the sector, about ESG, sustainability. It's important to the companies, important to the customers. How do you look at that? Greg MelichI frame it this way. ESG is important. It's always been important, but define it for me because I would say it's an acronym, ESG, and what society defines as important on E can change over time. I used to cover European autos, and at the time, it was considered that diesel was going to save the world by having more fuel-efficient cars. Twenty years later, Volkswagen was paying billions of dollars of fines for basically cheating our laws, saying that their laws were better. I look at it and go, define E for me because even that can move. Same thing with social, same thing with governance. I always look at it as a finance guy, which is that at the end of the day, there is no successful business that doesn't take care of its customers, take care of its associates and employees, and therefore become a bigger, more profitable enterprise 5 or 10 years from now. That's what companies should do. There's always going to be some part of governance and other factors that are a key part of that. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Greg Melich in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Business Week, Princeton Review, and US News & World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support in a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Greg Melich. Ken WhiteCustomers, the expectations seem to change from time to time. What are you seeing in that realm? Greg MelichOne constant, I would say, with consumers over the well, 30 years I've looked at consumers, but also 20 years in retail. In retail, specifically, it's three things. It's price, assortment, and convenience. Those are the three things people care about. You mentioned ESG before. It's like people will say that they care about what particular topic of the year is or decade. But at the end of the day, that's table stakes, right? That you're taking care of your customers and you're doing the right things for society. Okay, I need it. I need it. Is the price good? Do you have the assortment? And can I get it now? How convenient is for me? The rankings will shift. Sometimes, right now, the consumer has been strapped, and so value has really risen up in terms of importance. But those three are in every survey we do of consumers, those always show up as the top three. Ken WhiteWell, and that makes sense, right? I think most of our listeners would say, of course, that's what I look for. Greg MelichSometimes, the most simple things are worth repeating because it's this one. Ken WhiteCustomer service in a brick and mortar location still important? Greg MelichAbsolutely. I think having people talk about omnichannel and e-commerce and how big and important it is. But remember, almost 80% of sales are still not online. And even the ones that a portion of them, 40% it are, are somehow fulfilled with the store. So to think that you can not have stores and actually have 30% share of retail is I don't think it's going to happen, which is why Amazon, I think ultimately, will have stores again. They've tried and tested. They have Whole Foods that they own. There's a portion of that experience for the consumer that I think a store is a critical part. Ken WhiteYeah, DICKS Sporting Goods. We had one of the leaders from DICKS on, and some of the things they're doing to change the whole experience, actually making experience stores. You mentioned Amazon. What kind of effect, and this is a tough question because the effect has been gigantic, but what an effect have they had on retail? Greg MelichWow. Well, they are neck and neck with Walmart now as total GMV share, Gross Market Value. So it's about 10% of US retail sales. And we estimate that close to 100 million households out of 135 are Amazon Prime members. And those two things. I think that just shows you the impact, right? So they are now as big as Walmart. They still grow double digits. And if you're a retailer, I would even say a company making something that sold to consumers or even Google an advertising business, if you're not watching what Amazon is doing, you're putting yourself at risk. Ken WhiteTheft in retail. We're reading a lot about this and seeing a lot about that, also known as shrink. What can you tell us about that? Because it certainly seems to be growing, at least if we're looking at the media. Greg MelichYeah, it's a great question. There's no easy solution to it, but that's why it's one we're going to keep getting. I'll use Target as an example because they've given some of the numbers. It's been a particular challenge for them, but that's because they have a lot of stores in more densely populated areas, and those stores have been subject to a lot of shrink, and they've given the numbers out in such a way that we know that it's been over a billion dollars of incremental hits. Just to frame that, that's shrink was for them probably 1% of sales five, six years ago, and now it's over two. When people say, what does that mean? It has so many implications. I mean, one is just, well, there's some inflation right there. If you're a retailer, you have to price it through, or you're going to go out of business. What do you do for your employees? How do you keep it safe for them? Do you decide to keep a store open until eight o'clock or do you have to close it at five o'clock? There's so many decisions that have to be made given the strength challenges that the industry's faced. Ken WhiteWhat's ahead? What are you thinking? What might we see three, four, five years from now that we're not seeing necessarily now in retail? Greg MelichI think there's always been an innovative fast change business. I think the pace of that is just accelerating. It's why, if we talk about Amazon getting a 10% share. I don't see why they couldn't get to 20. I don't know if it's going to take 15 years or five, but you need to be thinking, what could they do to get it there? And what do I pivot to do a guess? I would think the biggest thing is going to be the pace of change; I don't think it necessarily slows down. And it could be; it probably has to do with AI. Still don't know where or how, but it's going to have to do with that, would be my guess. Ken WhiteIn your role, what do you specifically spend your time on when you're looking at companies? Greg MelichI've grown up as a bottom-up fundamental analyst, and one of the things I always liked and kept me in this equity research job for 30 years now is I'm always excited, and I love just visiting a company or learning about a business. To dig deep, I always felt like a private investigator, almost an investigative journalist of what can we to figure out that the market hasn't figured out. The tools all change because we have email now. I'm old enough to have not email when I started. So, the toolkit and the golf bag changes, but what you're after is the same. To me, there's nothing more interesting and exciting than learning about a new company and business and how it can grow and innovate. Ken WhiteI often ask our guests, because I'm seeing it as you're talking, that how important is it that you're passionate and you love what you do? Greg MelichIt's everything. I have two daughters, and this I tell them, I haven't sucked either one of them into the Wall Street gig. But I think the key is you're going to be successful in whatever you're doing if you're passionate about it if it's what you like. And look, that's the best way to get work-life balance is: make your work part of your life and make sure you enjoy it along the way. That's how you get there. Ken WhiteAny other advice you might want to give young professionals or working professionals on how to enjoy, how to succeed? Greg MelichYes. I think your first job is not your last job. Make sure wherever you are, you like the people you work with and that you're learning along the way. As long as you find what it is, as you're learning, and you find what you really like, then you'll know where to let those passions take you. That's how to keep it fun. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Greg Melich, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Greg Melich, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Zar Toolan](images/zar-toolan-220-thumb.jpg)
![Human Centered A.I.](images/zar-toolan-220-thumb.jpg)
Zar Toolan
Episode 220: April 5, 2024
Human Centered A.I.
The adoption of artificial intelligence and generative AI is moving so quickly. Leaders, companies, and organizations are working to determine how AI can best help them, their employees, their customers, and others. And while the work continues, some organizations have found the sweet spot: developing ways AI and employees work together to provide outstanding customer service by using the best of technology and people. One of those organizations is the financial services firm Edward Jones. Zar Toolan is Principle, Wealth Platforms, Data & AI for Edwards Jones. He recently visited the William & Mary School of Business to talk with students. Then, he talked with us about artificial intelligence and leveraging AI to build better connections.
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TranscriptZar ToolanWe actually are seeing more and more, even in the younger generations, that are saying they want a human to be part of that equation with them along with the A.I. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. The adoption of artificial intelligence and generative A.I. is moving so quickly. Leaders, companies, and organizations are working to determine how A.I. can best help them, their employees, their customers, and others. And while the work continues, some organizations have found the sweet spot. Developing ways A.I. and employees work together to provide outstanding customer service by using the best of technology and people. One of those organizations is the financial services firm Edward Jones. Zar Toolan is Principal Wealth Platforms, Data, and A.I. for Edward Jones. He recently visited the William & Mary School of Business to talk with students. Then, he talked with us about artificial intelligence and leveraging A.I. to build better connections. Here's our conversation with Zar Toolan. Ken WhiteWell, Zar, welcome. It's great to have you on campus, and welcome to the podcast. Zar ToolanThanks so much for having me, Ken. Great to be here. Ken WhiteYou spoke to a class today. How was that? Zar ToolanIt was just phenomenal seeing the future leaders that we get to educate and see the way that they see the world and really bringing out the best in them from how they view leadership, how they view their own accountability to not just university, but society, and really thinking big picture like that. It was just so great to see it in person in real-time. Ken WhiteYou talked specifically more about leadership with the group? Zar ToolanI did. It was great. We talk a lot about resiliency in leadership and lessons that we all take with us, not just intellectual lessons but really experiential lessons. What does resiliency mean in the face of the inevitable adversity that will come our ways? How do we think through it and do more with it as we go? Ken WhiteYeah. Business school is a good place to learn a little bit about resilience. Zar ToolanIt's a great place, for sure. Ken WhiteYeah, I am so impressed, and I do more work with our MBA students and love them to death. But I don't do that much with the undergraduates. But when I meet them, they are so unbelievably impressive. Zar ToolanAnd genuine, and really bringing their full selves into it, and just the responsiveness and the back and forth dialog throughout the entirety. It was really special. Ken WhiteWell, that's great. Glad you had a good time. We told our audience a little bit about you and what you do in Edward Jones, but if you wouldn't mind, what are you doing in terms of your role? Tell us a little bit about the organization. Zar ToolanSure. Thanks for that. I really appreciate it. Well, at Edward Jones, we have the privilege of serving over 8 million clients and investors across all of North America. We have a client in every county in the United States, except for one in Loving, Texas, which is fun, every province of Canada. We have about 50,000 colleagues across Edward Jones. Our purpose is to partner for positive impact for our clients and our colleagues, and together really better our communities and society as a whole. We take that very seriously. For me, for my role, getting to lead our wealth platforms, data, and A.I., we really think about how can we use those platforms. How can we use that broad reach that we have with our clients? Now, with the world of A.I. and generative A.I., how can we do that differently? How can we do that in a responsible human-centered way to really accelerate the way that we are able to serve our clients where they are for what they need for whatever is needed for them in the future? Ken WhiteWhat an exciting time, right? Zar ToolanIt really is. Ken WhiteWith so many things at our fingertips today. When you hear human-centered A.I., what's the definition 50,000-foot view of that? What does that mean? Zar ToolanWhen we think about it, Edward Jones, when I think about it, A.I., artificial intelligence, has been around for 40-something years at this point. It's been around, and it's only been recently with this explosion of generative A.I. and really bringing that front and center into the marketplace. You have disruptors like ChatGPT and all the things that Open A.I. are doing. When you think about that, that is something that's going to, I think, accelerate that way we as humans are going to be able to operate and interact with each other. It's going to give us the ability to, I say, do the fun stuff. Computers are really good at doing the routine, maybe the more mundane. We talk about taking the drudgery out of things, out of work. For me, being human-centered just allows us to explore more of that humanity using A.I. to accelerate that in many ways. I actually add a third kind of A.I., which I always call augmented intelligence. That's really where we can take all the human specialties that we have, applying it with A.I. to have that augmented intelligence to really help us do what we think is right and best for our jobs, for the things that we see every day. Ken WhiteI've heard you talk about transitioning from the information age to the intelligence age. What does that mean? Tell us about that. Zar ToolanSure. When I think about growing up in '70s and '80s and really being a product of what you may even call the back end of the space age and then going into the information age, which you think about the computers of the '80s and '90s and really bringing us there, you think about the things that happened in the late '90s, whether it was AOL or Google and then with YouTube. That was really this beautiful information age that really took us from that space age into where we are now. Over the last 5-10 years, really that shift into the intelligence age, where we're able to do things faster, more easily. You think about computing power. You think about the way that the gaming industry has enabled us to harness that computing power for things like not just A.I., but now generative A.I. You think about the exponential curve of that. For me, the intelligence age is really about we're taking these incremental steps on an exponential curve. For every one step to the right, we might get five out or, ten out or 100 out of that. That, to me, is really that acceleration into the intelligence age and the way that we can start thinking differently and acting and behaving differently as humans and doing things at a faster pace than ever possible in our history. Ken WhiteAre people adapting and adopting fast enough? Zar ToolanThat's a great question. We wrestle with that every day. What is fast, and what does that really look like? If you think about some of the classic business studies, you think about diffusion of innovation, and you think about things like early adopters versus the laggards. We're really in that innovator and early adopter phase right now. We're not quite probably to that early majority, let alone the late majority or the laggards. In that early part of the curve, and so what is fast, I think folks are exploring this in their own way at their own time. I equate it a lot to when you think back 20 years ago, think about or even 25 years ago at this point, where you had things like e-commerce showing up online. Folks are like, I would never put my credit card information into a computer, or it's going someplace into some black hole that I wouldn't otherwise know where it is. But think about today, where everything is on your phone; everything is at the tap that you can just put out right there. It's that big shift. We're still pretty early on in this phase. I think it's up to everyone to figure out what is fascinating for them and what does that adoption curve look like for them. Ken WhiteBut I assume if you're not early and if you're not on it, you got to get passed up. You've got to be there right now as an organization. Zar ToolanYeah. For sure, as an organization, if I take off my individual persona hat and put on the the Edward Jones hat, for us, this is what we talk about a lot is. What is that right pace? How do we benchmark ourselves against the rest of the industry? How do we benchmark ourselves outside of our industry? How do we look across, whether it's regulators or legislators, across that entire landscape to really say, are we going fast enough as an organization? How do we know if we're going fast enough? At the same time, how are we doing that in a responsible and ethical, and trustworthy way to make sure that as we do it and when we do it, we are taking care of our clients, which is our most important asset that we have across the board. When we think about how are we protecting the things that they give us to hold most dear, which is their financial futures. We want to do this at a measured pace, an intentional pace. I like to say we want to be in the front pack, not necessarily leading the front pack. Ken WhiteDo you see a different differentiation between generations and their willingness to jump on board? Zar ToolanIt's surprising. We actually are seeing more and more, even in the younger generations, that are saying they want a human to be part of equation with them along with the A.I. We have a study we did with Gennext and with some other internal work that we have done, which shows that actually when you look at it, the majority of Gen Z and even some of the earlier consumers in the marketplace still want to have that human interaction, human alternative. We see that consistent across all four of the generations that we surveyed as part of that, going from our boomers to our Gen X, Gen Y, millennials, and now on into Gen Z. It's fascinating to see that even with this proliferation of A.I., it's becoming more easily to capture and get. There's still that desire to have connection points with a human, and that's where we really believe that human-centered component. It's not going away, but this is how we can augment that each and every day. Ken WhiteThen, from an employee standpoint, as you said earlier, these are some tasks I no longer have to do that interfere with my relationship with my client. Zar ToolanThat's exactly right. How can we take those tasks? The more routine tasks that are, the more day-to-day, move it from A to B to C to D. Those are things that computers can do really well. What computers can't do really well is recognize emotion. They can't react. They can't really see the feelings that are happening across the table with a client. How can we use A.I. where A.I. is really good at doing things? How do we keep the human front and center? Because that's how our clients are telling us they want to continue to interact with us. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Zar Toolan in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and U.S. News & World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the U.S. and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Zar Toolan. Ken WhiteI heard you mention talking about accelerating our humanity, how A.I. can do that. Can you tell us more about that? Zar ToolanSure. It's an interesting concept. I had the privilege of having dinner with Garry Kasparov about two years ago, which was the 25th anniversary of his Championship game with Deep Blue if you remember that from IBM. Garry talked a lot about this concept of augmented intelligence and really the idea that how can one plus one plus one equal 25 or whatever the math might be there. When you think about accelerating our humanity, it's really that augmentation of let A.I. do what A.I. can do really well and then let us as humans do what we can do really well. How can we combine those two things together to have a better outcome, a better solution? You think about all of the breakthroughs that are happening, whether it's in medicine right now or in financial services as part of that. Humans are able to do the human things, the quick thought, the creativity, the strategic thinking, but then use A.I. use the computers to then synthesize all that information to make some of those breakthroughs occur. Ken WhiteHow can A.I. promote deeper connections with clients, stakeholders, partners? Zar ToolanI think about a great example that we have at Edward Jones, which is really around our financial advisor match program as an example. What that is designed to do is really taking the eye, really understanding what is most important for a given investor or a client who might need a financial advisor relationship, taking all those characteristics, knowing what's most important to them, being hyper-personalized and focus on those outcomes that are for them the future of what they need, and then pairing them up with a financial advisor who is right there with them who understands what that is. Making those deep personal connections and then enabling that advisor and that client to then explore what that might mean for them. Ken WhiteWhat a response have you had from clients? Zar ToolanThe response has been tremendous. We've been able to get our clients more tightly connected with our financial advisors. They're able to have a more immediate connection with them. Then we're able to then more quickly move them through the process of understanding their financial goals, what's most important for them and how we ultimately bring that to life. Ken WhiteYeah, so interesting. Yeah, saving time and creating the relationship. What about responsible use of A.I.? What do you think about when you hear that? Is that something that keeps you up at night, or is that just part of the job? Zar ToolanIt absolutely is. I think it's paramount for us to think about A.I. with a responsible lens around it. We have at Edward Jones our A.I. guiding principles. There's five of them, and those are sacrosanct to us when we think about this along lens of responsible A.I. The first one is human-centered. We've talked a lot about that and what it means to put the human first, which includes our clients and our financial advisors and our branch teams, and our colleagues across the board. The second one is around accountability, making sure that we are accountable for the things that we do, how we use A.I., where it is. The third is around having our privacy, our data secure and safe, because that is the thing that our clients entrust us with the most, is making sure that we are taking care of them and we're taking care of the things we know about them. The fourth one is around inclusivity. How are we being inclusive with how we're using A.I. to make sure that we don't have any disparate impacts, that we're bringing folks along, that we're having the right equitable approaches to what we're doing with A.I. The fifth one is around transparency. Being very visible, being very transparent and open around that. For us, those five things, human-centered, being accountable, safe, secure, and trustworthy, all-inclusive, and transparent, is the coin of the realm for me for responsible A.I. Ken WhiteHow did you get into this role? Are you a tech guy? How did it happen? Zar ToolanI am a tech guy by background, an engineer by training and trait. I've always been into the math, if you will, of it all. Then getting to spend some time in financial services here over the last almost 20 years. Then, having led data organizations and other digital and scaling parts of that was asked to step into this role and lead the charge forward. It's a pretty exciting time. It's something that's going to be transformative both for us at Edward Jones, but also for us as a human race. Ken WhiteYeah, it is a very exciting time, right? What do you like about it? What's the thing that really gets you going? Zar ToolanOh, gosh, there's so much that I think through, but it's just the ability to go from thought to reality in a matter of moments. What I mean by that, I'll give you a couple of examples. There are things that today might take us six hours to do. I think about it from an Edward Jones standpoint; it could be preparing for a client meeting, could be getting ready to do a summation for a client, could be processing paperwork. We want to take things from 6 hours to 6 minutes. That's the exciting part is that this actually will allow us to do that. What then that allows our branch teams to do is it frees them up to do the things that they do best, which is interacting with their clients, which is having those deep, personal, meaningful connections that only they know about. It's about finding those ways to go deeper with them, giving them personalized nudges that they may know, but they might not know how to actually get after those. It's just There's so much I could talk about in the space. Ken WhiteFor someone who wants to get into that, what should they do? What should they know? Zar ToolanIt's such an opportunity now for A.I. to be part of anything, whether it's an undergraduate business major or a pre-med or a pre-law, or whether it's someone that's already gainfully employed and thinking about what they're doing each and every day. There's a place for A.I. in all of that. The places to start are really just getting more familiar with what it is, what it isn't; just start dabbling and understanding where it can play out. I also think there's so much to be said for understanding the underlying data and components that it can do with that. You think about the interactions that we have each and every day. There's no wrong place to start. Just start. Ken WhiteHow much of your role is leadership involved? Zar ToolanThis is an emerging space, and leadership is key in any space that you're going to have something that's net new. What we look at is really having the playbook that we've developed over years and now applying it to something different. We talk a little bit about resiliency. We talk a lot about the experiences that we have that we're able to bring to bear. But this, to my mind, is a new variable, a very exciting and powerful and exponential variable, but it is just another variable. When we think about it from a leadership standpoint, we're still leading humans; we're still leading change, we're still leading on this long-term journey. We've got a really good playbook, especially at Edward Jones, for that, as well as with the leadership team as we take in these new variables, and then we do more with it. But again, back to our purpose, back to making a difference. It's all part of that same routine, same playbook. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Zar Toolan, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Zar Toolan, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Sean McDermott](images/sean-mcdermott-219-thumb.jpg)
![Football & Principled Achievement](images/sean-mcdermott-219-thumb.jpg)
Sean McDermott
Episode 219: March 23, 2024
Football & Principled Achievement
Succeeding. And doing so in the right manner. That's principled achievement. The William & Mary School of Business defines the principled achievement leader as one who values people, diversity of thought, empathy, humility, and success. This leader listens and inspires, practices ethical compassionate behavior, and embraces the tenets of the William & Mary honor code. This year's Principled Achievement Award Ceremony was held on March 21st in New York City at Rockefeller Center's Rainbow Room. The award was presented to Sean McDermott, a William & Mary graduate and head coach of the National Football League's Buffalo Bills. Before the ceremony, McDermott sat down with us to discuss his thoughts on football, leadership, and principled achievement.
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TranscriptSean McDermottIt doesn't matter what you look like, who you are if you're older or younger. If you can help them achieve their goals, they're going to listen to you. They're going to buy into you. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Succeeding and doing so in the right manner. That's principled achievement. The William & Mary School of Business defines the principled achievement leader as one who values people, diversity of thought, empathy, humility, and success. This leader listens and inspires, practices ethical, compassionate behavior, and embraces the tenets of the William & Mary Honor Code. This year's Principal Achievement Award Ceremony was held on March 21st in New York City at Rockefeller Center's Rainbow Room. The award was presented to Sean McDermott, a William & Mary graduate and head coach of the National Football League's Buffalo Bills. Before the ceremony, McDermott sat down with us to discuss his thoughts on football, leadership, and principled achievement. Here's our conversation with Sean McDermott. Ken WhiteWell, Sean, thanks so much for taking time with us tonight, not only to be here in New York with us for the principled achievement ceremony but to take time to do the podcast with us. Thanks very much. Sean McDermottIt's my pleasure, Ken. I'm happy to be here and looking forward to a great conversation. Ken WhiteYeah, thanks. You're a Philadelphia area guy. How did you end up at William & Mary? Sean McDermottBoy, when I spent some time my junior year speaking to my guidance counselor, I went to LaSalle College Prep School, an all-boys school outside of Philadelphia, and he said, hey, Sean, there's a lot of really good schools down south, and they have football as well. I wanted to play football in school and go to a good school at the same time. He said, A lot of the people from some of the more well-to-do areas, even though I didn't live in that area, were sending their kids down south to go to school. William & Mary being one of those schools, and so I said, hey, I'll look into that. The football and the sports, I met the academics side of things, and it all worked out. Ken WhiteYeah. You also wrestled in high school? Sean McDermottI did. Ken WhiteDid you think about doing that in college? Sean McDermottI did. Ken WhiteWas that a tough decision? Sean McDermottYeah. One of the things that swayed me to football, Ken, was that my grades started to dip every wrestling season because of the grind of a wrestling season, naturally. So, I decided to stick with football. Ken WhiteWhen did you decide coaching might be something in your future? Sean McDermottOh, boy. That's a rabbit hole now. We might go down. My dad was a coach, a part-time college coach, and I was a finance major at school. I just had my vision for myself was, I'm going to get a business finance degree and go live in Northern Virginia and get a dog, have a white picket fence, and have the whole American dream in front of me. Then, I got to my senior year, and I said, wait a second. I think I want to coach. I don't think I've had enough of this football stuff. I started coaching a little bit in the spring of my senior season, my fifth year when my eligibility had already run out. Then it just turned into, let me give it a try in the fall, and here I am. Ken WhiteIs it what you expected? Did you expect to be in the NFL? Sean McDermottNo, I didn't. I mean, who would have ever thought, X amount of years later, that I'd be in the NFL, in particular as a head coach? It's like anything else, though. For driven people like us, it's, hey, trying to be the best at what we can be, at what we do, and that's a goal. It's always been a goal of mine, whether it be at William & Mary or postgraduate. Ken WhiteIt's interesting. Sports fans who are our listeners know this; nonsports fans might not. But in your profession, many coaches change jobs almost annually for 20 straight years. Your background is quite different. You were basically with two teams before you landed your current role. What are the pluses and minuses of jumping so often? Because we can't do that necessarily in business. But for those who do that, what's the game plan there? Sean McDermottThe minuses, I would say, because they're mostly pluses of not jumping, but the pluses of jumping would be that you get a chance to be around a lot of different cultures and a lot of different ways of thinking and doing things naturally. The minuses are it's hard on the family, right? This is a tough business, like many businesses out there. We've been blessed and fortunate to have only been now in three places, and hopefully this is our last stop. Ken WhiteAs a head coach, if you have some coaches who have the background of they tend to jump, how do you build culture with that kind of a staff? Sean McDermottThat are new on my staff? Ken WhiteYes. Sean McDermottThey're a little bit gun-shy, I would say, because of the situations they've been in. And come the end of the season, what I've noticed is they're on pins and needles because, hey, this is the time of year I'm usually looking for a job or the staff gets let go and, yes, again, we're looking for a job and just some bad luck or whatever it is. And so through when it's come up for me as a head coach, it's like, man, wow, this doesn't happen. What I've been able to experience doesn't happen to everyone. And so you try and ease their mind a little bit and pump some confidence and trust into them and reassure them and their families that, hey, you're good, and we're going to be good here. Ken WhiteWho are some of your mentors in terms of head coaches and assistant coaches? Sean McDermottWell, I think you'd start with Coach Laycock. He's since retired at school, and he really had a professional style approach to the way he ran the program at the collegiate level. Then, since I've come into the NFL, Andy Reid spending 12 years with Coach Reid in Philadelphia, working my way up from somewhat low on the ladder to the defensive coordinator position. Then I would say Ron Rivera as well in Carolina, who I worked for, and I'm just super grateful for those opportunities. Ken WhiteWhat's a head coach in the NFL do? What are the roles and responsibilities in less than an hour? Sean McDermottOh, yeah. Well, the bandwidth is incredible. It really is. I'm going to talk about this a little bit tonight at our event here. It's years ago when I interviewed for multiple head coaching jobs over the course of two or three years. In the way it works in the NFL, you kind of get your name out there, you get recognized, and you get on the radar, and you get an interview, maybe two, and you may not get them, but then the next year, you come out the next year, and you're expected to get one. At all of those interviews, Ken, I was asked, how do you define leadership? What is leadership to you? Back then, I really hadn't been through what I've now been through. I was in a leadership role, but only for a few years. That being the coordinator level job is a leadership job. In this case, now being through eight years or seven years, now going on eight of a head coaching job in the NFL, it's, hey, you tell me what the situation is, and I'll tell you what type of leader I have to be. And that's just, to me, you've got to fit the situation and what the situation calls for. And whether it's a player and trying to get them to play better, that's the simple stuff. It's caring for people, caring for players, their families, and really trying to help them become the best version of themselves by building a great culture and an environment around them whereby they can do that. And not just our players, but our staff. And we are dead set on doing that. That is our vision. That is my goal daily, is to build that type of environment where people drive down. One bill is driving, they said, hey, I like going to work here. Ken WhiteAnd I assume also you're basically a CEO? Sean McDermottCorrect. Ken WhiteYeah, the parallels are definitely there. In your role, I know some head coaches have a lot to say in terms of player personnel, who we draft, who we trade for. Is that part of your role? Sean McDermottIt is. The structure of that is a little bit different at every team. At our team, Brandon, being our general manager, is primarily responsible for that, but he's great. He asks for input. The reason being is no GM wants to bring a player in here that a coach doesn't want. That doesn't usually work. But I'd like to believe that we've got a great partnership, and we've worked well together for seven years now. Ken WhiteYou've been in the NFL long enough that players have changed, not just the names, but attitudes, how they've grown up. The generation today is different than it was even five, six years ago. How do you work with players? How do you try to embrace the differences that we see today in players who are 21, 22, and 23? Sean McDermottWell, it has changed. I think what has changed has also stayed the same in terms of the core principles that I believe in. The number one thing is what my dad told me years ago of, hey, they don't really care what you know until they know how much you care about them. And then Andy Reid taught me, he said, hey, listen, all the player cares about after that is, can you help them accomplish their goals? It doesn't matter what you look like, who you are, if you're older or younger. If you can help them achieve their goals, they're going to listen to you. They're going to buy into you. But it really starts and ends with people, right? I think those are the two bookends. And then in the middle of all that is the guiding principles and the process and the culture and the environment you try and build. That's really where, to me, the rubber meets the road. Ken WhiteSo they need to trust you? Sean McDermottAbsolutely. Ken WhiteWhat can a player do so that you trust them? Sean McDermottI think it's mutual. It's showing that they're committed, showing that they're open to being coached. It's a two-way street, that trust. I think there's probably debate out there of, is it given? Is it earned? I think it's probably a combination of both. I'm one of those guys where it is mostly earned, but you have to give it a little bit at the beginning in order to move forward in an efficient manner. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Sean McDermott in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News & World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with the head coach of the Buffalo Bills, Sean McDermott. Ken WhiteYou've been to a couple of Super Bowls. I don't know that the average fan realizes what the odds are and how much that takes to get there, but what's it take to win at such a high level like that? Sean McDermottOh, man, boy. If I could find the formula, it'd be over. To get us back there every year, it's been. I mean, you're talking about the best in the world at what they do at every position around the building. Every week, there's such parody around the NFL. It's the greatest team sport, yes, but also the greatest spectator sport because your team may be not having one of those great years, but those fans are watching because the margins every weekend are very small. That's what leads to you're seeing every weekend a new team win or five new playoff teams because of the parody around the NFL. It's a great business model. Ken WhiteYeah. You look at the standings; everybody's at 500 half the time. Like, wow, it certainly shows. Sean McDermottIt does. Ken WhiteA couple of seasons ago, I think the whole world was watching Buffalo Bills when Damar Hamlin went down. For nonfans, he literally collapsed on the field in all of America watching; I remember everybody else watching and worrying, was he going to survive? What was that whole ordeal for you as a coach? What were you trying to do in terms of being a leader? Sean McDermottSometimes, when you prepare, you feel like you've covered everything in your handbook or the manual. In this case, that was well outside of the manual. As I said earlier, the way I responded was how I thought anyone would respond in that situation and caring for Damar's life at the time. The way I look at our players and our staff, for that matter, is, hey if that was my son on the field, you're responsible as the coach. That's how I feel about it. I am responsible for his well-being. It doesn't mean that no one's going to get hurt. It's a violent sport. In that case, it was an extreme situation. We're just extremely grateful that Damar is now healthy, and doing well, and really thriving. Ken WhiteYeah, remarkable story. I think one thing that you and your peers do, probably more than anyone else, is interact with media. Is it daily? It's at least weekly. Sean McDermottJust about. Ken WhiteIt's pretty much daily. Sean McDermottThere's about four or five mandatory interactions with the media a week during the regular season. Ken WhiteHow do you prepare for that? How did you learn to deal with the media? Sean McDermottWell, I had good training in Philadelphia, one of the larger media markets in the world, especially in the United States. That's a tough media market. At a coordinator level, you get a little bit of a junior look at what it is and the exposure once or twice a week. Then, as a head coach, now in Buffalo, it's, like I said, four or five, sometimes six times a week. And the further you go, the more concentrated it gets and the more the spotlight is on you and your team. So it's really about, like anything, preparation. And my approach, and some would rather I be a little bit more telling, but my approach is to lead. And to me, that, as far as the media goes, comes back to making sure that I do everything I can to help us win the next game. And so try and protect as many as I can and keep them as confident as they can be through the journey of NFL season. Ken WhiteWell, you're here because you're the winner of the Principal Achievement Award, and we explained what that was to the listeners when we first started the podcast. You're the third winner, and this is really exciting. I know people like William & Mary are very excited. How did you hear about you were being selected? Tell us about, was it a phone call, email? Sean McDermottYeah, Todd Mooradian, I'm tempted to call him Professor Mooradian, called me, and we had seen each other at my induction in the Athletics Hall of Fame last year about this time. A couple of months after, he reached out, and I think it was before our season actually started, and said, hey, we'd like to honor you with this award. I said, well, tell me more about it. I'm just extremely grateful and honored to be here and to be selected. Ken WhiteWell, we're grateful and honored that you're here. If our listeners don't know, Todd Mooradian was one of your professors, of course, now the dean of the business school. That's going to be cool for you to see him. He was a young guy, a young professor. Sean McDermottHe was. Ken WhiteThat's going to be fun for you to see him in this role. Sean McDermottOh, it is. He was that young professor that everybody loved. Had that young family, a dog, and lived close to campus. He was just a big fan of the football program, but fair, too. I would say he definitely held us to a certain standard, and there were no freebies, as one would maybe tend to hope for or expect at times from time to time. Once in a while, you need that at William & Mary. But no, he was a leader amongst leaders. Ken WhiteThat's great. Yeah, the young prof. I think students come in and say, this is either going to be extremely easy, or it's going to be extremely hard. There's nothing in the middle. Yeah, absolutely. You've already actually touched on some of the pillars that the school came up with, the defined principle, the achievement. You sound very other-centric. Your approach seems to be very other-centric. You've mentioned players, you've mentioned coaches, you've mentioned family. So obviously, other-centric is a thing for you. And also empathy. You've mentioned that. One of the pillars is diversity of thought. How do you bring that into your staff, the diversity of thought? Sean McDermottWell, number one, hire a great staff, and then trust them to bring things to the table, and then once in a while, to just be quiet and listen. One of our assistant coaches actually has. I don't know if it's a branding thing that he does, but it's talk less, listen more as a little bit of a maybe a clothing line he's doing. I don't really know, but I think that says a lot, really, about the job of a leader is to listen. When you hire the right people, you empower them to do their jobs, create the environment by which they can do it at a high level. I tell our staff, listen, any idea can come from anywhere on our staff. As much as it's vertically structured, it's horizontally aligned as well. Just because it's an idea coming from what we call a quality control coach or a graduate assistant coach at the college level is something similar. An idea is an idea. If you have an idea, bring it up, bring it to the table. That's what it's about. Come Sunday, we want the right game plan. Ken WhiteThe principal to achievement leader is one who embraces compassion when dealing with others. This is the NFL, man. This is a rough game. There's not a lot of time to be compassionate. Where does that fit in to your grand scheme as a head coach, compassion? Sean McDermottWell, it's big. Empathy and compassion are huge. To be honest with you, they don't come naturally for me. I've had to learn that people need to see that. People need that because through the course of a business day, week, year, people go through things, whether it's on the job, off the job. I've just learned over the years that if you're not right at home, we're off the field. In this case, it's going to be hard for you to be good on the field, and so caring for people off the field is step number one. Ken WhiteHumility. You're winning. The whole nation is watching you win. You're on TV. It's hard, I think. At times, probably to stay focused and embrace humility. How do you do that? Sean McDermottWell, the NFL humbles you rather quickly if you don't stay humble. No, we embrace the humble and hungry approach. I think that fits A, who I am and what I've come from, and the support and the guidance that my parents have given me over the years. Then William & Mary, no different, to be honest with you. The environment around our program at William & Mary and the campus, and you earn things at William & Mary. Things are earned. Even though it's got a great reputation, you're not walking in there, and it's going to get all of a sudden easier just because you got in. I love that about William & Mary. When you hire people from William & Mary, you know that they're battle-tested because of the experience that they've been through. Staying humble in the NFL is critical because if you get too comfortable or too complacent, you'll be reminded rather quickly. Ken WhiteFor young leaders listening to the podcast, we certainly have a lot of working professionals in the audience, but we also have students, MBA students, and undergrad students who, whether they know it or not, are going to end up in leadership positions. Whether they want to or not, will get there. What's some advice you have for a younger professional who you see, oh, wow, they've got a great future ahead of them in terms of leadership? Sean McDermottWell, I would say, don't make the mistake that I made. I used to think that leadership, you either had it or you didn't. For many of us who go to William & Mary, we've been successful all the way through our lives, to that point, at least, whether it's undergraduate or graduate at this time. When you get out of school, it's a little bit of, hey, I may not have the experience, but I know what this takes. Leadership is, yes, I believe it's borne in a little bit, but it's also learned and developed. I'm a big believer in that. Most jobs have some degree of leadership baked into them. I would just encourage those young leaders to continue to grow, take notes, watch, and develop all the while because before you know it, you're going to be in that seat. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Sean McDermott, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Sean McDermott, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Martha Rouleau](images/martha-rouleau-218-thumb.jpg)
![Grief & Grieving](images/martha-rouleau-218-thumb.jpg)
Martha Rouleau
Episode 218: March 8, 2024
Grief & Grieving
If you've lived for any length of time, you have experienced grief. It's a universal emotion caused by losing someone or something you've loved or cared about. Whether it's the loss of a job, the death of a family member, or loss of a pet, grief and grieving can be intense—strong enough to adversely affect your work and life. Martha Rouleau is an adjunct lecturer and mindfulness/wellness professional at William & Mary. She works at the university's McLeod Tyler Wellness Center. She recently delivered a presentation on grief and the brain to William & Mary faculty and staff. Afterwards, she joined us to talk about grief and grieving, what they are, and how to approach them as a person, colleague, and leader.
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TranscriptMartha RouleauThe grieving process evolves over time, and the reason it evolves over time is because of the way the brain happens to work and begin to make sense of this new shift in its new change in its experience. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. If you've lived for any length of time, you have experienced grief. It's a universal emotion caused by losing someone or something you've loved or cared about. Whether it's the loss of a job, the death of a family member, or loss of a pet, grief and grieving can be intense, strong enough to adversely affect your work and life. Martha Rouleau is an adjunct lecturer and mindfulness wellness professional at William & Mary. She works at the university's McLeod Tyler Wellness center. She recently delivered a presentation on grief and the brain to William & Mary faculty and staff. Afterwards, she joined us to talk about grief and grieving, what they are and how to approach them as a person, colleague and leader. Here's our conversation with Martha Rouleau. Ken WhiteMartha, thank you so much for joining us. It's great to see you and great to have you on the podcast. Martha RouleauOh Ken. Well, thank you so much. I'm happy to be here and to be able to shed any light on this you know particular topic because I've really learned so much from learning about grief and grieving through my own personal experiences and through some additional training and research that I did. So thank you. Ken WhiteYeah, oftentimes some of our guests have just spoken to a class they've been visiting the building and we talk about what they talked about with the students. You had just given a seminar that I sat in on just several days ago and I thought, oh, we've got to have Martha come and join us and to talk about grief. How is it defined? What is grief? Martha RouleauWell, so we look at Ken grief and grieving. So grief is actually the emotion that we have. It's a very natural emotion that we have and it's really the notion that if we have loved, we will experience grief. It is one of those emotions that really is universal. And because we are connected beings mammals that there will be loss and that we are wired to feel the loss because it is one of these bonding experiences that we have. And it's an attachment. It's an attachment that happens in the brain and all the chemistry that goes along with it. So typically when we talk about grief, we understand that it's the emotion. Very often it can come as certainly big waves. We can even years down the road have an experience and we can feel that pang of grief again. And that's all okay. We remember, right? And the body will remember, particularly when there's attachment. So now we look at grieving. And grieving is actually the process we go through as we continue to evolve and experience what it's like to be living in a different situation, with different parameters, with different experiences than what we had when we were with a loved one. Ken WhiteYeah. Martha RouleauAnd I want to just jump in here and add this piece too. Where is very often. Sometimes grief can be minimized because people can consider that there's like a hierarchy and someone's grief should be considered worse than my grief. But we all have our own unique experience of the situation or unique experience of the person, animals, transitions, that letting go and that shift through transitions is also important to notify, to recognize as a part of grief. Ken WhiteYou've worked with so many people. What are some of the events you mentioned? It could be a person, it could be a pet. What are some of the events that you've seen that have caused people to grieve? Martha RouleauRight? Oh gosh, certainly a loss of a loved one. I just mentioned loss of a pet. I think retirement. I think retirement is a very interesting place to go, that very often people don't want to acknowledge. And usually society basically says, oh, you're so lucky. Right? You're so lucky, you're retiring. Not realizing that it's a shift and a shift in the way the brain is perceiving your world. And certainly loss of employment. It can be people who have lost their health and there's a chronic illness that comes up. And their way of being able to move throughout the world can be very different than what they're used to. And being able to come to an understanding of what's that, of how to do it differently is another. Ken WhiteSo not necessarily losing an individual, losing something that, like you said earlier, you love something, it was very important to you. Martha RouleauSometimes that matters to you. Ken WhiteYou had said, it's a personal process. How do you explain that? Martha RouleauSo as a personal process, I think it's important to hopefully, I wish this for people to have ease is to understand that there's no set deadline, there's no set arrival point that we're going to get to, that the grieving process evolves over time. And the reason it evolves over time is because of the way the brain happens to work and begin to make sense of this new shift in its new change in its experience. So the hardest part, I have found for most people is to give ourselves permission to be able to take the time that it takes. And so there's many stigmas or cultural beliefs that go along with this, of, gosh, if you don't hurry up, you're not going to be a productive enough member of society. Keep back the emotions. It's not okay to express them. You're supposed to be strong. Let's not overdramatize the situation. And when are you going to be back to normal? So the reason we have to honor the fact that it's a unique process is because our brains are going to be putting things into perspective and it's going to take a bit of time for that. And particularly when the attachment has been strong biologically, but also, I want to say, the attachment to meaning and purpose, when we think about retirement or the loss of a job, right, that's given that person meaning and purpose. So there's that whole new way, perhaps even values based, of how do we redefine ourselves? Ken WhiteSo yes, there are some similarities, but yes, there are major differences then, and that's that personal. Time frame, I would assume there is none. Martha RouleauThere is no time frame. And I think that's what we have to really think about, particularly when we think about the five stages of grief that are very familiar out there, that yes, they have a lot of truth and merit to them, but if we begin to use them as a measuring stick of how am I doing and evaluating ourselves, then perhaps we're not allowing ourselves to just trust in the fact that it's going to evolve. And grief is a very. Grieving is an interconnected process, because if we're all recognizing that and can share that this is what I experience, then we can elicit support, really, from others to help us, help us understand and help us feel connected. So that's why even having other people who are grieving or other people who are supportive us going through grieving is probably one of the key factors that can help the trajectory as we continue to evolve. Ken WhiteWhat can it feel like? What can people experience as they're grieving? Martha RouleauWell, the motion of grief itself is clearly, it can be sadness, it can be overwhelm. It can be anger, it can be frustration, it can be even some people get to the point where they hold two feelings of, this is so hard, this is so difficult. And I'm thankful for. Thankful for the fact of whatever it might be. There's this sense of uncertainty, for sure, because we're living in such a different place, how do we actually see or imagine? Because the brain wants to predict what's going to come next. And if we have that familiar way of someone always arriving home at 06:00 p.m.? Right? At 06:00 p.m. is going to come up for the longest time where we're going to keep predicting that that person is going to come home. And the brain's right there predicting until again, it can make peace or shift the neuroplasticity to see things a little bit differently. Some people feel very isolated as well, too. And that's where I'm just going to be stressing. You'll hear my theme, Ken, of making sure we understand. It's that connection, interconnectedness, that helps us have compassion and empathy and feel not alone. Ken WhiteThat 06:00 p.m. thing. I just had a colleague who had lost a dog quite a while ago, maybe three, four years ago, who said, just the other day I pulled in the garage, I was expecting the dog to greet me. And I know that's not happening, but, yeah. So that leads me to what you were talking about when you were sharing your session earlier. This is all tied to the brain, and one of the words that you had shared was neuroplasticity. What is that? Martha RouleauRight. And I want to make sure I give credit to Mary Francis O'Connor's work. She's written a beautiful book called the Grieving brain. And there's also a TED talk out there. As you know, I showed just a little clip of that, and I think she's got beautiful examples of what to do. So over time, as we have experience, the brain creates that neural pathways of what the experience is. So 6:00 person walks in the door, animal walks in the door. And because we attach our neurobiological attachments, which means also through our experiences of connection, not just a physical act, the brain is continually looking for those same patterns over and over again. So the reality and the dissonance is when at 06:00 the brain is predicting, because it has such a strong, I can even say, like maybe even a superhighway, depending on the number of years of that experience, of 06:00 p.m. And all of a sudden it's not happening. The brain is going to take a while to try and make sense of this. Okay, so, no, there's an absence here, although my memory, my virtual memory, right. My virtual memory is that person is going to come in. And Mary Francis O'Connor has a lovely phrase where she says, we're actually creating our new cartography inside our head. And that's why it takes time. Right? And that's why it's okay. In that moment when there's that sense of, oh, yes, it's 06:00 and they're not returning home, feelings are going to come up. And that's why there can't be a definite end line because it could be years. And that doesn't mean that we're not adapting. And I think that's where it's real important to remember about evaluation and not evaluating ourselves, because we are adapting all along. The more and more we have the courage to stay present with your experience of emotions, because emotions are messengers. They're telling us that something mattered, and they're not, I believe from my mindfulness background, they're not to be put away, pushed away. They're to be just really seen, experienced, so that they then can shift. One thing that I definitely want to add right here is because I offered the program a second time for students and it was in person. And at the end we stood up and we offered some movement. And one student came up afterwards and indicated how she actually experienced the shift of from having sat, having listened, having felt some of the experience she was having, and then to move things around in the body. So I'm jumping ahead a little bit about what are some important things we can do, because there has been some research, just like trauma lives in the body, grief. And grief can be such a traumatic event lives in the body, too. So whatever feels good for the body to move and shift and allow things to not stay stuck, it can be really valuable. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Martha Rouleau in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and U. S. News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you the full-time, the part-time, the online and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Martha Rouleau. Ken WhiteYou took the question right out of my mouth. So what does someone do when you say movement or you mean exercise? Martha RouleauIt can be walking. It can be anything that resonates with them, but something really to get the body moving. So, of course, here at William & Mary, how lucky are we with all the amazing yoga classes and the rec center has all those classes. It doesn't have to be vigorous. It can be just the fact of gentle opening of the body. So energetically some people might like a more stronger aerobic workout, and some people, and this can shift from day to day, might just say, you know what, I just feel like a real gentle walk to do. So no prescription here. It's really, again, making this process be your process. Ken WhiteYeah. So many of our listeners are big exercisers. So many of our guests work out at 06:00 a.m. every day because they know if they don't, they're not going to get to it later. And so, yeah, it would be interesting, I think, for executives and leaders to what does this do? I already work out. Does that mean a lighter workout? A heavier workout? But bottom line is it is tied to the body and that can help a healing process. You also mentioned breathe. Breath or breathing. Where does that come into play? Martha RouleauOh, breath comes into play because if we really take a look at breath and breathing, we understand it's probably the only remote control of an organ system that we have. So the reason I say that is that it's our central nervous system with our breath that we actually can control. So because of that, and if we think about when we're contracted, when we're tight, right. Very often our lungs aren't filling to the full capacity, which means our oxygen intake is limited. And it might be scary to offer full breath and to open up for some people and if it's an intense emotion and if there's a lot of anxiety around it. But I think anytime anyone can just bring a little bit of deeper inhale and deeper exhale, and I think it's valuable, I would always be really cautious taking, seeing where the person is at in their process and how the emotions are impacting their body before there was any prescription, but anytime, and I shouldn't say but, and anytime we can bring awareness to the breath and feel any value from it, even outside, just looking up and taking in a nice big breath, feeling spaciousness around us, can be very healing and calming to the body. Ken WhiteSo if a listener experiences a loss and grieving is coming, it's going to be part of life for a while. What's one of the first couple of things they should do? Martha RouleauYes. I think that one of the first couple of things they should do is definitely reach out, find their support right away, make sure they have that. Whatever way they can begin to offer some gentle movement, I think is really helpful as it feels valuable for them. It's so valuable also to have the mindset that this is going to be a journey and look at their relationship that they want to have with their journey. And there's going to be some days where it's just like, you know what? I am just going to go put my head under the covers and that's okay. Right. And if there's people along the way that can help, kind of you check in and see where you're at is really valuable. I never, and I've learned that in my work with grief. Want to say to anyone, oh, there's hope down the road? No. I think planting the seeds that, gosh, is there an opportunity maybe to see that this is going to evolve and there might be hope down. Hope down the road. We sometimes talk about it in the training as, like, the tunnel of darkness, and sometimes we feel in it and then sometimes, oh, yeah, there's a glimmer of hope. Let's not overlook that glimmer. And even if it's in hindsight, retrospective. Oh, yeah, look at that. Yesterday I was able to blah blah blah, or yesterday I chose to blah, blah blah. Finding that self nurturing. As we're supported in community. Ken WhiteAnd you've worked with leaders and managers, what should they think of if a team member is experiencing a loss? How can we, as colleagues, support someone else and as leaders, support those who work with us and for us? Martha RouleauRight. And it's interesting you say that because people who are in the workplace, it was actually someone, after our time together last week in the program, sent me an email and said, it's so hard to be able to have grief and be in the workplace. Feeling that level of comfort of course, in many ways of where's the support? And there's not necessarily supposed to be the closest people, your support network right there, but to be able to be allowed to come in and to feel comfortable that, yeah, their emotions might eb and flow during the day, and that's not an indicator of who they are, their quality or their productivity. It's just they're going through a process. Ken WhiteSo the leader saying, do what you need to do. I'm here to support you. Martha RouleauYeah, I mean, beautiful. I love those words. That would be great. And also checking in. And it's interesting how people have shared that the event happens. There's a lot of intensity around the event and maybe for a bit afterwards, but then where are the people later down the road? Where is that check in? So I think it's important because you know, that anniversaries of the events really, it's actually the end. We call that anticipatory grief of either it being an anniversary date or it could also be we're in the process of, we know someone is soon going to be passing or we're even unsure. That's the anticipatory grief that can be difficult. So those people that come in and have that sense and maybe want to share and talk about it is great. But to do that check in to see how things are going, just to know that, oh yeah, they remembered, I think makes that interconnectedness feel really meaningful. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Martha Rouleau, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Martha Rouleau, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Casey White](images/casey-white-217-thumb.jpg)
![Resilience](images/casey-white-217-thumb.jpg)
Casey White
Episode 217: February 21, 2024
Resilience
Success today requires resilience. Whether it's a company dealing with a major shift in the market or an individual faced with a significant personal or professional obstacle, resilience is a requirement. Casey White knows all about resilience. A young, fit, working professional at the start of her career, she became unexpectedly and critically ill and began a lengthy fight for her life that would ultimately take away her ability to walk. Now, five years later, her life and career are back on track. She credits much of her amazing recovery to resilience. She joins us to talk about the lessons she learned about resilience.
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TranscriptCasey WhiteDoctors had come in and said, we know what's going on now, and the good news is that we can treat you. The bad news is that you're not going to walk again. And at that point, I was 23, and I had been an athlete my entire life. I was a personal trainer in college, and to hear at 23, you'll live, but you're not going to walk sounded worse than you're not going to live. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Success today requires resilience. Whether it's a company dealing with a major shift in the market or an individual faced with a significant personal or professional obstacle, resilience is a requirement. Casey White knows all about resilience. A young, fit, working professional at the start of her career, she became unexpectedly and critically ill and began a lengthy fight for her life that would ultimately take away her ability to walk. Now, five years later, her life and career are back on track. She credits much of her amazing recovery to resilience. She joins us to talk about the lessons she learned about resilience. Now, before we listen to our conversation with Casey, I should point out she's my daughter. My wife and I have three daughters. Casey is our oldest. Ken WhiteCasey, thanks for being with us. I appreciate you sharing your story. Casey WhiteYeah, thank you for having me. Ken WhiteAnd it is an incredible story. Do you remember the beginning? What beginning do you remember when it all began? What goes through your mind? Casey WhiteI think in my mind, when I think about when did this start? There was one very specific moment. I had already reached out to you and Mom and said that I was really unwell. I had a fever of 104, 105. And obviously, that is not normal. But I didn't really understand the extent of what I was about to deal with until one morning, I was in my apartment, and you and mom were there, and I went to walk from my bedroom into my bathroom. And when I got to my bathroom, I knew that I was about to fall. And I sort of thought I had stood up too quickly, that I was lightheaded, that I was losing consciousness. And that's why I was about to find myself on the floor, and as I laid on the floor, I realized that I had memory of that whole fall. I was fully aware. So it wasn't that my brain had given out. It was that my legs had given out. And as I laid on the bathroom floor and I realized that I couldn't get back up. And that's when I knew this was different, and I was in for something very different than just the flu or a fever like I thought I was having. Ken WhiteYeah. Because initially, doctors thought when first time to the ER, it might be a virus, but at that moment, you knew it was a lot worse than that. Casey WhiteI did, and I don't think I wanted to accept that, but it sort of stuck in the back of my mind of, we're getting ready to start something. Ken WhiteNo kidding. Yeah, that's the understatement of the year. I mean, you were hospitalized for the better part of a year, and most of that, not knowing what was going on. They couldn't figure out why this incredibly high fever, why your resting heart rate was double where it should been. What are your memories from that, being in the hospital? Casey WhiteI don't have very coherent memory of that time. So I know that I was in the hospital for six months. I know that most of it was in the intensive care unit. I do know that, at some points, I was on the cancer floor. I don't really remember the context of the switching, but I largely remember the emotions. It is so isolating and so terrifying to be in the hospital for that length of time and also to not know what's going on. Right. And there's this sort of external locus of control kind of thing happening where you don't get any agency over any of the decisions. Right. I, as a patient, just had to go along with what the doctors were saying. And so it was really a lot of fear, a lot of exhaustion, a lot of pain, but I don't necessarily remember a timeline of events. Ken WhiteAnd in a relatively short period of time, you had lost half your body weight. You were down to 62 pounds at one point. But then, after a few months, there was a bit of a breakthrough. Casey WhiteThere was. It took at least half of my time in the hospital to start figuring out some answers. I think initially, doctors were trying very hard, but it was just a really baffling situation, I think, to everyone involved. But eventually, we received the news that I had early-stage Hodgkin's lymphoma, and we started chemotherapy. Not long after starting chemotherapy, we also discovered that I appeared to carry a gene for a very rare autoimmune condition called hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, or HLH. And part of the problem of having the Hodgkin's lymphoma and HLH simultaneously was that they both had caused my immune system to turn on myself. And that explained the really high fever, that explained the rapid weight loss, that explained the weakness in my legs. And as heartbreaking as it is to hear you have cancer, it was an answer, and that was something that we had not had for the first three or four months of my time in the hospital. Ken WhiteYeah, and the chemotherapy knocked your fever down a little bit. I remember what a huge victory that was. But, yeah, there you are at half your body weight. You have somewhat of an answer now. And at what point do you recall them saying, you're not going to walk? Casey WhiteI'm not fully sure if I actually remember this conversation or if I just remember knowing that we had had the conversation, but I do know that doctors had come in and said, we know what's going on now. And the good news is that we can treat you. The bad news is that you're not going to walk again. And at that point, I was 23, and I had been an athlete my entire life. I was a personal trainer in college. And to hear, at 23, you'll live, but you're not going to walk sounded worse than you're not going to live. Ken WhiteYeah. So you kept fighting. You hung in there. You eventually got to a skilled nursing facility for a while. What was that like? Casey WhiteSkilled nursing is intended to be physical rehab. Right? For patients who have experienced a change in mobility in their time in the hospital. So the intention was that I would go to the skilled nursing facility, do extensive inpatient physical therapy and occupational therapy, and then I would be a little bit more functional, and I could go home and start living my life in the new normal. Unfortunately, I was still so sick. I still had cancer. I think when I was there, I still weighed. Maybe I'd gained a couple of pounds and weighed 65. So largely, what my stay in the skilled nursing facility was for was caregiver training to make sure that you knew the level of care you were going to need to provide for me because I was not capable of doing anything at all for myself. I was fully bedbound. I could not feed myself. I couldn't brush my teeth. And so rather than really teaching me those skills, it was teaching you guys how to help me. Ken WhiteSo, not fast-forwarding seems like the worst thing to do. But let's fast forward. So here it is, five years later. What's life like now for you? Casey WhiteI think I'm going to answer this in a way that would have shocked me five years previously. But my life is very normal. I am in a wheelchair, so I'm now what's classified as an incomplete paraplegic. So I'm not able to walk, but I do have a little bit of feeling and movement below my legs or below my waist. So, I do use a wheelchair, but I live on my own. I have a job that I absolutely love in medical sales that actually allows me to pull on my experience as a patient and my time in the healthcare system. I'm a competitive rower. Again, I think largely my life is pretty normal. It's just that I sit down. Ken WhiteYeah. But after all of this, as you were recovering and you were in an apartment, you had your job, you're driving, you're living and going everywhere with Roxy, your dog, and living life, you and I looked back and said, there's some lessons here. There's got to be some lessons here. And as a result, we've come up with some. That's really the point of having you here today, is to share those lessons and how people can be resilient and how they can, in fact, overcome unbelievable odds and unbelievable hurdles. And you've got them into two different sorts of categories: mindset and action items. Let's start with the mindset items. And you have three of them. And the first one is understand human potential. Casey WhiteSo when I say understand human potential, what I mean is embracing an unlimited ability. Embracing the idea that humans have an unlimited ability to achieve, right? And I think often we hear stories about people doing something really incredible, right? Climbing Mount Everest or running a marathon or whatever it is. And I think that we tend to see those stories and think that there must be something extraordinary about the people that are able to do things like that. I think that what I have found, and even in sharing my own story, people will hear the story and say, I could never do that. My first instinct is to say, well, why not? Right? Of course, you could if you had to. And so, while I was able to unlock sort of this belief in my ability to achieve because of an incredible challenge, I also think that it can be unlocked with a passionate and limitless belief in yourself. And I think that's sort of what carries me through now. So we're five and a half years later, and I honestly can't say that I've encountered an obstacle that I haven't felt like I can meet head-on and overcome. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Casey White in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Casey White. Ken WhiteYour second mindset item to help people understand and embrace resilience; number two is think your way to success. Casey WhiteExactly. So I think that your mind plays a big part in whether or not you're successful. And to me, thinking your way into success has two aspects. One is focus, and one is control. So, first of all, I think it's absolutely key to define your success clearly. You then, though, need to devote 100% of your mental energy, so your thoughts and your self-talk to achieving that goal because you can't think about more than one thing at 100% simultaneously. So you need to be able to block out the noise and then control. Something that I learned as an athlete growing up was the phrase control the controllables. So, in life, there are always going to be circumstances that are outside of your control. For example, in my story, the Covid-19 pandemic fell right in the middle of my recovery. And there was not one thing I could do about the fact that it was happening, how long it was going to be a thing that I needed to contend with, but I could control how I reacted. And so that's what I mean when I talk about control, understanding that there are going to be things outside of your control, and knowing that you can control the way that you respond. Ken WhiteMindset item number three: realize the journey is going to be somewhat mundane. Casey WhiteYeah. Unfortunately, the road to success can feel very mundane. It's often very slow and it's also not linear. And that's a huge reason, I think, why people give up. Because to achieve success requires an intensity, a repetition, and a focus that is honestly not glamorous. And so it's very easy, I think, to lose passion when you're not seeing really dramatic leaps forward. And I think, first of all, acknowledging that the process can be a little bit mundane makes it easier to push through. But again, I think passion is also very important in overcoming the monotony of what trying to achieve can be. I know that I have never in my life been so singularly focused on anything than I was in the two years after I came home from the hospital because, truly, my life depended on improving my functioning and my independence. Ken WhiteSo, in an effort to be resilient to overcome unbelievable challenges, you've got your three mindset items. Understand human potential, think your way to success, and realize the journey as mundane. But there are also three action items that we came up with. And action item number one is visualize your desired outcome. Casey WhiteYes. So this, to me, means a few things. So, I was an athlete for my entire life. And on one of the teams that I happened to be on, we had a sports psychologist. And his advice to us the night before every game was to visualize your perfect play. Now, as an athlete, that meant what was I going to contribute? See, the exact moment of my perfect play in my mind, play it out, play what it would feel like, play where I was standing, how I would hit the ball, every aspect about what that scenario would look like. And I realized in trying to recover from my health journey and try to put the pieces of my life back together that I wasn't going to be able to do that if I didn't know what that looked like. And so I truly did one day sit down and very intentionally visualize what I wanted my life to be when I put those pieces back together. And as we alluded to earlier, there were a couple of different things that I saw in that visualization. And one was being able to live on my own because when I came home from the hospital, I was living in your old bedroom, in your house. Ken WhiteRight. Casey WhiteI wanted to be able to work full time to support myself because while I wasn't aware of a lot of sort of what life would look like to me as a disabled person, I did know that if I had the ability to work, I wanted to take it because I like working. And then I also wanted to be able to drive. Right? I mean, I'd been driving since I was 16. I wanted to be able to do it again. So when I sat down and visualized putting my life together, that's what I saw. Ken WhiteAction item number two, seek and accept help, especially from the right people. Casey WhiteI think especially from the right people is the key to this one because when you're going through a challenge or when you are openly working toward a goal. People are going to come out of the woodwork to help, and it's very well-meaning. Right. People like to help, but it can not only not push you forward, but in some cases, I think, can push you back to take help from people that aren't in a position to actually be advising or be helping. So we were incredibly lucky that you happened to be at a grocery store at the same time as a man and his daughter were doing their own grocery shopping, and he was in a wheelchair. And this was at a point in my recovery where I was sort of starting to think about, okay, what do I do now? I'm a disabled person, I'm 24, and I have no idea what I do with that information. I didn't know what life could look like, and you just went right up to him, and he was so beyond willing to offer us help, and I was very willing to accept it. And meeting with him and learning about the possibilities of what life could look like as a disabled person was not dramatically; was life-changing. Ken WhiteYeah, that was absolutely amazing. I'll never forget it. Yeah. Action item number three: create and commit to a success dashboard. Casey WhiteI think it's very important to both define your goals and track your progress. So something that I, in my professional life, have always heard is that a goal that you can't track is just a wish. And so, again, define your goal. Define it, but also make sure that it's trackable. Because, as we said, success is mundane. And if you're not tracking your progress, there's never going to be sort of a signpost where you can look back and think, wow, look how far I've come. And I know for me, my initial goals were so incredibly dull. One of the things that I had tracked religiously at the beginning was how long I could sit on the edge of the bed, and I had a little notebook. And every day, I would sit on the side of the bed, and my mom would time me because I didn't want to see the time while I was doing it. So my mom would time me, and I would write it in a notebook. And in 30 days, I remember going from 10 seconds to 30 seconds to 45 seconds. And the last day of that month, I sat on the edge of the bed for ten minutes. And that doesn't seem particularly exciting. If a friend picked up the phone and said, hey, Ken, I sat on the side of the bed for ten minutes today. You probably wouldn't think anything of it, but because I knew the starting point was 10 seconds, I was really, really able to celebrate the wins along the way. And I think that's something that's really important as you move toward achieving. Ken WhiteSo you've got three mindset items, three action items. But there is a foundation, the one thing that must be done in addition to these six items if you are to overcome an incredible setback. What is that one item that is absolutely required? Casey WhiteYou've got to be ready to fight like hell. And honestly, these lessons that I've shared with you today, and we're sharing with your listeners, I learned these the hard way. I really learned these the hard way. But it doesn't have to be that difficult. And that's why I'm really proud to be able to share this with you and your listeners. And that's why I'm proud of what we do in sharing this with companies, and students, and medical professionals. I've learned a lot from my experience, and employing these strategies really works. I'm living proof. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Casey White, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Casey White, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Rachel Chung](images/rachel-chung-216-thumb.jpg)
![Myths & Truths About AI](images/rachel-chung-216-thumb.jpg)
Rachel Chung
Episode 216: February 5, 2024
Myths & Truths About AI
It's been a little over a year now since most of us were introduced to ChatGPT. Since that time, many professionals, businesses, and organizations have worked hard to understand not only ChatGPT, but machine learning and Artificial Intelligence and what it all can do to assist employees, serve customers, and positively affect the bottom line. There's no shortage of information in media coverage regarding Artificial Intelligence, but in the race to embrace AI, it can be challenging to determine what's fact and what's fiction. Our guest today is here to help. Rachel Chung is an award-winning professor at William & Mary's School of Business. Among other things, she teaches business analytics, machine learning, and AI. She joins us today to discuss the myths and truths about Artificial Intelligence.
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TranscriptRachel ChungDuring the course of a day, you probably use at least a dozen different AI applications, starting with Google Search, right? So, if you search for something online, that algorithm is an AI. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, it's been a little over a year now since most of us were introduced to ChatGPT. Well, since that time, many professionals, businesses, and organizations have worked hard to understand not only ChatGPT but machine learning and artificial intelligence and what it all can do to assist employees, serve customers, and positively affect the bottom line. There's no shortage of information and media coverage regarding artificial intelligence. But in the race to embrace AI, it can be challenging to determine what's fact and what's fiction. Our guest today is here to help. Rachel Chung is an award-winning professor at William & Mary's School of Business. Among other things, she teaches business analytics, machine learning, and AI. She joins us today to discuss the myths and truths about artificial intelligence. Here's our conversation with Professor Rachel Chung. Ken WhiteWell, Rachel, thank you very much for taking time. It's nice to see you. What an interesting topic. Everybody's been talking about AI and ChatGPT, probably for at least the last year. And it's funny how, to me, the knowledge, some know a little, some know a lot. I think most people are sort of in the middle of all of this. But to start off, could you help us define because I think these terms tend to be interchangeable. At least, that's how people tend to use them. What is AI? What is machine learning? And what is ChatGPT? Rachel ChungSo that's a great question. And we hear about AI all in the sudden, in the news all the time. And a lot of people seem to think that AI just kind of started in 2022. But AI actually has been around for decades, not hundreds of years. It's still a relatively new science, but it's been around for probably over 40 years at least. AI stands for artificial intelligence, and intelligence is something that we all have. So people are intelligent, babies are intelligent, even your puppy is very intelligent. And artificial intelligence just means instead of natural intelligence, like what your puppy has. Artificial means that it's something that's artificially made by people. So it's something that we create. And in this case, usually, it's a machine that has somewhat intelligent behavior. I would say that AI is really the scientist's best effort to simulate the brilliance that you and I have. Right. So, we are the true brilliance, and AI is just an approximation of the intelligent behavior that we have. Ken WhiteOh, that's terrific. Machine learning. How do you define that? Rachel ChungSo, machine learning, the key part is learning. So, machine actually is equivalent to the word artificial in AI. So, remember, artificial intelligence is intelligence that's implemented by machines that are artificially made by people. So, machine really just means machine learning is almost like artificial learning, right? So it's a machine that's capable of doing the kind of learning behavior that you and I are able to do. Your puppy can learn as well. A baby can learn. And we can also get a machine to learn from not knowing something very much to being able to perform a task very well. So that learning curve that we're talking about, basically starting with making lots of mistakes and then reducing the number or the quality of the mistakes over time, is the kind of evidence that we want to see in learning. And for machines to learn, we need to be able to see that as well. The machines starting with making a lot of mistakes but making fewer and fewer mistakes over time. Ken WhiteAnd ChatGPT, how do you define that? Rachel ChungSo, ChatGPT is a type of AI, artificial intelligence, and it's an implementation of a large language model. And the large language model it really just means that it's a model that has lots and lots of parameters, and it's used primarily to generate language. Language can be speech or text, written text. And that is a model really is a mathematical model. And all AI models are mathematical models, actually. So these are computed by your computer. So, a machine really is, in this case, a computer. And the computer computes, just like your calculator calculates, the computer computes. So, computation includes doing a lot of math repeatedly. So, it's an automation of all the mathematics that we usually do in school. Ken WhiteAnd you said earlier AI has been around. We might not be aware, but what are some examples of how we've been using this recently and in the past few years? Rachel ChungSo, during the course of a day, you probably use at least a dozen different AI applications, starting with Google Search, right? So, if you search for something online, that algorithm is an AI. If you watch Netflix videos and you see all these recommendations, if you respond to a recommendation by watching something that's being recommended to you, you're using AI. However, if you are recommended a film and you decide not to watch it, you are also helping to train AI. So you're giving some sort of feedback that you don't like this film, you like something else. And that signal is used to train the Netflix AI algorithm to make it smarter and getting to know you a little better. Ken WhiteThat ties into, I look at a story on a log cabin, and then suddenly I'm getting more information on log cabins, for example. Is it similar to that? Rachel ChungExactly. Yeah. So, the algorithm is calculating all these correlations and associations to determine what you like. So when you decide to watch something on log cabin, you are giving positive feedback to the AI machine and to get it to recommend more and more products that are similar. In a way, it's very similar to how you train your puppies to learn something that you want your puppy to do. Ken WhiteInteresting. So there are some myths out there about AI, a lot of misunderstandings, and people just aren't quite sure what's happening. And we've got a couple, I'll say them, and I'd love for you to respond. For example, AI, machine learning, and deep learning are the same things. Rachel ChungSo deep learning and machine learning are very popular types of AI, but AI also include other algorithms that are not deep learning or machine learning. So, as we mentioned earlier, machine learning is a type of learning algorithm and that includes many different kinds of algorithms that learn. And deep learning is what we traditionally call neural networks. And that is just a type of learning algorithms, a type of machine learning algorithms. However, AI also includes other algorithms. For example, recommendation systems is not necessarily deep learning. It can be deep learning, but there are other types of recommendation algorithms that are actually very popular everywhere. It's probably one of the most well-known and well-used algorithm, probably the most successful for businesses. Right? Think about how many businesses actually use recommendation systems. That's probably the number one most popular, wildly used, and we all love our recommendation systems. So, that is something that's not necessarily deep learning. Another one is called reinforcement learning, and that is not deep learning. So reinforcement learning is learning to do things step by step, sequentially. That does not have immediate feedback on whether your action is right or wrong. So that is actually used for AI's to play chess or the go game. And the algorithm that Alphago and a lot of the algorithms that are very successful for winning these chess games are reinforcement learning. So, those are also not deep learning algorithms. Ken WhiteAI systems are only as good as the data they train on. Is that a myth? Rachel ChungSo, data is a very important part of AI. However, the algorithm is also very important. So yes, you need to have high-quality data, but you also need to have algorithm that is appropriate for that data. So both of those components are very important. And these days, there are also many ways to address poor data quality issues or small data issues because there are many, many innovative methods to generate synthetic data, meaning that if you have a small data set, we can duplicate or clone that or simulate to make it a large data set. So basically, making up a lot of fake data for the machine to learn from. The fake data set start look very similar to the real data set. That's actually very popular in both healthcare and finance when data has to be confidential. And so, it is very difficult to train machines using real data. So, these sectors actually are very invested in generating simulated data. Ken WhiteAI systems are inherently unfair. Rachel ChungSo, AI systems, when we talk about AI systems, they are the algorithm and the data. The data are, in fact, generated by the world, right? So you and I, even when we breathe, we are generating data. Every moment that we're alive, we're typing something into the computer, we're speaking to our computer, we're generating data. So, ultimately, data are usually generated by people, not by the computer. The computer is really just learning from the data that's generated by people. So, if there's any sort of bias, it's usually inherent in the data that is coming from the people who generate that data. So, if people are biased, the data is biased. The algorithm, on the other hand, is a set of mathematical models, really, and they are really mathematical equations. I think people are trying very hard not to write biased math algorithms, and ultimately, the machines are really just executing the math for us very efficiently. They really don't have any inherent bias in them, usually. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Rachel Chung in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Professor Rachel Chung of the William & Mary School of Business. Ken WhiteAI will make human labor obsolete. Rachel ChungSo that question is very interesting. So there's a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety about job loss due to AI and the news in 2023. We have seen so many headlines and discussions about that. And all the consulting firms have all these numbers, either calculate that they can replace 25% of their workforce. Lots of these different reports have really high numbers estimated for AI replacement. However, today, I just saw an article, a research study coming out of MIT, saying that these are overestimates based on their very detailed interviews and economic analysis. A lot of these tasks because AI can do specific tasks. We don't have general artificial intelligence yet, meaning that we might be able to replace how you write an email, but we cannot replace what you actually do during the day. So, the human actually can do a bunch of different things. AI can only replace a very small set of that. And then, whatever the AI produces, the human still has to inspect it, refine it, edit it, approve it, and so on. So, at the end of the day, you still have to hire a human because the AI can only replace a very small portion of a specific task, and the AI can only do things under supervision. Someone still has to verify if the output is correct or not. Developing and deploying these AI models is still very expensive, and then it's also very expensive to maintain the AI as well. So, so far in the year of 2024, for many, many tasks, it's still way cheaper to hire the human labor than to hire the AI labor. Ken WhiteIt was interesting you mentioned the MIT study. I just read it just this morning in an e-newsletter from the Kellogg School at Northwestern. They looked at the 1950 census, and there were 270 jobs listed in the census. And the question was, how many of those have disappeared because of automation and technology? And it turned out just one. And it was an elevator operator, which I thought was, wow. So, yeah, that overhype again. We hear that so often, don't we? Oh, look out. Here's what's coming. Your job is going to be gone. So it's interesting to hear your take on that. One final myth AI is approaching human intelligence. Rachel ChungSo, AI currently is very good at performing very narrow tasks. For example, AI can recognize an image, label an image. But for you to be able to do complete a task, you might have to recognize something, and then you have to turn around to say something, right? Or maybe you have to go write something down. So, a human usually can perform a number of tasks together in a specific job, whereas AI, right now, we do not have the general intelligence that humans typically have, which means that you can perform a variety of tasks. Current AI technologies can only perform one specific task at a time. So, for example, ChatGPT can write text, but ChatGPT cannot sing. ChatGPT cannot pick up trash from the floor. There are very simple things that we do. ChatGPT cannot walk down the steps and go up, or ChatGPT cannot prevent you from running into the wall. So there are many, many tasks that we do every day that we take for granted that ChatGPT cannot do. Ken WhiteWhat's the future hold? What do you think? Where are we headed with AI? That's a huge question. Rachel ChungWell, the future, I think, is very exciting, with so much attention, and energy, and investment in AI, which is really something I think the AI scientists deserve. AI, the field of AI, went through a long winter when nobody thought that there is a future for AI. Many, many leading AI scientists today, they're still fairly young because it's a young field. And they will tell you that when they were in graduate school and they told people that they were doing AI, most people will tell them that you will not be able to find a job. There's no future because your results are not going to happen. And many people, actually, that I know personally, did not complete their PhDs because it was just way too difficult to actually finish and deliver your AI results. And that, a lot of times was, now we know it was limited by hardware. So, thanks to all the video game players, we now have GPUs. And these GPUs, the graphical processing units that supplement our CPUs, is what enabled AI because the video games need very fast processors, and there was a market for that. And that's why these companies produced GPUs, and they were really produced for video gamers, not for AI. But the AI scientists realized that those units can be used to actually run the AI tasks that they were unable to finish ten years ago. So thanks to all these technological advances, that's why we can enjoy a lot of the AI innovations that we see today. And I think that given all the interest and opportunities for AI, we are going to see leaps and bounds of innovation in the coming years. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Rachel Chung, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Rachel Chung, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Navdeep Gupta](images/navdeep-gupta-215-thumb.jpg)
![A Retail Destination](images/navdeep-gupta-215-thumb.jpg)
Navdeep Gupta
Episode 215: January 23, 2024
A Retail Destination
If you're an athlete, or someone close to you is an athlete, you've most likely spent time in a DICK'S Sporting Goods store. Depending on where you live, the next time you visit your neighborhood, DICK'S Sporting Goods, you might be surprised. DICK'S has launched its House of Sport: A new type of sporting goods store. DICK'S House of Sport isn't just about sporting goods; it's experiential, and there's a tie to the community. Navdeep Gupta is Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at DICK'S. He says the new stores have been embraced by customers, employees, and suppliers. He joins us today to talk about DICK'S House of Sport, how the concept was created, and where it's headed.
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TranscriptNavdeep GuptaCan you create a concept store that, if that store opened right across the street from our existing DICK'S sporting goods store, that this new store will put the existing DICK'S sporting goods store out of business? Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. If you're an athlete or someone close to you is an athlete, you've most likely spent time in a DICK'S sporting goods store. Depending on where you live, the next time you visit your neighborhood DICK'S sporting goods, you might be surprised. DICK'S has launched its House of Sport, a new type of sporting goods store. DICK'S House of Sport isn't just about sporting goods. It's experiential. And there's a tie to the community. Navdeep Gupta is Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at DICK'S. He says the new stores have been embraced by customers, employees, and suppliers. He joins us today to talk about DICK'S House of Sport, how the concept was created, and where it's headed. Here's our conversation with Navdeep Gupta, Senior VP and CFO of DICK'S Sporting Goods. Ken WhiteWell, Navdeep, thanks very much for taking time to be with us today. It's nice to see you. Navdeep GuptaKen, thank you so much. This is exciting time to be coming back and speaking about an interesting concept. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt about it, you know the house of sport is so interesting. Everybody I've met who has seen one can't wait to tell you about it and talk about it. What do people see and do when they go there? What's it look like? Navdeep GuptaYeah. So, we call it that there are four key pillars around which the House of Sport concept was created. So, the four pillars that we talk extensively as part of every new store that we open: it's about experience, it's about service, it's about community, and it's about product. So those are the core foundational pillars on which the House of Sport is built. Virtually everything that we do in House of Sport is around the concept of creating an engagement and an elevated athlete experience. And so, just as a thought, we call our consumers as athletes, we call it that. It's all built around the athlete experience. So it's about merchandising standard. When you go and go into a walk into a DICK'S sporting goods, you will see merchandising display. The visual appeal of the store is going to be dramatically different than anything else that you may have seen. Even within the DICK'S sporting goods store itself, there is a clear focus around community involvement. We want this to be not just your store, to go and buy the product. We see this as a hub where the community can come together and engage collectively, not just within the store, but as a community also. We talk a lot about the brands the way the brands are. Brands are very important part of retail, but they have to be showcased in a way that differentiates and how that brand itself is presented to the athlete, how the athlete actually experiences that brand. And then we talk a lot about the experiences. So if you walk into a house of sports store, there are house of sports stores that actually have a 15,000 to 20,000 squat field that is attached to the store. So when you're buying a baseball bat, when you're buying a cleat, you want to be able to experience that cleat on a normal turf on which you will be actually going and experiencing that. So you should be able to buy the product, walk out onto the field, and actually experience the product. Some of the stores have batting cages, or we call them the multi-sport cages, that if you're buying a baseball bat, you want to be able to explain the bat, you want to be able to feel the bat. If you're buying a baseball glove, you want to be able to experience that glove. If you're buying golf equipment, we have trackman simulators. Each of these stores will have three or four trackman simulators that you can actually go and swing the golf club and see what it is to use that product or even get fitted for it. So it's all about athlete, it's about brand, it's about community, and it's all about experience. Ken WhiteWhen you talk about athletes, is there a particular age, or is it pretty much all over the landscape? Navdeep GuptaNo. We love every athlete. Every athlete, that we say, has an aspiration of trying to better themselves. We talk about bettering your best. You have a dream that you want to accomplish, right? Sometimes, I want to be just a better swimmer. Sometimes, I just want to be a better runner. So it's not just who you are, but what type of sports that you have ambitions with. And we want to be able to kind of provide a good destination for all of the athletes that have their own personal dreams, and we hopefully can bring some of those dreams to reality. Ken WhiteAnd you mentioned square footage. Am I correct in assuming most of the house of sports locations are larger than your typical store? Navdeep GuptaYeah. So DICK'S prototype is around 50, maybe as high as 80k. But the House of Sports locations are typically 100 to 120,000 square foot locations and may actually have a field attached, but adds another 15 to 20,000 square foot on top of that. Ken WhiteHow did you choose your locations? Navdeep GuptaI would say that it started out as, when we started out, the first two stores were opened up where we were thinking to relocate our existing stores, and we said, let's go test out this concept in Knoxville, Tennessee, and then Victor, New York. And those were where we had a really good performing box. The store was coming up for lease term, and then we decided to relocate. But since then, we have become significantly scientific about which market, how large the market is, what the addressable population there is, and we're really excited about that. We'll be opening ten new House of Sports locations in 2024. Ken WhiteFantastic. The old term out of the textbook is a concept store. Is it, or is it more than that? Navdeep GuptaYeah. When you think of a concept store, you tend to think in terms of, it's about discovery, it's about learning, it's about offering something different type of an experience. So, as I think about the House of Sports locations, we call them these are concepts. We were trying to better understand how can we serve an athlete in a very differentiated way. They originated as a concept, but I would say we have so much of confidence and how well the concept itself has resonated that we are much more in the rollout phase. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. Where did the idea come from? Navdeep GuptaSo there's a nice little story behind it. Our Executive Chairman, Ed Stack, it was probably in 2017 2018. He challenged the organization, and it was actually one of the meetings that we have as a town hall that we do for the full leadership team. And he challenged the organization to say, can you create a concept store that, if that store opened right across the street from our existing DICK'S sporting goods store, that this new store will put the existing DICK'S sporting goods store out of business. And that's kind of the disruptive thinking that at DICK'S sporting goods, we challenge ourselves a lot. And so this was like, rather than somebody else coming and disrupting your model, how do you not think about something that can be radically so different and new that can disrupt your own existing one? So that's how this idea came about. It was an internal challenge given by our Executive Chairman, Ed Stack. Ken WhiteYeah, how fun. Let's run ourselves out of business by creating something new. That's fantastic. I assume people immediately got on board with that and had some fun with it. Navdeep GuptaWell, I would say took us almost about a decade. The challenge was given. We went back to the drawing board. We actually drew it and said, no, this is not different enough. And we just put it on cold storage for several years. And then we came back during COVID and said, okay, we have new things that we have learned. Let's go test this out. And so, I wouldn't say it was a straight journey right after the challenge. It was quite a lot of trials, tribulations, putting it on a cold shortage and then bringing it back out. Ken WhiteWhat's the customer reaction? Navdeep GuptaOh, it's been fantastic. We have been so happy with how well the stores have resonated, and we look at it through multiple angles. So, an athlete is one of the most important angles. The community involvement is really important. Right. Is the field actually getting used? And we convert the field, like for example, in Minnetonka, we converted the field to an ice rink during the winter months. So now you can have the community teams come there and use the ice rink for their own local games, or they are doing the combines. There are training classes being held in the field that we have attached to the store. So, the community has embraced it really well. We look at the drive time radius; how far is an athlete wanting to travel to come to this? And we are seeing that the average drive time is almost three times as large as what it is for a normal DICK'S sporting goods store. But then we looked at beyond that to say, is this resonating with our brands? And our brand partners have said that this is the best presentation of their products in any location, even including their own locations or the stores that they manage. And then, we looked at it also through the lens of, if you can imagine, real estate community; the landlords are really important constituents in this value chain as well. And the landlords feel that we are bringing a new form of theater, a new form of excitement to the malls. And so it's resonated with them also very well. And then financially, it has to make sense, and couldn't be happier with the results that we are seeing across all four of these pillars. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Navdeep Gupta in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Navdeep Gupta, Senior VP and CFO at DICK'S Sporting Goods. Ken WhiteWhat about employees, those in the stores? What do you hear from them? Navdeep GuptaIt's really a different type of an experience, right? They find that this is such. And then, first of all, the athletes love it. So it makes their jobs much easier. But they are appreciating the fact that there is big focus around not just selling, but it's about service, and it's about servicing not just the product, but our athletes as well. And so it's been, overall, the level of engagement from our team, the level of theater that is available within the store has all been very well received by our teammates as well. Ken WhiteYou know DICK'S has always been about community. You were on the podcast several months ago, and we talked about what you do in Pittsburgh, where you're located, building a school, and so forth, and offering supplies and making sure kids have the equipment they need to play with. That seems to be such a big pillar of the organization, correct? Navdeep GuptaAbsolutely. We say that you have to be able to engage with the community and find opportunities to actually give back to the community. And to your example, we have provided opportunity for 2 million additional kids to be involved with sports. And the challenge we ask ourselves is, if these kids are not playing sports, what else could they be doing out there? And sometimes you don't end up in the right answers or answer for those questions. And so we feel this is the right way to give back to the community, actually be much more involved, member of the community itself on a local level, and then continue to be part of the community and servicing that community. Ken WhiteMy question is, per square foot, did the number of employees have to increase? Does that basically stay the same? Navdeep GuptaIt does go up because you have like. So for example, the House of Sport location has a climbing wall. And so now you have dedicated team members that are available to be able to help the athletes climb the wall. Right? We have a dedicated area to be able to provide servicing. So if you have a tennis racket that you want the tennis racket to be strung or lacrosse string to be strung, or do you want your bike to be teched out, we have a service area, so there's definitely a bigger focus around service engagement with the community. You have the community marketing managers, or community leads that engage with the community to all these types of community events. So definitely more team members as well. Ken WhiteYeah. And I would assume different type of team members, hourly workers that you've had in the past. Navdeep GuptaYeah. You're looking at a leadership level that is different, as well as you're looking at an hourly lead that is going above and beyond just then selling the product but also providing that differentiated experience. What we call as the solution, selling. Right. You have to be able to understand the problem identify what opportunities you have with the product or with the service that you have available in the store to be able to meet the athlete's demand. Ken WhiteFrom a financial standpoint, do you consider it a success at this point? Navdeep GuptaYeah, absolutely. We'll share more details as you can imagine. Right. Three years, few stores is not enough of a sample. But with twelve stores now open, and we actually opened eight of them, or nine of them, actually, in 2023. So, our sample set is so limited. But the results that we are seeing from a financial perspective couldn't be more happier about them. Ken WhiteCan you even compare time in-store since the store is that different? Navdeep GuptaYes. So we have technology within the store that we can see. What's the dwell time like, how often, first of all, an athlete is spending going to different parts of the store? How often are they going there? How long are they staying? And so these are not in every store, but we look at in samples of stores and continue to see how best do we create what we call as curation of the product, the adjacencies of the product, and continue to refine and learn through that data. Ken WhiteAs someone who loves the old-school DICK'S store, I'm assuming you probably have to practically drag people out. I've talked to a few students here who've gone to one. There's one not too far from Williamsburg who actually spent the better part of an entire Friday night going down. So I assume some people really spend some time there. Navdeep GuptaYeah, I think so. I'm guilty of that myself every time. And I've gone to all of these locations that every time I go. And I know I can spend a couple of hours and find a lot of unique products that I find it attractive each time I go. Ken WhiteEverybody listening regardless of their field, they're always thinking of new ways. What's next? How do we innovate? Just in general, the retail landscape, do you think this is sort of where it's heading, the experience versus the old-school store? Navdeep GuptaYeah, I think so. One of the things that is not very well understood. Sometimes, retail is construed as an old way of format or old way of doing business. What people don't realize is the amount of data, and the analytics that is going into the new form of retail is parallel to lot of other industries. So imagine, right? I'll just give an example. DICK'S carries $3 billion worth of inventory. We have 800 different points of distribution. Now, think of the math problem that you have there. That first of all, which 3 billion do you buy, how often do you buy, how deep do you buy, what size do you buy? And then now you have to do the reverse calculation to say, okay, how do I tape all of this data or the product that I bought in different sizes, color profiles? How do I allocate that effectively to the 800 points? And now you have six distribution centers. So what is the most efficient routing this product to? Should it go directly, or should it go through across Doc? How often should you be sending it? So we tend to sometimes put retail as an old format of doing business, but the amount of data, the analytics, the amount of new and innovative ways of thinking is just phenomenal, and so we not only love the fact on what we are doing with House of Sports but how much amount of personalization information that is getting used, how much amount of data and how effectively do we buy, how effectively do we curate the product, how effectively do we throw the product? All part of new ways of thinking that is being implemented across the company. Ken WhiteThe passion for your job is obviously in your voice. I see it in your face. What are the few things that you really like about what you're doing? Navdeep GuptaI'm an athlete by heart. I love to run. I love to work out. To me, first of all, like I said, it's a theater. When I walk into the store, just because I can not only appreciate the product, but I know what I'll be using it in my own personal life. So, my appreciation starts from the product. And then the team that I work with is probably that second highlight that I would give. The third is there are not many people that are familiar with we have a very interesting product portfolio as well. So, from a finance perspective, we have a BC firm that we started about two years ago within the company where we are making small equity investments into unique products. Unique type of capabilities that we could be bringing to our athletes. We actually own a platform called as game changer. Game changer, from a youth sports perspective, is the best tool out there for video broadcasting, scorekeeping, and just the engagement with the youth athlete. And so it's like, not just about retail; it's about unique things that we are doing within the company that keeps it really exciting. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Navdeep Gupta, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Navdeep Gupta, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Mike Lord](images/mike-lord-214-thumb.jpg)
![Understanding Corporate Public Affairs](images/mike-lord-214-thumb.jpg)
Mike Lord
Episode 214: January 6, 2024
Understanding Corporate Public Affairs
It's difficult to succeed in business today without having a solid grasp of public affairs, public policy, and politics. Regardless of the size of your business or sector, decisions that are made in your state capital, Washington, DC, and beyond, can greatly affect your bottom line. Learning to strategically manage corporate public affairs was the focus of a recent three-day workshop for William & Mary's Executive MBA students. The workshop took place at The Washington Campus, a non-profit, non-partisan education consortium in Washington, DC, that partners with top business schools and universities around the world. Mike Lord is the President of The Washington Campus. He joins us today to talk about public policy, public affairs, and why business leaders must be well-versed in this arena
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TranscriptMike LordSo it really doesn't matter what type of organization, including if you're an entrepreneurial startup. But the CEO has to be the chief public affairs officer to navigate all of these complexities. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's difficult to succeed in business today without having a solid grasp of public affairs, public policy, and politics. Regardless of the size of your business or sector, decisions that are made in your state capital, Washington, DC, and beyond, can greatly affect your bottom line. Learning to strategically manage corporate public affairs was the focus of a recent three-day workshop for William & Mary's executive MBA students. The workshop took place at The Washington Campus, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education consortium in Washington, DC, that partners with top business schools and universities around the world. Mike Lord is the President of The Washington Campus. He joins us today to talk about public policy, public affairs, and why business leaders must be well-versed in this arena. Here's our conversation with Mike Lord. Ken WhiteWell, Mike, thanks for taking the time to join me. It's a very busy day for you, but I appreciate you taking the time to do this. Welcome. Mike LordGreat, thanks, Ken. Ken WhiteYou just spoke to our executive MBA students, well, a couple hours ago, and it was very interesting. One of the things that you said that struck me is you thought, there seems to be some pessimism across the country. What is that? Why do you see it that way? Mike LordSo, it's a matter of perception versus reality. We certainly have challenges, but the US economy is still quite strong, especially globally. Inflation is down, and even real incomes, net of inflation, are stronger. But people aren't feeling it. They are feeling more anxious than ever. There's actual polling and data that show this. And so it comes down to perception versus reality, including things like, there's one example of the price of eggs, which I know because I eat a lot of eggs, and when it's $6 for a dozen eggs, that hits you. And so even though the statistics show that incomes are doing well versus inflation, inflation is way down. There's a sense of anxiety, and some of that's due to the partisanship and the political environment that we have going on. But overall, the US is in a great position in terms of the global economy. Capital investment and expenditures are strong, and it's a strong economic environment. But people have a lot of concerns about the future, and a lot of that stems from the political environment, but also what they see in media and social media. Ken WhiteRight. Yeah, social media. What's the role of that in Washington, DC? Mike LordDefinitely, in DC, social media has an outsized role, and it's difficult for a lot of people to understand, but it gets a lot of attention. And again, perception is reality. And so if there's a lot of noise on social media about something, it gets a lot of attention. Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's not so good. And so it's a challenge for organizational leaders to figure out how to navigate this new environment and how to make sense of things, including when a lot of what's out there is not true, because social media has no filters, there's no editors, everyone's their own content creator. And that can be really great and empowering and democratizing. It can also result in a lot of misinformation and subpar information. Ken WhiteYou said it's a new age for public affairs. What makes it so different from the past? Mike LordSo I think in terms of public affairs, for any organizational leader, any business leader, it's become a new skill set for the C suite set of knowledge and skills, where it means you need to understand how to navigate this media and social media environment. You need to understand and deal with stakeholders more than ever, including government. So regulators, legislators at the federal level, state level, local level. And it requires diplomacy. It requires judgment. It requires a sensitivity to thinking about different sides of different issues, what your customers are thinking, what your employees are thinking, what public policymakers are thinking. And it really is a new and different challenge for executives to figure that out. It's not just about mastering your functional areas of finance and operations and things of that sort, but it's really the CEO has to be a chief public affairs executive as well. Ken WhiteIf we look across the board, not many business schools are covering it. And so I think, I'm assuming, many come to you. Tell us about The Washington Campus and who you work with and what you do. Mike LordSure. Well, The Washington Campus was founded in 1978, so we're about 45 years old, and we specifically were founded to bridge that gap between business and government. Where business didn't understand government, government didn't understand business. So it was a group of senior government officials who had just left the Ford White House, business school deans, and business executives who got together and founded The Washington Campus. And back then, in 1978, and for most of our history, the focus was on public policy, government relations, things like lobbying, understanding regulatory processes. But now, just as much of our curriculum is about that larger public affairs space, which means understanding media and social media, how to navigate it, how to react to it, when not to react to it, dealing with stakeholders, whether it's communities, NGOs, non-governmental organizations, employees, customers, and so on. So, our curriculum has really evolved as the challenges of business leaders have evolved. Ken WhiteNow, you work with and instruct MBA students, executive MBA students, like you do with William & Mary, but companies and C suites as well. Mike LordSo we do, we used to do, earlier in our history, a lot more executive education. But since the MBA and executive MBA market has evolved, most MBA students now are working professionals. So we've switched to doing it in our regular programming, where I would say 80% of our participants are working professional executive MBAs. So typical profile might be at least in their 30s, some are in their 50s, some are already CEOs, some have started their own companies, and they know that they need to understand this public affairs and public policy environment. So we've switched from doing the traditional exec ed to where every program we do now tends to be 80% or so are working professional MBAs. Ken WhiteRight, and exec ed., for those who don't know that, that's where your company sends a group off to a university or somewhere to learn for a few days or a week or longer. Right? So for a CEO who might say, I can only do so much, let me just have a chief public affairs officer, let's throw this to the communication office. What do you say to them? Mike LordIt's not a task that you can delegate or contract out. It's an inherent set of knowledge and skills that CEOs need to have, whether it's for-profit, not-for-profit, public sector, private sector. It needs to be part of the C suite and board in terms of their knowledge and their skill set and their involvement. Things have to be coordinated. You can't have one side saying one thing and your comm saying one thing, and then the CFO saying something else. And especially with instant communications, that comes back and bites you. And so, it is a very complex and diverse challenge, but it has to be integrated at the C suite level and at the board level. And we see challenges like, I've used everything from Apple and Tesla to what's going on with university presidents and universities these days, getting embroiled in politics, whether they like it or not. So it really doesn't matter what type of organization, including if you're an entrepreneurial startup, but the CEO has to be the chief public affairs officer to navigate all of these complexities. And it has to be integral to the business strategy, to the investment planning. So even with US-China relations, for example, that's politics. And you need to think about that in terms of your supply chains, your market planning, your investments, where you're going to build facilities, production, and who are you going to use as your suppliers. Ken WhiteAs someone who teaches communication, I'm thrilled with where leadership is going now. The leader needs to be a communicator. That sounds basically what you're saying. The leader has to be able to interact with people if they're going to be successful today. Mike LordAbsolutely. And a lot of it is about framing and messaging. A lot of it is about putting yourself in the other person's shoes. And so it is a different set of skills where it's not just about technical, financial, operational skills and performance, but you have to look at things from 360 degrees, think about all the different stakeholders' roleplay, think about the consequences. And so, communications is absolutely critical. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Mike Lord in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Mike Lord, President of The Washington Campus. Ken WhiteSo when you're teaching a program like ours, what pieces of the puzzle do you try to bring in in front of students so that they get a good understanding? Mike LordWe definitely have a pretty comprehensive curriculum. We even have students who have worked on Capitol Hill or worked at a regulatory agency. Then, they go back to do their MBA. They take our course, and they say, I spent ten years on the hill, but now I finally understand how DC works because they all have their own slice. So, if they were a staffer for a member of the House from western Michigan, that was sort of their domain. That's what they focused on. Or if they were working at a regulatory agency, Department of Education, or Department of Labor, that was their slice that they saw. And so it's interesting, we've had many students who even worked in government in DC for ten years or more go back, get their MBAs, and they say, now I finally understand how all of it works, because our curriculum includes lobbying and advocacy, regulatory processes and regulatory engagement, how to navigate media and social media, the role of associations and coalitions, and even some of the basics like we're talking about. What does it mean? Public affairs versus public policy? Politics versus policy, which is often a fraught area because as an organizational leader, you definitely want need to get involved in various policy discussions, but you might want to stay away from the politics. So, just understanding even the difference between politics and policy is pretty important. Ken WhiteSo, I think we use those terms interchangeably. Public affairs and public policy. How do you define public affairs? Mike LordSo public affairs is really an evolution of what we've seen here in DC in terms of the executive functions, where it used to be a traditional government relations executive and maybe an in House or contract lobbyist. And that was kind of the way things were for decades here in Washington, DC. But because public policy is such an integral part of larger public affairs, which includes things like communications, stakeholder relations, and so on. It really DC has become the center of the public affairs function as well, which includes public policy as a subset. So, I think that's the best way to think about it is public policy as a subset of this larger universe of public affairs that includes things like stakeholder communications, media and social media, lobbying, and advocacy. So, it includes the traditional government relations and public policy functions. But it's about a whole lot more because that public policy and the public affairs environment is what shapes public policy. Ken WhiteAnd you also said politics. So, how do you define that? Mike LordSo politics is the gamesmanship, the horse race. It's important it determines who's going to occupy that office, who's going to control the House, who's going to control the Senate, the White House. But that is different from policy. So, there's become a much more robust industry here in Washington, DC, of policy expertise, policy engagement, and policy advocacy, which means you are the subject matter expert. So on issues like gene editing or on issues like artificial intelligence, you need to have some serious business and or technical expertise to effectively lobby and advocate, but also just to effectively inform and engage policymakers. But to your point about communications, you also have to be able to simplify that in a way that your average staffer, your average regulator, your average house member of the House or Senate can understand, which really means what is the impact, what's the impact and importance for the country, but especially for their state, their district, for jobs and so on? Ken WhiteWhat are some of the hot issues right now? You mentioned artificial intelligence, I assume. Is that one of the hot topics in the nation's capital? Mike LordYes, definitely. AI is the hot issue. It's cross-sector. It ranges from education to healthcare to financial services. It's interesting because people are trying to figure it out legislatively and regulatory-wise, but no one's quite even sure what they're talking about because different people have different ideas and definitions of what AI is or what AI should be. So it's kind of hard to legislate and regulate something when you can't even define what it is. Ken WhiteBut the idea is regulation. Are we headed that way for AI? Mike LordIt's already happening. So regulators are working on it every single day, and they're trying to shoehorn it in with existing legislation. So whether it's the FDA, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Transportation, and so on, they're trying to use existing laws to shape regulations. And those existing laws may or may not fit in terms of AI is quite different than anything we've seen before. Ken WhiteWhat are the other hot topics in Washington, DC, besides AI? Mike LordI'd say a lot of it is they are social issues, social and cultural issues, which is something that organizational leaders are going to be drawn into. They are being drawn into. They may not like it, but you don't have a choice. So whether you're the CEO of Disney or whether you're a university president, you're going to be drawn into these issues. And the interesting dynamic, especially in this country, is that the policy is shaped and determined both at the federal level, but just as much at the state and local level. And those are often in conflict, or you have two different states in conflict. So California and the stakeholders and situation there may be very different from how it is in Florida, but you've got thousands or tens of thousands of employees in each state, and then you also have federal issues and federal legislators and regulators to be concerned with. So, it can be a very complicated environment, but it's one that organizational leaders cannot avoid. Ken WhiteIf someone's interested, one of our listeners, or all of our listeners are interested in this, what should they read? Publications, websites? What's a good thing to look at daily or regularly to learn? Mike LordSo, there's definitely good news sources. Politico is for DC insiders, but that means they're not trying to present to your general public. They're trying to present to DC insiders who are trying to understand what is actually going on as opposed to taking sides. So, if you really want to see some of the inside of what's going on, Politico can be a great source. There's also our executive committee member, Vice Chairman Emeritus Bruce Melman is one of the best-known lobbyists here in Washington, DC. He publishes quarterly sort of insight reports, and they're available to the public, and we often post those on our LinkedIn pages. There's less partisan sources or more fact and policy-based sources. Axios, for example, has some great information, great newsletters you can sign up for, and they're brief. You can get a quick, you know, two-minute insight into what's going on and how policy is affecting business. And they're less focused on the politics and more on the policy dynamics and the impacts on business. And by business, I mean for profit and not for profit. Ken WhiteYou're pretty optimistic about where things are headed. Mike LordI am. I'm quite optimistic. I'm a realistic optimist, but I'm realistic because there's data that show that the US economy and the US within the world is in a stronger position in many regards than it has been in decades, if not ever. We have a really dynamic, resilient economy. We're still the world's innovation leader. People still look to us. The reason we have an immigration problem is people are voting with their feet by the millions. So that is a challenge. It is a problem, but it's also an indication that we are still something that people look up to and are hopeful about. And so even some of our challenges are because we're actually in a pretty good position. The fact that we don't have any major legislation, we were just talking about that earlier today, is because we don't have any crises we're dealing with right now. So it's better to try to avoid those crises. But when you have big bills doing big things on Capitol Hill, passing, that's usually because of a crisis. So even the fact that we're not seeing huge bills on Capitol Hill is an indication that we're actually humming along pretty well. Despite all the noise of the politics and partisanship, especially in the media and social media, which does not represent what's actually going on. Even here in Washington, DC, behind the scenes, people are actually trying to work in a bipartisan way. Most staffers, most members on issues like artificial intelligence, where it's not a partisan issue. And both sides are trying to figure it out and figure out how to tackle it. So I am very much a realistic optimist, and I think the US is in a unique position in some regards more than ever in terms of its strength as an economy, but also in the world more generally. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mike Lord, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Mike Lord, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Amber Price](images/amber-price-213-thumb.jpg)
![Hospital Leadership](images/amber-price-213-thumb.jpg)
Amber Price
Episode 213: December 21, 2023
Hospital Leadership
When you think of a typical hospital chief administrator, who comes to mind? The majority of hospital CEOs are men, and many possess a graduate business degree. But Amber Price is different; she's one of a small number of women who lead hospitals. She holds a doctorate in nursing practice with a focus in change leadership, and she spent years working as a certified nurse midwife. She says those differences and experiences help her succeed. Price is President of Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center—a 145-bed acute care hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia, recognized as one of the nation's top 100 hospitals. She joins us to discuss the unique challenges and rewards of leading a hospital.
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TranscriptAmber PriceI call it healthcare amplification. Right? Everything that happens outside in the world is amplified in healthcare. If you can't find a parking spot at the mall, you're annoyed. If you can't find a parking spot at a hospital, that might be a life-defining trauma. If you have a loved one dying and you didn't get there on time. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, when you think of a typical hospital chief administrator, who comes to mind? Well, the majority of hospital CEOs are men, and many possess a graduate business degree. But Amber Price is different. She's one of a small number of women who lead hospitals. She holds a doctorate in nursing practice with a focus in change leadership, and she spent years working as a certified nurse midwife. She says those differences and experiences help her succeed. Price is President of Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center, a 145-bed acute care hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia, recognized as one of the nation's top 100 hospitals. She joins us to discuss the unique challenges and rewards of leading a hospital. Here's our conversation with Amber Price. Ken WhiteWell, Amber, thanks a lot for taking your time. This is cool. Usually, we're in the studio, so to be in your office is fun. So, thanks for having us. Amber PriceWell, thanks for coming. Ken WhiteYeah, this business is so very interesting, and your leadership role is interesting. But your background is a nurse. How does that affect the lens through which you see your job? Amber PriceWell, it's a great question because it's unusual for a nurse to be a hospital CEO. And I actually did not start as a nurse. I started as a medical assistant, first an EKG tech. I've worked as a telemetry tech. I've worked in the kitchen. I worked as a unit secretary and a nurse's aide, all of that before I ever became a nurse. And so the joke in the hospital is I can relieve anyone for lunch. But there's a relatability here. I can walk through the hospital, and I kind of understand what people's daily work is like. It helps me make good decisions around what we need to do in different units. And that's pretty unique for a hospital president to have had the lived experience. So I think it's helped me quite a bit. Ken WhiteI think it's unique for any leader because they normally come up through one chain or just a couple. So do you feel, as you're separated from that, that you're still up to speed on some of the things those units do? Amber PriceI think I do. I think I'm a little bit more approachable, maybe than somebody who did not live that because intuitively, you reach out to help or you make a comment that makes people understand that you do know what their day is like. So, I think it's very helpful in building good communication with your teams, and it helps you drive needed change on those units from a perspective of a lived experience. Ken WhiteI would assume not many hospital leaders are women. How does that affect what you do? Amber PriceWell, that's very true. Nationwide, only 13% of hospital CEOs are women. We see lots of women in leadership in hospitals. In fact, the healthcare workforce is 67% female, but in the seat, we only see about 13%. And many of those women work in smaller hospitals. They were glass cliff positions where there wasn't anyone else, or it was kind of, by default, a given. So it is very different. And women are important as leaders in healthcare because our consumers are women. 80% of healthcare decisions are made by women. They're made for themselves, for their partners, for their children. And so innately understanding your consumer from a personal place makes a very big difference in how you execute healthcare delivery. Ken WhiteWhat do you like most about what you do? Amber PriceWell, I like complex work. And running a hospital is absolutely complex. It's not just the business aspect, and this is a big business, but it's the workaround moving cultures and shifting cultures in a direction that help take phenomenal care of people. And this job spills over into the community as well. So it's both inward-facing and outward-facing, so there's no shortage of complexity. And that is what excites me every day. Ken WhiteWhat's your biggest challenge? Because it is complex. Wow. So, what sort of keeps you up at night? Amber PriceI have to say that we came out of a pandemic that really froze the healthcare system for a while. And we've had to reinvent how we deliver healthcare, how we engage our employees, how we move beyond the trauma that the healthcare system experienced during the pandemic. What keeps me up at night is how I can take care of the people who take care of people best, how we move beyond what was essentially a big traumatic experience for our providers. We saw people exit the healthcare field due to that trauma. People confuse trauma and burnout all the time. And so we want to make sure we create environments where trauma is something that we process in the moment. And so that's the work we're currently doing, is to create a culture where people are free to emote, where we support them in that we actually have counselors here on site, our employees get free counseling, and we're normalizing that as part of your work experience. Prior to the pandemic, if people had a bad day, it was a bad day. And we've realized the impact it has on our team members and that downstream has an impact on how we deliver patient care and our outcomes. So we work very hard. Ken WhiteTrauma and burnout. So interesting. I think people do use them interchangeably. What's the difference? Amber PriceWell, trauma is something either extremely stressful or difficult that is changing the way that you perceive your role in your job. And trauma is something that we can address, talk through, teach people how to manage. But we have to begin by acknowledging that you have experienced a trauma and really understanding trauma-informed care. And so what we tend to do is say, hey, what's wrong with that person? Versus, hey, what happened to that person? And so, I try to approach these situations as what has happened to you to get you to the place that you are today, and how can we process that for you? Versus I'm tired of coming in. I really don't want to do this anymore. I want to go do something different. And if you help people process their trauma, you prevent burnout. And people don't recognize trauma. They don't know that what they're experiencing is the effect of a trauma. So we talk about it, highlight it, help people identify it, and help them process it. Ken WhiteThat's tough work. Is retention and hiring a challenge? Amber PriceI think it has been in healthcare overall. I have to say that right now, where we are in our hospital today, that is no longer an issue. We don't have any external travelers here. We just got our employee engagement scores back, which are high. But we're all working on this effort to create a positive work culture. And I'm happy to see that shift from early post-pandemic where people feel resilient again, where they feel that they have a reserve. And that's what we've worked hard on. Ken WhitePositive work culture has got to be a challenge when it depends a great deal on the people who come in. How do you approach patient's families? What are some of the issues and goals you have in that regard? Amber PriceWell, patients are our customers, and so we have to work with our team members to help them understand what it's like to be a patient and then how we respond to that as human beings. Right. Not distancing ourselves from the patients, particularly when we see behaviors that aren't so conducive to having a great conversation, but really understanding where they're coming from. I call it healthcare amplification. Right. Everything that happens outside in the world is amplified in healthcare. If you can't find a parking spot at the mall, you're annoyed. If you can't find a parking spot at a hospital, that might be a life-defining trauma if you have a loved one dying and you didn't get there on time. So we need to be understanding of that. So we do a lot of work in helping our team members understand what it's like to be that person, and we put all these things in place from the moment you park all the way through, going home as a patient, that really hone in on understanding that everything we do is just a little bit more difficult because you're hurting or you're scared, or you're waiting, potentially, for a difficult diagnosis. So we have to understand that. And when we do that, it helps us kind of de-escalate situations that in any other situation might get volatile. The other thing we do is, every morning, we actually identify people in the hospital who have a high potential for violence or outbursts. And we support our team members in that. So we're all aware of it. We have a plan for each of those patients, and then we have a plan for when people come into the hospital really are in a bad place. So, we de-escalate quickly, and we focus on it every day. Ken WhiteOne thing that strikes me when I walk in is people who work here look at you and smile at you. I assume that's intentional. Amber PriceWell, I'm very happy to hear that, but it is very intentional because we know that if you walk into a hospital, you're nervous. You may not have processed whatever instructions you were given. And so we make a lot of effort to intercept people very early so that they know there are people here going to help you. People want hospitals to help them. So we work very, very hard to make sure that people realize that's what we're doing. We're not looking at our phones in the hallway. We know that these patients are nervous and scared, and everybody here knows that it's all of our jobs to make sure that people feel that we are connected. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Amber Price in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you are thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has a world-class faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Amber Price, President of Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center. Ken WhiteAll of our listeners have been to a hospital they've visited, they've been a patient. And I'm thinking of my own experience. I don't recall being in a hospital where people smile, maybe the front desk, but literally walking down the hall and seeing that. Is this something you've instituted? Is this system-wide? Amber PriceWell, the job of the senior executive is to set the tone and the culture of everyone in that hospital. So you have to model that behavior yourself, and you have to talk about it. People aren't often aware that they're not connecting or that they are distant. So, the way that I approach people in the hallway is to make eye contact and say hello. And so you start to emulate that behavior over and over and over, and then you talk about it. So we host a town hall four times a year, and we talk through what it's like to be a patient, how important it is to feel safe in the hospital. The other thing I talk about is that it's not certain people's jobs to do that, that everyone leads, that everyone is here taking care of the patient. My job is different than your job. But in the end, we are all here to make sure that that patient is safe and is prepared to go home. And goes home feeling like we did everything we could to make them feel safe and welcomed. So, we hold everyone accountable to the same standard. And people do that with pride. Ken WhiteI was going to ask. They seem to accept that and embrace it, and run with it. So it's a positive? Amber PriceYes. And it goes to, who do you hire? Right. So, what are you hiring for? And I think, particularly in healthcare, there's been a trend of hiring people with a skill set and not worrying so much about their culture or the perfect fit. We were just focused on making sure that we had people doing the job. We've actually made a commitment here to hire for culture, even if it takes a little bit longer. We're making sure we're hiring people who are going to fit in and who emulate that behavior because, in the end, that leads to retention. And so we're celebrating a very high retention and very low turnover rate this year. And I think it is because we made the effort to hire for culture and fit, and that begets more recruitment because when you have a great work environment, it attracts employees as well. So I'm happy to hear that you're noticing it. We're certainly very proud of it, and we will continue that. Ken WhiteOn hiring like that. I assume it does take a little longer than if you were just looking for skill sets, but it's paying off. Amber PriceIt is paying off. And, you know, the best way to recruit is when your employees are out telling people about what it's like to work in your hospital. So often, people show up because a friend referred them. It's kind of a really nice barometer of how you're doing in your hospitals when people come to apply because somebody who works here referred them. Ken WhiteYeah. What a great measurement of quality, right? In any business, if a customer or an employee referral, boy. Yeah, you just can't seem to beat that these days. What do you think when you look at leadership in general? What qualities should a leader have in order to be effective? You've already mentioned some of them, but what are some of them? Amber PriceWell, I think if you ask me, what is the hallmark of a leader? What's that one thing that you need to have that's different from potentially being a manager? Like how do you lead? And I think it is the ability to lead change while keeping your teams engaged in doing that, particularly in healthcare now. There's so much rapid change happening with technology changing, with the pool of physicians and nurses changing. We have to pivot quickly and adopt technology. There's so much happening very quickly, and so we need to be able to move through that very fast, take our teams along with us as all of those things get rolled out. So, if you can't lead change, then you're going to struggle to be a leader. And I think the other component of that is figuring out how you lead. Right. So rather than following a playbook, figuring out how you do that as you to be genuine in that and to be able to make genuine connections with the people in your hospital and do it with them, rather than directing those changes, I think those are the two really important things. Ken WhiteWhat's your day like? When do you get here? When do you get home? Amber PriceI get here usually sometime after seven in the morning. Our first big meeting of the day is a safety huddle at 815. Every leader attends that. We're all aware of what's happening in the hospital. Any barriers to care for the day, we resolve them together. And then I spent my day working with my corporate leaders, working through contracts, making sure that our quality and KPI are all going the way they're supposed to go. But I will tell you, running a hospital is really dealing with the unexpected every day. Probably three or four times a day, somebody comes to me with something that I could not have anticipated happening. And then we need to quickly rally and make sure that we're taking care of that. So there's a lot of connection with my executives here in the hospital. We all work very closely with each other. You met our chief medical officer this morning. It's very fluid, and we do it together. We do it as a team. And if there's anything that needs to happen in the moment, we go together, and we take care of it. Here in this hospital, if there is an emergency of some sort, particularly something that stresses our resources, we all go. We don't think it's one person's problem. We believe that we're all responsible for that together. So you'll see us all over the hospital all day, and that's the job. Then, when the day ends, after the last meeting, which is usually somewhere around five or six, then we go into the community. So, I am out almost every evening, connecting with business leaders, connecting with the community, not-for-profit organizations. And so the job goes seven days a week. And then the question is, how do you make time for yourself? And so that's what you have to figure out, but that's the job. Ken WhiteWas there a particular point in time where you said, you know, I want to lead? I want to step up and take on a role like you have now. Amber PriceI never intended to be the CEO of a hospital, ever. I was going to be a nurse midwife, which is what I did. But what happened to me wasn't really the epiphany of I want to lead, particularly once I got my doctorate, which was focused on change leadership. What I gravitate to is honing in on what a problem is and how you solve it. And so I did have many moments of, dang, I think I know what that problem is, and I want to go solve it. And then offering myself up to do that, and that leadership and the invitation to move up in leadership came from those things. I tend to be attracted to the most difficult, challenging things to fix. And that's what excites me because, in the end, it makes a hospital a better hospital, it makes patients happier, it makes outcomes better. And so the question tends to be, why do you lead? And it takes a while to figure that out for some people, and for me, it was to have an impact. To have an impact on healthcare, an impact on outcomes. So, I tend to seek out those things that make things better. Ken WhiteIt makes the job fun. Amber PriceAnd it makes the job. Ken WhiteDo you have fun? Amber PriceI have Ken WhiteYeah, you look like you have fun. Amber Priceso much fun. Ken WhiteI think when you're observed, people think, Amber PriceAbsolutely. Ken Whiteyou're having a good time. Amber PriceI enjoy leadership, and I did not know that I would enjoy leadership. I don't know that I knew what leaders did until I found myself in that seat. And I think each person needs to figure out for themselves how they lead, how they influence, how they connect with people. And so what I tell people to do is get a coach right, get constant feedback, learn what your impact is on others so that you can keep moving on and really working on yourself every day so that the impact you have is the impact you want to have. Ken WhiteIf you look back at your childhood friends, your family, when they knew a twelve year old, Amber, would they be surprised at where you are now? Amber PriceWell, yes. My father is still disappointed that I didn't become a flight attendant. He thought that would be a great career for me, which is very funny because, to this day, he mentions that you would have just made a great flight attendant. So I think there is a bit of a surprise because I think I'm seen as very nurturing. I love direct patient care. I did it for many years. I've delivered many babies as a certified nurse midwife, and that became my identity for many people. And so to see the pivot to senior leadership and pulling away from specialty care and taking on that zoomed-out that viewpoint of healthcare and being able to lead that, I think that's what surprises people. I don't think people are surprised that I'm in a hospital taking care of people. I just do it from a different seat. Ken WhiteOne of our guests a couple of years ago said, you know, you're successful if your parents don't quite understand exactly what you do day to day, right? Then you've hit it. If you had any, you mentioned coaching, any other advice for an aspiring leader, what would you share? Amber PriceWell, I think coming from the perspective of a woman who is a leader. I think that women don't always understand how they are perceived, and you carry a lot of cultural baggage with you as a leader. I hear women tell me, for example, and I've spoken at the business school before, questions from the audience are always like, I'm afraid I'm talking too much, or I'm afraid I'm going to start crying if I fire somebody. These things that you've learned to believe about yourself as a woman. We know that women do not talk more than men. In fact, many of the studies coming out in recent years show that women actually speak far less. And so you have to really delve into those cultural beliefs for a bit to see where you fit in and challenge yourself in overriding that right. I've learned to interrupt when I need to interrupt because it's the right thing to do if things are steering in the wrong direction. I've learned to take up space. I've learned to speak up more, and I've learned to be brave in many ways. It's something that's harder for women to do because there's so many cultural judgments that sit in that behavior. And so you have to move beyond that to get to a senior executive position because the reality is that in the end, you have to be able to move things, drive the needle, have the conversations, and be the leader in the moment. So, I do mentor women in that as well. I currently have three people in this hospital, one fellow and two interns, that I mentor because there are not that many women who are in this seat in healthcare. So I think we all have a duty to pass that on and show people how to do that and how effective we are in doing that. You don't have to do it the way everybody else does it. You have to figure out how you need to do it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Amber Price, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Amber Price, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, happy, and productive new year. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Stephanie Rentschler](images/stephanie-rentschler-212-thumb.jpg)
![The Job Market](images/stephanie-rentschler-212-thumb.jpg)
Stephanie Rentschler
Episode 212: November 22, 2023
The Job Market
When it comes to the job market, things certainly have evolved in the past few years. During the pandemic, the unemployment rate reached almost 15%. Today, the labor market is strong and the unemployment rate is under 4%. When comparing today's employment landscape with that of the pandemic, one word comes to mind: Change. We're seeing changes in hiring practices, employee expectations, and the ages of available workers among other things. Stephanie Rentschler works at the Graduate Career Management Center at the William & Mary School of Business. She's the Director of Career Advising and Education. She coaches MBA students and those pursuing Masters Degrees in Accounting and Business Analytics. She joins us to talk about the current job market, what companies are doing to attract talent, and what job seekers can do to find the right opportunity.
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TranscriptStephanie RentschlerYou have to be able to find and highlight what are those top key strengths that I have. But how does that then correlate to the employer and what the employer is looking for to make it relevant? Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. When it comes to the job market, things certainly have evolved the past few years. During the Pandemic, the unemployment rate reached almost 15%. Today, the labor market is strong, and the unemployment rate is under 4%. When comparing today's employment landscape with that of the Pandemic, one word comes to mind: change. We're seeing changes in hiring practices, employee expectations, and the ages of available workers, among other things. Stephanie Rentschler works at the Graduate Career Management Center at the William & Mary School of Business. She's the director of career advising and education. She coaches MBA students and those pursuing master's degrees in accounting and business analytics. She joins us to talk about the current job market, what companies are doing to attract talent, and what job seekers can do to find the right opportunity. Here's our conversation with Stephanie Rentschler. Ken WhiteStephanie, so nice to see you in a different setting. We normally running into each other in class or in the office, but it's nice to have you here. Thanks for being with us. Stephanie RentschlerKen, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Ken WhiteYeah. So what you do is fascinating. I mean, you've got your fingers on many pulses, so to speak, and you're talking to job seekers, you're talking to companies, you're seeing the trends, and so forth in the market. What are things looking like out there right now in terms of jobs? We hear so many things in the media. What are you seeing here? Stephanie RentschlerYeah, it's a great question, and I think it is something that is continuously changing, right? And even harder to have a pulse on. We are seeing lots of fluctuations, lots of things. Where we're seeing ups, we're seeing downs. In particular, over the past couple of years, in general, we've seen a ton of ups and downs. But right now, it's been interesting in particular to see what sectors are being a little bit more open in terms of hiring, where we're seeing some slowdowns. And then for us, as we work with students, trying to find what are going to be those sweet spots that we can get people into. In terms of the market, we're seeing a little bit of slow in hiring in certain areas, but then I would say growth in others. Slowness in particular for us here at William & Mary, we produce a lot of students going into the consulting sector, and that's an area we're not having a ton of traction in for some of our folks right now, a bit of that comes from maybe start dates being pushed back. And now, for folks trying to enter in, having to back up against those folks who are now getting ready to start six months later than when they anticipated, we're seeing some good traction in certain areas like healthcare as well. Something that our population is pivoting into in a way that maybe we didn't see as much of in the past. But then also just finding that creativity with different types of companies and maybe finding opportunities at a smaller or a medium-sized firm. Whereas the opportunity might be more relevant there, too. Ken WhiteYeah, I think a lot of people think big companies not necessarily the case now, correct? There are opportunities everywhere. Stephanie RentschlerYeah, absolutely. And I think it's finding those niche spaces as well, but knowing that depending on the size of the company might determine how available they are to hire as well. We're seeing some good traction in the medium size. I know we always focus on the big because that's where the opportunities are. But if we can explore, particularly as we think about tech sector, I know that's something that a lot of folks have questions about for us in our department, big tech companies, where is the hiring, what's happening? We're finding some of these other firms try to focus in on technology-based roles to pick up some of that talent that may have been laid off in those bigger companies or say, hey, you might not be able to get into the Google or the Microsoft right now, but we're hiring tech-based roles. So look at us instead. So I think it's a little bit of pivoting on both sides and creativity from us as the folks that help people get jobs. But I think creativity on the employer's part, too. Ken WhiteYeah, I've definitely heard that in the tech sector, people going from big to large and finding or going from big to medium or small and not having issues finding. Is there, in your opinion, is the market any better, any different for someone starting out versus someone maybe moving from company to company or from one sector to another? Stephanie RentschlerThat's a really good question. I think for those that are just starting out. What is interesting that we're seeing from some companies, as you mentioned, my office works with students, right? We're working with students in different grad-based programs. Some of those folks that are looking to get into that first professional role are maybe having to cast a bit of a wider net, maybe come up with some different ideas and options, as opposed to, this is the one route I had in mind. And we work with students to kind of, I guess, educate on those different options, too. For folks that are looking to pivot as well, I think it's understanding and taking time to assess where they're at currently. But what are some of those key skills, qualities, traits that they can really sell upon to help pivot into a new sector? A lot of the conversations that we have with folks here at William & Mary is the idea of transferability of skills and how can you use that as selling points to help you pivot and break into another sector. Having the prior years of work experience in some capacity is going to be helpful for sure. It's the creativity coming up with. What else is there to pull from when you are looking at breaking into your first professional career, maybe coming out of school or coming out of another program, where you have to be able to find and highlight what are those top key strengths that I have? But how does that then correlate to the employer and what the employer is looking for to make it relevant? Ken WhiteSo, how do I figure that out? Do I seek help? Do I get a coach? How do I know what transferable skills I have if I've got my eye on a new sector, for example? Stephanie RentschlerYeah, that's a great question. So there are lots of different things that we talk with folks about, and I think people that folks can do on their own terms as well. I earlier this year gave a presentation to our young professionals group here in Williamsburg, Virginia, and talking about kind of like this two-part process of focusing on where I'm at now and then drawing the lines and connections to where I want to be, and sometimes that might even be working backwards. Right? So, if I know I want to be in a particular role or a particular industry, what are some of those key skills qualities of people that do well in those roles, people I admire in those roles? And how does that map back to where I'm at right now? So what that can look like for individuals and maybe even doing on their own time is doing a bit of a skills assessment and inventory. There are so many free resources that folks can look at through 16 personalities and plenty of other opportunities online. But being able to kind of take an inventory of what have I done and see the places that the strengths are, but then the areas of improvement in order to get to the role I'm looking for. In terms of the things that I've done or the things that I'm good at. Something I talk to even our students about is creating a brag list and having this as something that you're continuously adding to every month, every three months, whatever that looks like, to highlight what are the things that I've done well this quarter. What's a new project that I took on? What's a new skill that I learned? And over time, this brag list starts to get longer and longer of really key specific areas that candidates can then use to help highlight as they're trying to make that pivot into a new role or even new industry. Ken WhiteI read. I get everything on Twitter, right? That's where I learn. And I don't know who said it. I don't even think it was attributed to the person who said it, but they said your career in the future is not about what you can do. It's your ability to learn. How does that sit with you? Does that sound right when you're interacting with employers now? Stephanie RentschlerYes. I could not agree more. I think something we hear from employers is the idea of coachability, of individuals coming into certain roles, but then also a little bit of this ability to be a self-starter, too. How can I take in some of this knowledge? Be open to feedback and that coachability aspect, but then be able to start taking that and have more autonomy in certain areas. Take initiative. Be the one who's going to come up with the idea of how we can move forward with something as opposed to maybe sitting back and waiting for constant direction. Maybe this is something I think employers are talking about in a lot of sectors at this point, too, is having folks come in that they can shape and mold, maybe, but knowing that they're going to have a bit of those critical thinking skills, the initiative and those other sometimes we've referred to them as soft skills. I refer to them as power skills that are really going to be transformative when adding value to a team. Ken WhiteAnd so that's what the companies are looking for. And if you're an applicant, don't get so hung up on exact experience. Look broader. Stephanie RentschlerYes. And I think being able to draw some of those lines and connections, and that might come back to the idea of selling yourself as a candidate, too, right? Going back to the spaces of things that you've done well. And how is that then marketable for you as a candidate going into the job search? Employers talk to us about a wide array of different skills that they're looking for in candidates. And I think across the board, it boils down to a couple of different categories. That piece that I mentioned about being a self-starter being able to take initiative. The other thing that comes up a lot is problem-solving skills. And problem-solving in the sense of I'm able to think critically about the next step. I might be able to dive a little bit deeper to find information in order to move forward with the next step. And then I think a third bucket that comes up, depending on role two, is we are just seeing an increase in demand for technical skills as well. And that looks very different, I think, depending on the industry and depending on the role. But as we've seen, technology has infiltrated every single industry at this point, right? It is something that is relevant in almost any job that's out there. So, being able to show a bit of technical expertise in certain areas that doesn't mean you need to be a world-class programmer by any means. But I'm just dangerous enough in Excel to be able to tell you how to run a formula. So, I think it differs depending on industry. But that is another subset that does tend to come up from a lot of the employers that we're communicating with here at William & Mary in particular. Ken WhiteAnd if you're not comfortable with tech skills, just try it right. What's it going to hurt? Stephanie RentschlerThat goes back to that learning piece you just mentioned, right? Being open to learning a new skill, being able to show an employer that you are willing and eager to learn, too, even if you don't have that skill set yet. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Stephanie Rentschler in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year, the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report all have named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Stephanie Rentschler. Ken WhiteWe've had a number of guests on the podcast who either have AI expertise or their company is kind of playing in that sandbox. How do you think that's going to affect jobs? I'm talking college graduates and MBAs and so forth. What do you think? What kind of effect is that going to have? Stephanie RentschlerIt's a really good question. I think we're finding ways to automate processes everywhere, even in the career services space and higher education that I work in. We use AI-related programs for resume development. We use AI-related programs for feedback on interview performance, and employers are using that, too, right? When you think about the way that we're even interviewing these days, a lot of times, you might be interviewing through a video-recorded platform that then is going to use AI to provide feedback to the employer on your performance. So it's something that I think is to watch and for folks to be aware of, and maybe even as you're thinking about going into different sectors or going into a new role, doing some of that research beforehand, how has AI maybe transformed this industry? What are some of the new initiatives that are coming up for this company? And being able to do some of that research beforehand, I think, can help pivot candidates to having just enough knowledge to be dangerous in that interview as well, too, to be able to adapt to some of those changes. Ken WhiteThings obviously changing like mad. Networking? Has that changed? I mean, it's still critical, correct? Is that right? Stephanie RentschlerAbsolutely critical. I think networking has always been something that's important, but especially as we go through so many of these changes in the market right now, I think it's become even more important. And networking for different purposes. Right. And this is something we talk to students about a lot, too is the idea of making a connection and trying to build your network isn't just solely based on you have a job, I need a job, give me job. Right. If it were that easy, everyone would have a job within a couple of weeks. But it's more based on this idea of how can I create, build, and then maintain a longer-term relationship that I can then maybe go back to for different instances. Networking can be really helpful for students or for candidates, in general, to break into an industry or break into a company. But it can also be really helpful from just an information-gathering perspective and utilizing that person you're reaching out to gather intel on what's important in that role, what's important to this company right now, and all of those pieces of information, I think help the candidate then tailor their approach to maybe a particular job search that they're focusing on, too. So when I talk about networking, I think about it outside of just the context of trying to get that one job or that one referral, but how can I maximize this relationship for additional gain as well? Ken WhiteWhen I talk to companies, I'm sure you're the same. I was at a company this morning before we started to record one of the first things we're hiring. We're looking, we're looking, we're looking. How much of that everyone's seeking every company seems to be seeking? How much of that has to do with people staying and their jobs at a first, shorter period of time? Stephanie RentschlerIt's a really good question, and I think we're seeing a continued trend of I don't really love the terminology, but job hopping. Right. And maybe the way that I talk about it is pivoting right. Now, some of that might be due to the employee saying this was not the best fit, or I'm not getting out of this what I thought I was getting out of this and wanting to make that change sooner than later. Right. We're once again going back to technology. We live in an immediate gratification kind of world these days. So it's very kind of on par for folks who are going into the workforce to have kind of a similar mentality. Now I think, on the other hand, too, it can also be fit-related as well, right? And I think fit from the company perspective, fit from the employee perspective. I think the generation that's coming into the workforce right now has different expectations than prior generations. I think we had more of an idea of getting in with one organization and finding the opportunities to maintain within that company, to grow within that company, potentially. But now I think folks are seeking growth opportunities outside the company they start with and then pivoting from there and again and again, potentially. We have statistics from the Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics that say that individuals of ages 25 to 34 are within a job on average for 2.8 years right now before they might be pivoting. And it's crazy to think about. But even as I reflect on my own job and career development, I see that trend being true for myself in a millennial capacity for me, and I think for others, too. But I think every person has a different reason too for jumping. It could be for growth, it could be for wanting to find increased flexibility. It could be maybe the company wasn't giving what they thought they needed. It could also be from company-related too. Maybe the person wasn't a great fit. So I think there's a lot of reasons people are jumping jobs right now as well. Ken WhiteI think it could be I'm done. What else can I do? I don't feel challenged anymore, certainly. Stephanie RentschlerAt that level. Yeah. Ken WhiteAnd if there's not an opportunity, and so there's some, I think we tend to look at the employee or the professional for that shorter tenure. But I think there's some responsibility for the employer and some things they might be able to do to keep people engaged. Stephanie RentschlerYeah, absolutely. And we have lots of conversations with some of our employer partners, as I will say, about what our students, even here at William & Mary, communicate with us about what they're looking for. And we see those trends kind of across the board when you look at what is important for this generation coming into the workforce. I think one big thing that has come up in the past couple of years is increased flexibility of work schedules, work environment, being able to have opportunities to be remote, maybe not always being in the office. I think there's pros and cons on both sides of that for company and employee. But another really big trend that we are seeing from the candidate perspective is I want to have more of a deeper connection with my employer. And what that means is I want to feel connected to the values, the mission, the culture is going to be a culture of collaborative or focus on employee well-being. And the amount of times that comes up in my conversations with MBA students, specialty master's students, it is so frequent for me to hear that from folks. And I think that is something that employers are starting to catch onto and say, well, how then can I showcase my company in a way that is going to highlight our commitment to employee well-being and mental health and awareness and what have you? So it's a bit of a shift, and I think we're all still trying to figure out what that looks like, but it's something that's important to this workforce. I believe. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Stephanie Rentschler, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Stephanie Rentschler, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Dr. Elias Zerhouni](images/elias-zerhouni-cross-over-thumb.jpg)
![From an Algerian Village to Director of the NIH: One Immigrant's Leadership Story](images/elias-zerhouni-cross-over-thumb.jpg)
Dr. Elias Zerhouni
Episode 211: November 21, 2023
From an Algerian Village to Director of the NIH: One Immigrant's Leadership Story
Host Phil Wagner fills in for Ken White on this special crossover episode of Leadership & Business and Diversity Goes to Work. Our guest today is Dr. Elias Zerhouni, who has had an incredibly inspiring story of pursuing the American dream while never forgetting his roots. Born in a small village in Algeria, he came to America in his 20s with only a few dollars to his name. Yet through hard work and mentors who saw his potential, he rose to become the director of the world's largest biomedical research agency, the National Institute of Health. He pioneered breakthroughs in medical imaging, including MRI techniques still used today. His scientific innovation combined with leadership skills earned him roles like Department Chair at Johns Hopkins, but few expected a boy from a small Algerian village could someday lead the NIH and its multi-billion dollar budget. We are honored to have Dr. Zerhouni - a radiologist, researcher, and the former director of the NIH - on the podcast today.
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TranscriptFemale VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Phil WagnerWelcome to a special crossover episode of Leadership & Business and Diversity Goes to Work. If you're a regular Leadership & Business listener, my name is Phil Wagner, host of the Mason School's Diversity Goes to Work podcast. I'm stepping in temporarily to fill in for Ken White on this special crossover episode. Our guest today has had an incredibly inspiring story of pursuing the American dream while never forgetting his roots. Born in a small village in Algeria, he came to America in his 20s with only a few dollars to his name. Yet through hard work and mentors who saw his potential, he rose to become the director of the world's largest biomedical research agency, the NIH. Our guest pioneered breakthroughs in medical imaging, including MRI techniques still used today. His scientific innovation, combined with leadership skill, earned him roles like department chair at John Hopkins in his 40s. But few expected a boy from a small Algerian village could someday lead the NIH and its multibillion-dollar budget. His diverse background gave him the global mindset needed to advance the NIH mission and promote better health worldwide. He championed science diplomacy to build bridges between nations and ensured doors were open for emerging leaders of all backgrounds. The trajectory of his life says much about the boundless opportunities America provides to those who dare to dream. I'm honored to have with us today Dr. Elias Zerhouni, radiologist researcher and former director of the National Institutes of Health. Elias, thank you so much for being here. It's an honor to have you on our podcast. Dr. Elias ZerhouniThank you very much. And it's an honor for me, too, Phil. Phil WagnerSo, I want to waste no time today. I'm hoping that we might unpack the many different elements of your story. So, let's start at the beginning. You were born in Algeria and moved to the US in your 20s. How did that immigrant experience shape your worldview and your approach to leadership? Dr. Elias ZerhouniI think it's fundamental, actually, to who I am and what I became. Right. If you go back, the reason I came is because I was pursuing the potential of doing research in a way that hadn't been done before. My father was a teacher of mathematics and physics, and so I was interested in math and physics first. Medicine came in later, and actually, my father opposed that. He said he thought medicine was for less than stellar people, that they just learned by rote and they wrote prescriptions, and it wasn't really challenging. He said you'll get bored. And indeed, I was getting bored after a couple of years because you had to learn all the muscles and all that until somebody showed me a CAT scan, the first CAT scan obtained in the world. It was a radiologist, a mentor. And he told me, he said, you know, this is the future, this is how imaging is going to be. We're going to be able to peek inside the human body without having to open it sort of image. That really was the fuse, if you will. And then, I decided that I was going to pursue radiology and imaging because it was a disjunction of math and physics and biology and medicine. But to do that, you had to come to the United States. I mean, in those days, very few countries, the UK and the US, had that, and that was the foundation. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into, frankly, because when you are sort of taking a chance like this, you know you're leaving, you don't know where you're arriving, and so that was the beginning, if you will, of my career. Phil WagnerSo you have a very vast, and I would say, complex leadership story from being a medical consultant to the Reagan administration in your 30s to ultimately leading the NIH. Talk to us a little bit about your journey from the University of Algiers to the NIH. Can you give our listeners a little taste of that leadership story? Dr. Elias ZerhouniSure. First of all, when I came, I asked my mentors again. The dean of our med school had been at the NIH, and he knew folks here in the US. And he said, well if you want to do what you are proposing to do, you need to get an exam equivalency so that you can be certified in the US. So I studied that, and then I succeeded, and then he said, well, would you like to go? I said tell me which schools are the best? And he said Harvard, Hopkins. I said, well if you can find me something one of those. I was arrogant at the time. I'll go, and we called the Dean at Hopkins, who he knew, and the Dean of Hopkins was a radiologist. And he also believed that this was a new era that mathematics and physics would converge with medical imaging and medicine in general. So what he heard what I was wanting to do, this converging of physical sciences and medical sciences, oh yeah, bring him over. So that's how I got into the Hopkins program, not as a resident, just as a visiting researcher, if you will. So that's what started it. And then when I got there very quickly, I mean the environment was exceptional, people were not like, you know, saying, well he's an immigrant, what does he know? I spoke, barely spoke English, but in my first interactions, it was very obvious that they were excited by the concept of research that would really combine these things because radiology has always been at the edge of biology and physics with radiations and so on. And so over a few month period, I got to know everyone, and I decided that, yeah, I wanted to stay, but there were no positions. And so, I looked for positions around the US. I was going to go to Loma Linda. I had a job offer. Then, when I told my mentors there, they say, I'm leaving. I got a job at Loma Linda. They said, wait a minute, don't rush. Turns out there was one resident at the time who really didn't like the specialty had spent a year and he wanted to go into dermatology. So he left, and they gave me his slot. And so that is how I became a resident in radiology at Johns Hopkins. But then, I was doing research on pulmonary nodules. One of the things that I always followed is the sense that you can learn more by quantitating a biological phenomenon than by observing it. And medicine in those days was more observational qualitative, and I wanted to bring numbers. And my chairman, Stan Siegelman, Dr. Siegelman, he had the idea that measuring calcium in tumors would be a good thing because it turns out that previous studies had shown that calcium, when it's high, is usually a benign disease, not cancer. And so we started to do that, and one thing led to another. We were successful, except that we were successful at Hopkins. Then, when people try to replicate that, they couldn't. And when that happened, obviously, people always wonder if you massage the data or something like that, and we know we didn't. So I studied why that was. And what I found was that in those days, scanners were not standardized, and people forgot that the image you looked at was really the result of a computation. And the computations were different from company to company to company, which means that they give you different numbers, and you couldn't really make a diagnosis because using a scanner from company A wouldn't give you the same results of company B. And so I solved that problem by creating what we call a reference phantom. And the idea that with computerized imaging, which was becoming standard, whether CT, MRI, ultrasound, the world was going to need a way to standardize, right? So it's like having a meter and a mile or a kilometer and a mile. You need to agree on the measure, right? Well, but you need to provide that measure. And that's what I did. Now, you mentioned I was a consultant of the White House. I was not a political consultant. I was a medical consultant because it turns out President Reagan had pulmonary nodules, which were found after he was operated. And I got called in because, at that time, I was the only one who could use that method to determine whether they're benign or malignant. So, I was asked to be a medical consultant. I met the president. I studied, I examined him, and so on, and told him that it was benign, that they need to reoperate again. And that was really the beginning, if you will, of this research career. And I was coming back to Hopkins at the time and essentially continued to follow the same theme quantitative biology. Bring numbers, bring rigor, bring real data to medicine. That was the trend, and I applied that in many ways. Phil WagnerYou mentioned earlier you said I was arrogant at the time, but I've listened to your story a lot, particularly over the last few weeks, and I think it's one defined by such humility. And I've heard you talk openly about how you very clearly didn't have the expected pedigree of someone who would eventually find their way into the White House and serve multiple administrations. What do you think it ultimately was that landed you such impressive roles in your career? Dr. Elias ZerhouniRight. That's a good point. You don't have that phenomenon as much today as you did then. But in those days, if you were what they called a foreign medical graduate, meaning you have graduated from a foreign university, foreign medical school, and then you got your equivalency, people thought you were inferior, that you didn't have the same level of education, skills, capabilities as a US trained. And that was part of the aura at the time to see we have the best of the best medical system. There was a little bit of arrogance behind that, but then the consequence was that when they looked at you, they, you know, there will be a glass ceiling. You'll make it to assistant professor, associate, maybe professor, but that's it. No more because you're a foreign medical graduate, and it's indeed in your Pet degree. You don't have, like, Harvard or the big Ivy leagues. I mean, University of Algiers, who knows where that is? I mean, they thought it was out of a movie or something. So, you really had to establish your credibility on the ground. And that's where, you know, it really happened because as I was there, I worked hard. I asked a lot of questions. If you ask my professors and Stan Siegelman, somebody asked him what distinguished him from the others you had. He said well, you would never be satisfied by just what we told him. He said, Why you're telling why is that that way instead of oh, I get it. Okay. I understand. The bone is broken. All right, fine. It fixes itself this way. Why? What happens, really, at the molecular level to repair a bone? I mean, can you imagine the mechanism of self-repair? Phil WagnerYeah. Dr. Elias ZerhouniDo you imagine if you had a motor that self-repaired itself? Isn't that fantastic? And so this feeling of the world is fantastic. Nature is fantastic. You observe it, and you see things that we cannot do ourselves. We cannot engineer ourselves. A larvae that becomes a butterfly. So the complete amazement at the discoveries that we made inside the human body, both with imaging and trying to coupled with the curiosity, really led to people saying, well, this guy's a little different. And that's where it started. Phil WagnerYour tenure at the NIH is notable for a variety of reasons, but I also want to draw our attention back to the timeline. So we're talking the Bush administration, and we're talking post-911 America. And so I'm wondering, during that time, as you rose into this position of prominence, did you face any backlash in that era? We see a lot of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim backlash. Here, you are leading a very well-known and well-regarded entity. Did those collide in any way that were complicated for you? Dr. Elias ZerhouniWell, first of all, you know, I have to give credit to Johns Hopkins University. I mean, it's a merit-driven university, and I never really got the direct feeling of, except for what I told you before, if you're a foreign medical graduate, there was, you could know there was a little perception difference there, and people saying, well, it's just not as good. My English got better very quickly, so that was obviously an advantage. But I never felt that at Hopkins, although I felt that it was there. Nobody would come to you and say anything. And when it came time to be promoted to professor, there was no discussion. It didn't matter. What counted is, what did you do? What did you publish? And the rest of it was irrelevant. And so that was the culture that I came from. Hopkins has this culture of merits first, and then when the chairmanship of the department was in question, I always thought I would never make it because of pedigree reasons and so on, but it didn't bother the search committee, and I became that and quickly after that became the executive vice dean, all of that because I brought a different perspective. And I'll tell you what the different perspective was. When I started my research in MRI, I realized that I couldn't do it as just a physician-scientist, and I was a biomedical engineering associate if you will. But what happened was I realized quickly that if you didn't have a multidisciplinary approach to science and your lab was not multidisciplinary, you wouldn't succeed. So I went to the dean. I said I want to recruit a physicist. People raised their hand say, oh, my God, a physicist in the medical school? Are you kidding? We're not doing atomic research here. And I said, no, you don't understand. But without a physicist, we won't be able to understand what is it we're seeing with MRI. So my first recruit was actually a physicist, and then I recruited an engineer in radio waves, and then a biologist in cancer, and then another type of mechanical engineer and electronic engineer that could do signals. So, pretty soon, my lab at Hopkins was unique in the sense that it combined multiple disciplines in one lab, and that had never been done before. So, it was a model that actually attracted a lot of attention because it was successful. We very quickly became one of the most granted lab. We received grants from National Science Foundation and NIH, and so there was a lot of interest in that. And I kept saying, you know, you're not going to be number one again unless you combine molecular biology with mathematics, with physics, with computer science, but nobody knew how to do it. I didn't know it was not possible because, at the time, I didn't really appreciate that the basic science departments and the physics department, the math department wanted to control their faculty. They want to select them. They want to tell them what to do and so on. And I sort of broke that mold. So I broke the barriers between them by just basically saying, don't worry about the salary, we'll take care of that, and bringing them into one lab. Now, I'm telling you that story because that's the fundamental reason I became NIH director. So I pushed a new way of doing research at Hopkins, which, you know, as soon as I became chair, they had seen that model. It had been reported actually in science as the model of the future. And I practiced it, and then I extended it to the whole Medical School as the executive vice dean, and I was dean for research. And if you look back, what happened was that I was more looking at the system than any one project in particular. So, I have this sort of systems engineering mind. And I said the system requires you to break barriers between departments and disciplines. And we created these institutes that had no departmental barriers. They were multidisciplinary by nature, and it became very successful. I think that fast forward. After a few years of that, I got noticed I was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and I was known as somebody who broke barriers, both as an immigrant, I broke barriers, I broke the glass ceiling, but more importantly, I broke transverse barriers and glued people together. And that's what they thought NIH needed at the time because NIH had 27 institutes and centers, none of which talking to each other. So I can tell you the details of the story, but that's the fundamental thread that led to that connection. Phil WagnerSo clearly, some big wins mapped throughout that story. What are the biggest accomplishments or initiatives that you're particularly proud of from your tenure at the NIH? Dr. Elias ZerhouniWell, first of all, you have to understand what was happening there because your question was related to 911 and the period of time. Right. And at the time, there was a lot of concern in terms of security. You remember there was an anthrax event where they distributed anthrax around, and it turned out not to be a foreign operation but a soldier from the US laboratories. So, it was clear that at the time, the country and Congress was supportive of NIH. They actually agreed to double the budget, and George Bush, the president, also was a big supporter. At the time, I, like you, thought that I'll never make it. I mean, you know, Muslim, Arab, there's no way. I got interviewed by the White House by a fellow Ed Moy was the presidential personnel. And they had had my name by people who said, you should look into this guy. And the president of our university, Bill Brody, was asked, do you have anybody? And he said, oh, I don't want to tell you his name because it's like giving my arm away, but this is who you should talk to. And so when they talked to me after the first interview, they had a very clear idea of what the problem was at the NIH. It was basically a confederacy. It was not a federation. There were lots of things that needed to be done that no institute wanted to do because they say, wait a minute, that's not my business. I'm focused on my budget, with my diseases, and so on. So lack of coordination and lack of synergy, if you will. And I had noticed that because what you don't mention, and that is important, is that in 1996, I was asked by the director of the National Cancer Institute to write a strategic plan for imaging for cancer. And NIH has a bureaucracy. And I said, no, I'm not doing that. And Rick Klausner was his name, and he was a young, very aggressive, very smart scientist. He called me back. He said, you know, nobody turns me down. Why are you turning me? He said because I've seen that we do work for you guys. You put in the drawer, you never do anything about it. And he said, no, I'm the new director. I'm different. I said, okay, well, let's make a deal. If you're different, I just want you promise me to do the following. If I put a plan together, you have two options. You can say yes, or you can say no, but you cannot tell me what you all always say maybe I don't want any maybes. So that was the conversation that I did work, and I told him I said, I don't want a typical plan made by cancer specialists. I want a multidisciplinary team, which is my mode of operation at the time. And so we did the plan, and he loved it, and he put in the resources. It really transformed the way imaging is done for cancer from molecule to men. But then, as part of that, he said, I'd like you to be on my advisory council. So I end up on the advisory council at the National Cancer Institute in 1996 seven, something like that. I sat there, and I started to know the inside, the NIH from the inside. That led to a second step, which also is important in the story because relationships play a huge role in what happens to you. You don't plan, but it does drive the decision that the relationship was the following: Harold Varmus Dr. Varmus, who had become the president of Memorial Sloan Kettering, who was the outgoing director of the NIH, was asking someone to review his imaging programs. So I did. And as part of that, he was happy. He said, well, why don't you become a member of my advisory, so remember, I was on the advisory council of the National Cancer Institute. I was on the advisory council of the former NIH director with his, and then all of a sudden, the White House calls in and says, oh, we'd like you to consider this job. Well, I wasn't unprepared. It wasn't coming out of the blue. People knew me, and I knew them. And that the conversation immediately related not to who you are, what you do, what's your politics. I was independent. I was neither independent, or I mean, Republican or Democrat. So I was completely out of left field choice, right immigrant, not even born here, so on. No, I mean, it was completely out of character for selection. The problem is the conversation led to a convergence of thoughts that said he's thinking systems. He's not thinking his specialty. So that drove the conversation. Then, at the end, I said, but aren't you worried? I mean, I'm not the pedigree you want. He said, look, President Bush, as long as you're an American in good standing, it doesn't matter who you are, what your relation is, and I was shocked. I was really he said, oh, don't worry. If you make it, we'll back you. So that was it. So when you ask about, obviously, discrimination and lack of diversity and so on, I personally did not experience that, although it's there, there's no question. But I didn't because of factors that I described to you. And in other words, you had something unique that was not available; otherwise, you see things from a different way. The system needs a change. And that's when my contributions to NIH started. From a different point of view. Phil WagnerYour story is one defined by so many wins. Not just wins for your career, but wins that have changed the lives, livelihoods, health, longevity of, I mean, millions. Is your story one of victory and victory alone? I mean, what are some of the challenges that you have faced or faced during that time that might help our listeners as they find themselves configuring their leadership story? Dr. Elias ZerhouniSo, first of all, I don't think there's a little bit of hubris in what you're saying, changing the world and life. Who can do that? The second is it was always driven by observations in medicine that told me this is accepted, but it's not acceptable. So, for example, my first thing was to look at these people who came in with a nodule in the lung that you saw an X-ray, and they would get operated. I mean, major surgery. I mean, Thoracotomy, which is opening of the chest, is not benign. And yet you realize that a third of them or more had benign disease that didn't need to be operated. So, it was accepted. But to me, it was not acceptable. Right. And that's what drove the first project if you will. The second message there is that you try to do something, and then you realize that the entrenched patterns of behavior oppose it. So, anytime you try to change, you had a resistance. The problem was, how do you overcome that resistance? Right. And then I was lucky to meet Bruce Holbrook, who was an accountant, and he said, well if the people don't want to change, create your own startup company and convince them. Well, it was bad advice because we almost went bankrupt trying to sell the technology to the big companies. Why? Because the big companies said, look, our main customers are the surgeons, and what you're asking us to do is to prevent surgery. That doesn't make a lot of market sense. And sure enough, there was a lot of resistance to it. So then I realized very quickly and learned that, yeah, you can see that something is accepted. You think it's unacceptable, you find a solution to it. That solution is rejected. And that made me understand that you cannot be just a specialist in your field. You also have to understand the context around your field. And when you talk about wins, that's the secret sauce to wins. Not just be good at what you do, but understand what you do within the context of the times. Phil WagnerThat's good. You talked about relationships just a few moments ago. You said relationships often define what happened to you. Can you talk to us a little bit about mentorship? The mentorship that you received as you were growing your career, or the mentorship that you've now given and doled to others, developing future leaders? Talk to us about the role of mentorship in careers like yours. Dr. Elias ZerhouniThat's a very great question. I didn't know how important it was until later. I get it now, but I didn't then. And you look back, and you say, how did it work? And I tell the students that there is a pattern to that, and that is that to really be good leader and innovator and bring new things, you need more than just knowing your specialty, your discipline. Right. You need connectivity. It's like what I call the balance T. Phil WagnerYeah. Dr. Elias ZerhouniThe letter T that has a horizontal bar and a vertical bar. The two have to be equal because if you just have a vertical and not a lot of horizontal, you're basically a nerd in your specialty, and you connect to no one. If you just talk, talk, and connect to everybody, like a good cocktail conversationalist, you know, a lot of people, a lot of things, but you have nothing to contribute. And so that concept of the balanced T is really what underlies, in my view. The advice I give to students that you got to grow that. Now, why is that? I'll give you an example. So Paul Wheeler was a radiologist who was at Johns Hopkins, and he believed that you cannot be a good physician scientist unless you're a good physician. And then he came went to me one day and he said, let's go read some films. I said, I'm tired. I got to go. Listen, you know what the difference is between a great pilot and not so great pilot? I said no. He said, do you think a pilot who has 40 hours of practice is as good as the one that does 1000 hours? No, obviously not. And the one that does 1000, is he better than the one who does 10,000? No, obviously not. So, okay, let's go. Let's go get 10,000 films at 100,000. So he was teaching you that fundamentally, you need to be good at your game. Your vertical of the T had to be really solid. Otherwise, you didn't have the right to talk. So he taught you that hard fact that at Hopkins, at least, you know, you had to be a good doctor before anything else. So that's mentoring number one, right? And then we had another Bob Gaylor, who was very wise, and he understood the tensions between the interests of different departments and different so he was more like a wise man. And so you talked to that person, and he said, well, don't push. If you push, you're going to get a pushback. And those conversations were really important because you can be an innovator. But if you innovate against people and you don't understand, then you really don't place your innovation in the right place. Networking is also important because it opens new world. So I always tell students, look, 50% of the people you know should be around what you do, but 50% should be completely different. So I have one of my best friends, an accountant. I have friends who are basically artists and friends who are completely out of medicine and kept them for years from childhood to today. So I think nurturing your connectivity, your horizontal bar, is as essential as anything else, but you can't do it by being passive. In other words, mentoring. People say, oh, well, somebody put me under their wing. Listen, mentor; good mentors are busy. They don't have time to go and look you up and put, oh, come in, come it's not a cafeteria plan. You go and pick the mentor you think is attractive to you resonates with you, and you work at it. So it's as big a work from the mentee than it is from the mentor. Phil WagnerLet's go and lean into that vertical bar for our final question here. Let's nerd out just a second because you're someone who I think is uniquely qualified to speak to the next generation of medical innovation. So, where do you think medical science is leading us? There's a lot of cause to be concerned if you're a human living right here, right now. You've got wars and rumors of wars. You've got ChatGPT and Generative AI seemingly taking over the world and our jobs. Is there a case for hope as it relates to where medical science is taking us? What do you think? Dr. Elias ZerhouniI don't think there's been as much breakthrough discoveries and advances in medicine as there has been last 25 years. I mean, that's just not mince words. I don't think we've ever seen something, the wave of innovation that we've seen the past 25 years. When I became the NIH director, I assembled a 300 scientists and said what is the roadmap for medical research in the 21st century? And if you ask me so, what did you do at the NIH? That's what I did. I reset. It was like a reset button. And 300 people came, Nobel Prizes, great scientists. And I asked them a simple question. I said what is it that the science needs to see done that none of the institutes of NIH is doing but that the NIH has to do? And through those conversations, what appeared was a few concepts that really are underlying what you call medical sciences of today. One was computation and computational capabilities and quantitative capabilities, and the ability to have larger data sets. Okay, so data sciences. And the reason for that is because people were saying biology is more complex than we thought it was. In 1970, President Nixon said war on cancer. Everybody was waiting for silver bullets to come and cure cancer, right? But it wasn't the case. Cancer is not a disease, single disease. It's like 2000 diseases, different ways, different molecular arrangements that make the cancer cell grow. So that complexity was awesome and at the same time, frightening. And so people said we need to unravel the complexity of molecular pathways of disease. And you realize that a disease was not just due to one cause. When you look at cancer or inflammatory disease, it's due to multiple things. And then, when you treat them, you treat them with a combination of drugs because you don't really modify it otherwise. So that emerged, and that posed the question what exactly should medical sciences be in the 21st century. So when you come to that, you then go back to your question and say what did we need to do? We needed to do the blueprint, what's the code, what's the genetic code? So the Human Genome Project, which finished in 2003 to complete the and then, we said yeah, but that's not enough. You need to understand the DNA, but you need to understand the RNA. So whole field of research was put into RNA, and we invested to understand the behavior of RNA, and oh, wait a minute, that's not enough. RNA is only there to code and make proteins. Okay, so what about proteins? So, a whole field of research was invested in what we call proteomics. And what you've seen in each one of these fields, the technology that was needed progressed. And so people today, I would say there is no separation between science and technology. You can't really explore the complexity of science or biological systems without an advance in technology. And so this concept of convergence, of physical sciences, engineering, and biological sciences, is what's driving medical sciences today. Let me give you one example that blew my mind away, frankly. It's a company called Alpha Fold Two. It's not a company. The company is called DeepMind. If you recall, there was these people; these young guys were playing with algorithms that would beat the chess champion, and then they divinely made a game called AlphaGo. AlphaGo was for the game of Go, which is mathematically the most complex game played by humans. And over a period of few weeks, they beat the world champion. And then Google was really amazed. So they bought this company, and one of the scientists, John Jumpers, had really worked on the fundamental problem of protein structure. What I mean by that is everything you have in your body, all the functions that the life undertakes, is related to the shape of proteins and their interactions. Okay? But, we had no idea about how to deduct the shape of a protein from its gene sequence. So we had the human genome, but we didn't know how that translated into shapes. Very fundamental problem. Not new. It's been around for 80 years. And we use crystallography with X-rays and then Tomography, all kinds of methods, magnetic resonance to try to deduct the shape of proteins. These folks came in out of left field. They were not even doctors or physicians or biologists. They came out of mathematics, and they said, well, give us all the known structures which had been studied over 60 years, thousands and thousands of them. They put them into their computer, which is an AI computer with a neural network. And so from that, they started to deduct the roles. And each year, we had a championship where we would provide unknown structure, I mean, unknown structures. And we provide a sequence, and we say, okay, figure out the structure. By then, by 2017, 18, 19, we were able to do 20% of that, and 80% we couldn't. Until these folks came in their first year, they got 40% correct. And then, two years later, with Alpha Fold Two, which was their improved, they got 85% correct. Now, going from 20% to 85% is the equivalent of 200 years of research with the old methods. Not only that but this year, they gave all of their structures, 2 million structures, to the European Molecular Biology Lab, publicly accessible. Now, there's not a single lab that I know that is not using this methodology. I work on antibodies on multispecific antibodies today in my lab. And I tell you, you go, and you basically use AlphaFold to sort of define where your antibody is docking on your target protein. It saves you months and months and gives you insight that you wouldn't have otherwise. So, to answer your question, scale of research is going to be bigger because it's complex. So, data is going to be much bigger. Depth of understanding of the atomic interactions has to grid bigger. But more importantly, we got to understand the disease at the population level, not just the individual, and that is made possible by data sciences. So I think a marriage of complex biology that need to be very specific at the atomic level, at the individual level, at the population level, is what's really going forward. The last frontier is brain sciences. And to me, that's the frontier of the century is the brain and how neurons are amazingly working together. I mean, you look at your child, and in a period of months, they do things that no machine in the world does by itself, self-assembly, if you will, of skills. And how does that happen? Well, what is the miracle of that? So to me, I think we need to continue is to continuously be inspired by nature. There's no smarter teacher than nature itself. Phil WagnerFantastic. Well, what a rich conversation this has been. Clearly, pulling from a rich life and legacy. Elias, thank you. I appreciate all of the insights that you've given and how you've really walked out a commitment to being a T-shaped leader, something that resonates deeply here in these halls in the Mason School of Business. So, thanks for a wonderful conversation. Dr. Elias ZerhouniThank you, Phil. Phil WagnerThanks for taking a second to listen to Diversity Goes to Work. If you like what you heard, share the show with a friend. Leave us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and reach out because we're always looking for new friends. And if you'd like to learn more about any of our programs or initiatives here in the business school at William & Mary, be sure to visit us at mason wm.edu. Until next time. |
![Lyn McDermid](images/lyn-mcdermid-210-thumb.jpg)
![The 'State' of Leadership](images/lyn-mcdermid-210-thumb.jpg)
Lyn McDermid
Episode 210: November 5, 2023
The 'State' of Leadership
Imagine leading and revamping your organization's cyber security system. For Lyn McDermid, that organization is the Commonwealth of Virginia, the 11th most populated state in the US. McDermid is Virginia's Secretary of Administration. She was appointed to the position by Governor Glenn Youngkin in January of 2022. She oversees five state agencies and leads Virginia's efforts in cyber security, IT, elections, Human Resources, and other important areas. Before making the move to state government, she was a successful IT professional and leader. She was CIO at the Federal Reserve System and held similar roles in private and public companies. She joins us today to discuss leading in state government, how states manage cyber security, and where technology may take us in the future.
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TranscriptLyn McDermidWe used to look for. We have a vulnerability. We have to fix that, and nobody will get to us. These bad guys are getting much more sophisticated. They're being paid to do what they do, so it's a business for them. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Imagine leading and revamping your organization's cybersecurity system. For Lyn McDermid, that organization is the Commonwealth of Virginia, the 11th most populated state in the US. McDermid is Virginia's Secretary of Administration. She was appointed to the position by Governor Glenn Youngkin in January of 2022. She oversees five state agencies and leads Virginia's efforts in cybersecurity, IT, elections, human resources, and other important areas. Before making the move to state government, she was a successful IT professional and leader. She was CIO at the Federal Reserve System and held similar roles in private and public companies. She joins us on the podcast to discuss leading in state government, how states manage cybersecurity, and where technology may take us in the future. Here's our conversation with Lyn McDermid. Ken WhiteWell, Lyn, thank you very much for being with us. It's great to have you here. Lyn McDermidWell, thank you so much for inviting me. Ken WhiteAnd you've had a chance to interact with some students. How'd that go? Lyn McDermidI did. I interacted with an undergraduate group of students and then just met with some amazing women who are in the MBA program. So, I learn as much from them as they do from me. For sure. Ken WhiteAmen. Yeah. They're my students, I can tell you. It's why you can't wait to get to work when your feet hit the floor every day. Lyn McDermidRight, good for you. Ken WhiteWhat an amazing experience it is. And you're right. You had mentioned to the undergrad class they're the future leaders. I feel pretty good when I look at that group. Lyn McDermidI agree with you. They're very intelligent, very eager, and ready to go to work. Ken WhiteSo your career is so very interesting. Public, private, the Fed, and now a state government leader. What are the differences that you've seen working in business and now in your current role? Lyn McDermidThere's a lot of differences, but a lot of similarities when you look at the differences between private sector. So I think my career was private sector, retired from that, then quasi-government, which the Fed is still a government agency, although independent, and then Virginia state government. Each of those is a little bit unique. State government, I think one of the big differences is the time you have to get things done. In private sector, you have very strong goals, you have a mission, and you have time to build on that. In state government, the term of the governor is short. The General Assembly changes a lot. The whole funding apparatus is very different and on a less long-term basis. And I think that is a real challenge for big projects or big initiatives that take a little bit more time to get done. Ken WhiteDid you have much experience in government before? Lyn McDermidZero experience in government. Ken WhiteYeah. Lyn McDermidWhen I interviewed with the governor, I said, I vote, and he laughed. So that was my experience, really. Ken WhiteBut he's a business guy. You're from business. I would assume there's a common language there. Lyn McDermidThere's a common language, and I think it helps a lot. And he's hired people from business and people from politics. I think he has an idea of what he wants to get done, and we're just trying to get it done as quickly as we can. We're halfway through the administration, and it's just hard to believe. Ken WhiteYeah. How can that be? Time really does fly. Lyn McDermidIt really does. Ken WhiteYeah. That's a great point you made earlier. Yeah. You oversee a number of areas, IT being one of them, which changes so incredibly rapidly. And you talked a little bit to the undergrads about change. How do you approach change and, embrace change, and think about it? Lyn McDermidI think that you have to look at change as inevitable but also as an opportunity. Everything changes the world changes. And I think as long as we're looking at it through that positive lens of how can we take advantage of this pivot point in either business or even in your own life, how do you take advantage of that? How do you guide it in a way that the outcomes are the things that you're looking for? Or even more importantly, if you're a business person that the business is looking for, if everything stayed the same, you're really backing up because everybody else is moving along at a faster pace. So you have to keep changing. Ken WhiteCybersecurity is one of your top priorities. Same with the governor? Lyn McDermidAbsolutely. Ken WhiteYeah. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I don't know that the average person thinks much about state government and cyber. What is it you think about what keeps you up at night? Lyn McDermidThere's two things that we think about. One is maintaining services. And I was surprised even to myself, Ken, the state has 100 different agencies. Probably half of them are very different businesses, from running hospitals to getting your driver's license and everything in between. Sustaining those services in a reliable and safe way is the most important job of the state. And cybersecurity underlays all of that, whether it's protecting private information. I mean, we are stewards of citizen's private information, ensuring that those services are reliable and fast. Looking at data in a way that we make decisions. Cybersecurity of our data and ransomware is something that we're all worried about is available so that we're making good decisions for the citizens of Virginia. So, cyber is ubiquitous in just about everything we do. And the threats are getting exponentially more complex. We used to look for we have a vulnerability. We have to fix that, and nobody will get to us. These bad guys are getting much more sophisticated. They're being paid to do what they do, so it's a business for them. And so we have to be constantly vigilant, on alert, have the right tools. Because a lot of what's evolved in the cyber world are new, very good tools for how do we deal with it, have the right people. So recruiting it's an area of shortage. There's thousands, if not more, cyber jobs out there to be filled. So training people and getting the right tools, I think, is most important. Ken WhiteSome of our listeners may be listening on election day. Leading up to election day, what are some of the things you think about from a technology standpoint and an IT standpoint? Lyn McDermidI think it's important in Virginia to understand that we still have paper ballots. So everybody fills out a paper ballot that goes into a machine, and then that machine actually counts it and sends it on to the system. So we always have that backup. It's not that machines run our elections. That's really important. What we're looking for is making sure that every eligible voter has an opportunity to vote. So a lot of it happens locally in the precincts, in the voting places. Our registrars are angels and saints on election day and work very hard, and we all ought to be very appreciative of that. But the back-end systems are all just crunching the numbers, crunching the numbers. And we have tested every system, we have tested every machine. We have cyber people on alert. We have had a blackout period. So, no changes have been made in a certain amount of time. Because if you know IT, it's usually a change is what causes a little blip. So I am confident that we're prepared. Ken WhiteAI. What kind of a role? I'm asking literally every guest on the podcast, right? It's all we're talking about, pretty much. But what kind of a role is that playing in your job? Lyn McDermidWe're just beginning to think about it, to be honest. And there's two kinds of AI. As you know, there's older kinds of AI that we've been using forever. I mean, we've been doing data analytics and synthesizing data for ten years. What we're really focused on now is generative AI, the type of AI that actually writes the code and what are the models that are being used for that. So our governor just put out an executive director that he wants us to pilot generative AI. He wants it to look at all aspects. He's formed an advisory committee of AI specialists externally, and we really want to learn more about it before we let the horse out of the barn. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Lyn McDermid in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year, the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Lyn McDermid, Secretary of Administration for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Ken WhiteYour background is heavy IT, but you're a leader. Is that something you set out to do way back when? Lyn McDermidNo, I think it's something you learn, and it's something that you learn even when you're not a leader. I look at everybody as a leader. I think that wherever you are in an organization, you have the opportunity to lead and develop good leadership skills. And if opportunities arise where you can take that to the next level of your career, so be it. But you learn by doing. You learn by studying people and understanding that to lead people, you have to get to know them. You have to understand kind of how to motivate them, how to reward them, how to incent them. It really is a wonderful part of a career, is to be able to recognize others for doing good work, coaching, mentoring, setting clear goals and objectives. So we all do that, and it's just taking it to another level. Ken WhiteAnd I'm guessing by that answer, not to put words in your mouth, but probably leading not that different in your current role versus roles you've had in the past. Lyn McDermidNot at all. Not at all. I think the processes are different. The requirements might be different, but the people are the same. Ken WhiteTechnology has changed so much in your career. Is there one particular area you look back on and say, wow, boy, do I remember that? Or, that was a big moment for me for others. Was there a certain time period or certain event? Lyn McDermidThis is kind of techy, but I think virtualization. And when we started going to the cloud. More infrastructure, it's huge. I mean, we used to build these monolithic data centers, have these huge fill-up, the whole data center with mainframes. They were slow. As soon as we learned how to kind of minimize the back end, virtualize, create cloud-like environments. And now, of course, we have wonderful opportunities in the cloud. It opened the door for all kinds of innovation on the front end. We're building applications differently, allowing those applications to run very fast. The whole data aspect of IT evolved out of that. So I thought that was, in my mind anyway, a game changer? Ken WhiteYeah. You have your MBA. How's that helped you? Lyn McDermidI think it helped me understand that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of aspect of managing. And the MBA, to me, was for me an opportunity to learn things that I hadn't been exposed to. You're learning HR management, finance management, conflict management, all kinds of different aspects of leadership and business, and running a business that you just don't have the opportunity to see it in the scale that you do with your MBA, but also how it all fits together. And at the end of the day, you're running a business. Ken WhiteWe don't blink an eye when we see a woman leading an IT team or working in IT. But when you started, that was different. Lyn McDermidIt was different. Ken WhiteWhat was that experience like for you? Lyn McDermidI didn't really know how different it was until I got there. And then, I just tried to work hard, earn respect, be smart, never come to the table without knowing the subject matter. Because I was being viewed through a different lens, we're all different, but I was really different. So I just realized that in order for me to keep my seat at the table, I had to know my stuff. Ken WhiteWhat advice do you give to young people coming out of school getting ready to start careers? Lyn McDermidKnow your stuff. Really keep learning. Don't close the book when you graduate because the world's going to change the way we do things will change. So be curious. I think curiosity is a trait that is undervalued. And then have fun. Don't take things too seriously. If you make a mistake, get up and try again. Ken WhiteI've asked this question of a lot of our guests. How important is loving what you do important to your success? Lyn McDermidI think it's really important. And it doesn't mean that you love the bits and bytes of it, but you love the environment that you're in. You love the work that you're doing. You love the output and the impact that you're making, whether it's on one life or a lot or on one solving one problem or many. As long as you know that you're accomplishing something, you're doing good work. You can learn kind of the nitty gritty how to do a spreadsheet, but at the end of the day, you have to feel like you're making a difference. Ken WhiteYou mentioned change. It is changing. Where do you see things moving technologically? Lyn McDermidI think we're about to blow it out of the park. I mean, I think AI, generative AI, is going to be a game changer. I think quantum computing is going to be a game-changer. I think we haven't even begun to tap the wonder of mobility and how we can put applications on a mobile device on a phone. I mean, we've begun to do a lot of work there, but there's a lot more opportunity there. I just think we're at that step change, just like we were getting off the mainframe. Ken WhiteWow. Lyn McDermid15 years ago. Ken WhiteYeah. Or, like the introduction of the Internet, some people have said. Lyn McDermidExactly. Ken WhiteYeah. Where does the state fit in? Lyn McDermidThe state fits in as number one, using it to our advantage so that we can do the work that we have to do as well as we can do it. The other is advocating. Advocating for policies, advocating for funding to actually continue to invest in new technologies or in new ways of doing business or in people's education. I mean, you think about what Virginia state government does: education, workforce, health, and human resources, transportation. I mean, one of the ways we're using AI now is when you get an alert that you have traffic in a certain area, take another route. That's AI. So tons of opportunities in state government. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Lyn McDermid, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Lyn McDermid, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Chris Caracci](images/chris-caracci-209-thumb.jpg)
![Learning from the Past](images/chris-caracci-209-thumb.jpg)
Chris Caracci
Episode 209: October 21, 2023
Learning from the Past
One of the best ways to succeed in the future is to understand the past. A new partnership between Colonial Williamsburg and William & Mary will count on the past, along with a special place, to teach leadership, civil discourse, and engagement in a unique way. The newly created Williamsburg Institute will offer learning opportunities like no other for leaders, executives, adults, and young adults. It'll use Colonial Williamsburg and William & Mary as living classrooms while it relies on some of history's most influential leaders to teach lessons for today and tomorrow. Chris Caracci is Executive Director of the Williamsburg Institute. He's spent years as a senior leader with Disney University and Disney Institute. He teaches at the William & Mary School of Business, and he joins us today to discuss the Williamsburg Institute and its unique approach to learning.
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TranscriptChris CaracciIf we think about it very big picture, we think, well, why would we want to start a leadership institute to teach leadership principles when you can find leadership institutes and leadership executive education in a 1001 other places? And the answer to that is we do have the uniqueness of the power, what we call the power of place. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, one of the best ways to succeed in the future is to understand the past. A new partnership between Colonial Williamsburg and William & Mary will count on the past, along with a special place to teach leadership, civil discourse, and engagement in a unique way. The newly created Williamsburg Institute will offer learning opportunities like no other for leaders, executives, adults, and young adults. It'll use Colonial Williamsburg and William & Mary as living classrooms while it relies on some of history's most influential leaders to teach lessons for today and tomorrow. Chris Caracci is Executive Director of the Williamsburg Institute. He spent years as a senior leader with Disney University and the Disney Institute. He teaches at the William & Mary School of Business, and he joins us today to discuss the Williamsburg Institute and its unique approach to learning. Here's our conversation with Chris Caracci. Ken WhiteWell, Chris, thanks for sharing your time with us. Welcome back to the podcast. You're in that rare group. You've been asked multiple times, and there's only a couple of you, so you're right at the top. It's great to have you back. Chris CaracciWell, thank you. It's great to be back. Ken WhiteYeah. We're going to have to tease Dawn Edmiston. Professor Dawn Edmiston is very proud of being the one who's been on the most. I think Dawn's been on four times, and this is three for you. Chris CaracciWell, we'll look for another opportunity. Ken WhiteWe'll have a tie. Yeah. Well, this is very exciting the Williamsburg Institute, but before we dive into that, maybe we start sort of at the beginning. And where did it all start? Chris CaracciIt all started with the thought that or the idea that Colonial Williamsburg, the organization Colonial Williamsburg, should join with William & Mary and do something jointly together and support something together that was very unique. It wasn't completely Colonial Williamsburg's, and it wasn't completely William & Mary's, but really joining the two together to provide leadership programming for participants that want to come to Williamsburg. All the programming will take place here in Williamsburg because we want to take advantage of the place, obviously, but it's unique in that the institute sits between the two organizations, and it uses the resources of both fully. So it uses the intellectual expertise that William & Mary has to offer and the unparalleled world-class historical expertise of Colonial Williamsburg and the place that is Williamsburg. Ken WhiteAnd you are executive director of the institute? Chris CaracciI am, yes. Ken WhiteAnd who else? Is there an organization, a board, or what have you? Chris CaracciThere is a board. The executive chair of the board is Carly Fiorina, and she represents also the Colonial Williamsburg side. The board is balanced between Colonial Williamsburg and William & Mary. Carly is on the Colonial Williamsburg side, along with Cliff Fleet, who is the president and CEO of Colonial Williamsburg, and Jeff Trammel, who is on the board of trustees for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation but also has his foot in the William & Mary side because he's a former rector of William & Mary and a former member of the Board of Visitors for William & Mary. Then, on the William & Mary side, we have Peggy Agouris, who is the current provost of William & Mary, and still one empty seat for William & Mary. That, for the moment, Kendrick Ashton is filling. Kendrick is an alumnus of William & Mary and also the CEO of the St. James Group in the Washington, DC. Area and also a former member of the Board of Visitors for Colonial Williamsburg. I should say I'm sorry. William & Mary and on the Board of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. So there's a lot of representation from both sides. Ken WhiteYeah. So everybody gets both sides and what can be possible. Chris CaracciYeah. Ken WhiteSo I wasn't sure what to expect when I first heard the name, but it's cool that there are three sort of distinct audiences you're thinking about. Can you tell us about that? Chris CaracciThere are we are preparing to design programs that will be all Williamsburg-based programs. For the moment, we won't have anything that is virtual or online. Everything will be in person, face to face here in Williamsburg, and three distinct audiences. The first is an audience of what we call lifelong learners. So this is any adult that's interested in learning more about the leadership lessons we can glean from Colonial Williamsburg's past and their applicability to today. Today's environment of leadership and managing. The second group is the executive education group. These are business executives, business leaders, and also community leaders, civic leaders who want to take more of a deep dive into leadership concepts leadership practices. But looking at them in the context of our founding leadership from the nation 250 years ago and, finding out what lessons from that we can apply to today, and finding where those lessons are. And perhaps a lot of those lessons are forgotten. Lessons that we can bring back to the surface and then look at how they can move forward in their own lives as leaders and managers using those practices. And then the third group is for a younger crowd. It's for high school seniors, college freshmen, college sophomores. To give them some context again, going back to colonial leadership, going back to Williamsburg's leadership of 250 years ago, founding leadership, I should say principles, but also giving them some leadership skills that they can take forward with them into their careers because they'll be young in their careers and just starting their careers, but doing something that will give them, if you will, a foot up on their colleagues. Ken WhiteThe fact that it's in Colonial Williamsburg really differentiates it, for I think everybody knows of Colonial Williamsburg. Maybe not everybody has been there, but for those who just know it by name, why would this be unique to have a program in Colonial Williamsburg? Chris CaracciOne of the reasons we wanted to start this was because we had that uniqueness. We not only have the uniqueness of Colonial Williamsburg, but we have the uniqueness of William & Mary and the campus for William & Mary that can't be replicated anywhere else. So if we think about it, very big picture, we think, well, why would we want to start a leadership institute to teach leadership principles when you can find leadership institutes and leadership executive education in 1001 other places? And the answer to that is we do have the uniqueness of the power, what we call the power of place. And the power of place is here in Williamsburg. So Colonial Williamsburg is it's going to celebrate its 100th year as a restored Williamsburg in 2026. It is the world's largest living history museum. It tells the story of the very foundations of American democracy, the American representative government, and it does that in world-class ways that aren't duplicated anywhere else in the world. So by bringing people here for these programs, we not only can create programs that use leadership expertise from William & Mary, from the intellectual academic leadership side, but we can blend those with experiences. So it's a very immersive program, experiences that Colonial Williamsburg can help us with because they have a whole cadre of colonial interpreters. And we had our opening event last week, and it was a discussion about civil discourse. We had that on the steps of the Raleigh Tavern, which is the place that debates were taking place, from the discussions in the Capitol just down the street 250 years ago. And our guests for last Friday night were Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Pastor Gowan Pamphlet, Reverend Gowan Pamphlet from the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg. All recreating and, in the context of their roles, talking about what did civil discourse look like 250 years ago and how can that be applied to today. So very unique and really not something that others can replicate. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. You hit the nail on the head. There is some great executive education out there. There's a ton of it. But this power of place is so unique. What a differentiator. Chris CaracciYes, the power of place, and I call it the power of people, because nowhere else can groups have a conversation with somebody who is interpreting and embodying Thomas Jefferson or Gowan Pamphlet and finding out, well, what was it like when you were debating these things? What kind of discourse were you having? How were you finding common ground to move forward? Those are the lessons that are important for us today. When we're living in such a hyper-polarized environment, everything is politicized, and nobody can find common ground in order to get to the next step. And I think the lessons are really there from 250 years ago that can give us at least some insight into what we can do next. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Chris Caracci in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year, the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, unparalleled student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Chris Caracci, Executive Director of the Williamsburg Institute. Ken WhiteAnd you've had experience in what we call executive education or corporate sort of education, where the leadership team would be taught something, but going somewhere, getting away from the building, the city, and just unplugging, leaving the cell phones and the laptops and focusing for a couple of days is pretty powerful stuff. Chris CaracciIt's very powerful, especially in adult education. Adults like to learn through experience. They like to learn through seeing and understanding as they see it's commonplace now for executive ed programs or other institutes that teach leadership programs to have programs, but they're limited to a classroom space. They're limited to a ballroom in a convention space. They're sterile in such a way that there's really not a lot of outside influence on that learner other than what they're seeing or perhaps seeing projected on a screen. The differentiator with the Williamsburg Institute will be all of those participants. We may talk about something in a room briefly, but then we're outside, and we're meeting somebody in a historic building or on the campus of William & Mary, in a very historic place, talking about things that happened a long time ago, but have direct relevance to what's happening now. There's nothing more powerful than being able to experience that power of place. Ken WhiteYeah, and this is such a beautiful place. This is my 10th year, and still, every day, every day, I walk in and say, wow, you can't help it. Chris CaracciIt's like walking into the past but in such an impactful way. History impacts you in such a way that you can't help but not leave feeling changed or transformed. Ken WhiteWell, along those lines, you're going to hear from someone who was leading 250 years ago, and it is a human being wearing a costume, and I think it takes a few seconds to buy in. And at least for me, I was like, okay, but doesn't take very long before you're sort of there with them. Chris CaracciIt's very true. And we think that it's just about somebody putting on a costume and pretending, if you will, to be another person. But what we don't realize is that here at Colonial Williamsburg, those interpreters spend their entire career in that character. They are scholars. They know that person inside and out. So when they speak, at first, you may think, well, it's an actor. They're pretending, if you will, to be James Madison. But within a few seconds, you realize, oh, my goodness, I'm listening to James Madison opine about whatever it is we're discussing. And it's so impressive that you can't help but feel impacted by the experience. Ken WhiteCertainly, that's my experience. Absolutely. It doesn't take long at all. And you realize that, wow, this is not an act. It's not even close to that, like you said. Chris CaracciYeah, very powerful. Ken WhiteYeah, it is. Extremely powerful. So you're pretty much starting out. Chris CaracciWe are. Ken WhiteIt's fairly new, right? Chris CaracciWe are very new. Ken WhiteWhat are you working on now? What's the goal for, like, short? Chris CaracciWe had our kickoff event last week with that gathering at the Raleigh Tavern. We're going to start producing our first program, which will be the programs that we do around those three demographic groups that we just shared. They will be from a day to three days in length, still to be designed. So we're going to start working on the first one, hopefully, and we're going to start with the lifelong learners, and hopefully, we'll have that one ready to go in February or March and be able to invite people to join us and participate in those first programs. Ken WhiteAnd you say maybe you're staying over a night or two nights. Not a half-bad place to stay over, either. Chris CaracciNot at all. Even in the wintertime, when it's cool, it can be cold. There is a beauty about Williamsburg in general, a beauty about the campus of William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg that in the wintertime takes on an entirely different complexion. It's stark, but yet it's beautiful, and there might be some snow on the ground, and it brings you to a whole different place than if you're here in July and August when everything is green and the weather is very warm. It's very moving. It speaks to a certain part of your soul and your character and takes you back to another time and to another place that's deeply enriching if you allow it to be. Ken WhiteYet winter is still pretty mild. Chris CaracciWell, compared to other places, but it's still cold. Ken WhiteYeah, for us, yeah. I can't believe what I consider cold now compared. Yeah. Growing up in Pittsburgh. Very different. Chris CaracciVery. Ken WhiteSo, what excites you about what's taking place and what's ahead? Chris CaracciI think the possibility, just the possibility of coming into an organization that will let creativity be its guide, that will let curiosity be its guide. We're not married to any kind of approach to teaching other people or having people go through a learning experience. We're really open to wherever our imaginations can take us because we want these programs to be exciting. We want people to look forward to them. We don't want it to be one more passive sort of learning experience with not a whole lot of stimulus. We want the stimulus to be all around everybody every moment they're in one of our programs. And that's exciting to me because it speaks to adult learners very much, and we think it'll be very successful. As I said, we're just in the beginning stages of that and beginning to design. But we have high hopes that it'll be a real differentiated set of experiences for our participants. Ken WhiteAnd for listeners who would like to see what's going on and learn about programs. Website? Where do they go? Chris CaracciYes, they can go to our website, which is Williamsburginstitute.org. Very simple. Ken WhiteEasy enough. Chris CaracciThe programs are described on there. There's an about us. Yes, they can go there, and they can also sign up for more information and to be on our mailing list for our programs. Ken WhiteWell, it's exciting. You and I have both had a lot of years in executive education. There's not anything like this. Chris CaracciNo. Ken WhiteThis is really different. Chris CaracciYes, it's very, very different. And that's what we're hoping makes it a success. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Chris Caracci, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Chris Caracci, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Michael Flood](images/michael-flood-208-thumb.jpg)
![Leading & Making A Difference](images/michael-flood-208-thumb.jpg)
Michael Flood
Episode 208: October 05, 2023
Leading & Making a Difference
About 1 in every 10 American households is food insecure. That's according to the US Department of Agriculture. That means 10% of American households are uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all members of the family. In addition, households with children have a higher rate of food insecurity than those without kids. A big problem like food insecurity requires a big solution. Michael Flood is part of that solution. He's the President and CEO of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. A former All-American soccer player at William & Mary, he visited campus for a soccer reunion. And he visited us to talk about food insecurity, food banks, and leading in the non-profit space.
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TranscriptMichael FloodFood banking, interestingly, is an American phenomenon started in Phoenix in the late 1960s, spread throughout the United States, and now has spread throughout the world. A way to sort of reuse an existing resource and having it benefit people who really need it. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. About one in every ten American households is food insecure. That's according to the US. Department of Agriculture. That means 10% of American households are uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all members of the family. In addition, households with children have a higher rate of food insecurity than those without kids. A big problem like food insecurity requires a big solution. Michael Flood is part of that solution. He's the president and CEO of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. A former all-American soccer player at William & Mary, he visited campus for a soccer reunion, and he visited us to talk about food insecurity, food banks, and leading in the nonprofit space. Here's our conversation with Michael Flood. Ken WhiteWell, Michael, thank you so much for being here. Welcome back to your alma mater. It's great to have you here. Michael FloodOh, it's my pleasure to come back. It's been a little while, and to see the new facility here is really incredible. I have not been in this building, and it's phenomenal. Ken WhiteYeah, our listeners know, I often say on the podcast, you just walk in every morning and say, wow, how grateful to work in a place like this. You just spoke to a group of MBAs. How'd that go? What'd you talk about? Michael FloodIt was great. I presented about my work, which is in the nonprofit world. I work for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. I'm the president and CEO there, and so I thought it would be good to come back and talk about how, while I got an MBA back in the late 1980s from the program here, I decided to go the nonprofit route. And very pleased I went that route. It's been a great career choice for me personally. That's what I presented to kind of my work and, how I got into it, and some of the challenges in the nonprofit world. Ken WhiteWhat was it about the space that opened your eyes or got you interested? Michael FloodSo, I came to William & Mary as an undergraduate and have a government degree. Political science, they call it government here. It's an old college. Right. And took history took a lot of courses. I came here also for soccer. I played soccer here, which was also a great experience. I did work in the newspaper industry for a bit of time in the 1980s, and I was trying to figure out really what I wanted to do. I discovered I didn't really want to go into government per se, so I had the opportunity to come back and go to the program here, the MBA program here. Coach for my old coach, Al Albert, as the assistant coach and the MBA program, I knew it was going to give me skills that would be helpful, but I still was undecided in terms of what I was going to do. There was a class while I was here that was taught by Dr. Harrington Bryce, who I think has retired recently. And it was about nonprofit management. And it was in that class. I bought the book, and it was in that class. I thought, you know what? This is interesting. I think this is something I want to pursue. And when I graduated from the MBA program, I moved back to California, where I'm originally from, and went into the nonprofit world, specifically food banks. I work for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and have for the last 20 years or so. Ken WhiteIn this era where people tend to work two-three years for an employer and move, as you said, two decades, what is it about it that makes you stay and like it so much? Michael FloodWell, there's so much variety to the work. And that's part of what I talked about this morning in the class. We have our feet in the food world the agricultural world. We have donated food coming in. So fascinating what's going on in the domestic food industry. Of course, we're in the philanthropic world. We're a nonprofit. We have to appeal for funds community engagement. The volunteer program is huge. We're involved in policy decisions made in DC. Sacramento, which is our state capital locally, have a big impact in our work. Nutrition and health is an important component of our work. Research. So you go down the list, and there's a lot to keep someone busy and engaged in this work. And that's why I've stayed. And it's just been fascinating, not to mention how the external environment has changed over that time. Most recently, of course, the pandemic upended things as it did for everybody. So, demand through the roof. The organization responding to that. It's been very interesting and rewarding work. And in the end, the bottom line for us is what is the community impact? How are we improving the lives of people? So it's a different bottom line, right, than a typical business bottom line. And I think that really is what drove me into the nonprofit sector and looking for that type of sort of reward, personal reward for work. Ken WhiteBut in one hand, you're the CEO of a business. It's a major business. Michael FloodYes. I mean, there's $250,000,000 worth of revenue and expenses, the value of the food coming in and out, large distribution centers, logistics, trucking, and the like. So, all the factors of planning and budgeting. IT, HR, I mean, everything, yeah, it's the same in terms of having that type of discipline. Because in the end, for a nonprofit, you go out of business just like any business. Right. In terms of if the enterprise isn't managed well, you're going to be in trouble. Ken WhiteHow'd the MBA help you? Michael FloodThe MBA helped me in terms of finance and that side of things because, again, that's an important aspect of running an organization. Of course, we have a great CFO and a great finance team, but having that knowledge in my role is important. Spent time here in marketing. Marketing is very important for a nonprofit. You have to attract the resources. For us, it's funding, it's food donations, it's volunteer, it's in kind. That has been important. Organizational development was very helpful here. In the end, there's both leadership in terms of providing the leadership for the organization, but there's also managing the enterprise, managing the operation, attracting talent, retaining talent, determining how to build an organizational culture that people are going to want to stick around. So, there were a lot of things here that I found beneficial. There was a real estate class I took. Well, we bought real estate as the food bank. So, a lot of things that provided me again, I think that foundational knowledge that has been very helpful to apply. Ken WhiteAnd we mentioned you were an athlete and a good one. How does sports, how did that prepare you and athletics for your role? Michael FloodSo, my parents immigrated from Ireland to the United States. They immigrated to Los Angeles. And for my brother and I, just sports was an important part of growing up. We played all different sports. And soccer is the one that I gravitated to. And as I mentioned, played here was all American. The team was a good team here had good success under our coach, Al Albert. Sports, for me, teamwork, competitiveness, resiliency, learning to lose as much as learning to win. Right. How do you bounce back? Right. And parts of leadership come into play. Sports has been very helpful. I had a brief professional career in soccer and then coached for quite some time. As I mentioned, I came back and coached here for a couple of years but did a lot of volunteer coaching and training right. Because I had really good coaches when I grew up, and that was my sort of give back right to hold coaching trainings. This would be in California, coach my kids, who played also as youth players. And yeah, I think sports has been very helpful for me in terms of the overall kind of just learning leadership skills, and you know, teamwork skills and related areas. Ken WhiteI'll often ask our guests this question, and that is, was there a day, a time, a moment when you said, I want to be a CEO? I'm ready for that. Did you ever make that decision? Michael FloodThat's a really good question. When I went into the nonprofit world, things were a bit smaller. It's grown. It's a big sector. If people aren't aware, the nonprofit sector in America is a huge, important sector doing important, critical work. I think when I got into it initially, it was sort of in an operations logistical role. And I probably thought early on, yes, I want to progress. I would like to lead an organization. So I had a great mentor in that first food bank I worked with in Northern California, guy by the name of Larry Sly, and then moved to another food bank to become the executive director or CEO, as they're called, in the nonprofit world. So, yeah, I think it was sort of a natural kind of evolution for me. Yeah, early on, I thought, one, I want to stay in this work, I'm enjoying it. And two, I would like to progress in my career. Ken WhiteAnd I'm sure it feels pretty good to make a difference every day. Michael FloodIt does. Even in the most difficult days, great work is going on. People are being helped. There's headaches in any job. Anywhere you go, there's challenges that you deal with. That, for me, was, again, sort of a primary driver, is that I'm a hard worker. I apply myself. It's important for me. And again, seeing the end result day in and day out is very satisfying. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Michael Flood in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year, the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Michael Flood, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. Ken WhiteWhere does most of the food come from? Corporate folks? Where does it come from? Michael FloodYeah, you know, so the United States, we're a prolific grower and producer of food, which is great. It's good to be in a position not all countries are. We export a lot of food, and from that, there's a lot of food that's just left over. Nutritious food wholesome food that never makes it to market, either in the retail sector or in the food service restaurant sector. So that's how food banks got going many years ago. Our food bank celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Food banking, interestingly, is an American phenomenon. Started in Phoenix in the late 1960s, spread throughout the United States, and now has spread throughout the world. A way to sort of reuse sort of an existing resource and having it benefit people who really need it. So that has been sort of the working model of sort of food banking since the beginning. There have been a lot of sort of tentacles out from that working model, but that still remains the core work. Ken WhiteWhat about families and individuals? How much of the food comes from that group? Michael FloodFood drives, that type of thing can be helpful, I think. It's not a big part of food, but it helps on the engagement side, especially like schools. And that's where the volunteer program is very important. We want high schools, colleges, businesses, universities to come in, and it's a great engagement piece, too. People tend to come back because they feel like, for 3 hours, they're getting something accomplished. Right? So I would say the food drive part is kind of a smaller component, but again, helps, I would say, in just getting people involved and getting people engaged in the issue. Ken WhiteSo those people, the volunteers, quote-unquote, how many, how much of your time do you spend with volunteers? Michael FloodYeah, so we're organized where we have a team focusing on the food donors, a team focusing on financial donors, a team focusing on the volunteer side of things. So those are sort of three teams that are focusing on various inputs. 16,700 volunteers coming through on an annual basis are at a big number coming on-site to our two distribution centers are helping at the mobile distributions throughout the community. So it's very large. And then the food bank is serving 600 other nonprofit organizations, and they have also a huge volunteer army helping at that level. So this work, in terms of providing help to people, the volunteer component is very important. Ken WhiteFood insecurity in the United States. How big of an issue? Michael FloodIt's been with us for a long time. It tends to increase or decrease depending on what's going on with the economy and also what's going on with government policy. That's why we focus on policy. It's very important. Decisions made in DC. Sacramento, for us, our state capital local, have a big impact in our work, and you know, the pandemic has seen pushed food insecurity rates up significantly. And once the employment situation improved two years into the pandemic, then the impact of inflation came into play. So, in Los Angeles County, about 30% of people are struggling with food insecurity. Doesn't mean they're necessarily going hungry every day. Some are, but it means they have a measurable shortfall of food accessing food for themselves or their family. So it's a big gap. And that's part of what the food bank is involved with in helping fill that gap, not just through food donations and our work, but the policy work also because the resources that federal government and government has is massive and dwarfs what we can do in the nonprofit world, even though we do a lot. So that comes into play and is a very important aspect. Ken WhiteSo what type of policy, when you're going to DC and Sacramento, what are you looking for? Michael FloodSo, in Washington DC, there's something called the Farm Bill that occurs every five years, a debate on the agricultural policy of the United States. Everything's in there. It's a critical piece of legislation that provides the framework and the priorities for agricultural policy in the United States for the next five or six years. So that's a very good example that we want our voices heard in terms of all different aspects, and you know, the traditional food stamp program now called Snap is part of the Farm Bill. So that's just one of many different examples that come into play where advocacy is very important. Ken WhiteIs that your role? Do you go to DC and Sacramento? Michael FloodI do some, but we also have a team, you know, part of this, you know, finding people who are, again, bring sort of a skill set to the work and getting them engaged and the like. But yes, I do go to DC. And also we'll see electeds down at the food bank or at our partner agencies or volunteering sometimes. So that's an important part of educating them of kind of what is going on in their local community. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. Someone who mid-career, early career, late career, who says, yeah, I've been thinking about nonprofit, I've been thinking maybe about food bank and those types of industries. What advice do you have for them? Michael FloodI would say that get involved. If you're working full-time in business or whatever the case may be, you can get involved now as a volunteer. Nonprofit organizations have volunteer boards of directors. We need smart, experienced, talented people who are committed to the work. So there's an entree already, and that can give you a little bit of an insight of, like, what's this world like and is that something that maybe I do want to do full time, or if not, you're contributing in that fashion. So, getting in as a volunteer, not necessarily right away as a board member, get in and be that working hands so you can see the operation of whatever nonprofit is firsthand that will give you some insight into the work. And I would just encourage people find things that you're passionate about, whether it's education or health care, mental health, children, seniors. I mean, there's all sorts of causes and great nonprofit organizations across this country. The nonprofit world is really an American phenomenon. There are NGOs throughout the world doing important work, but we have a nonprofit sector here that really is unmatched. And that's a great sort of credit to sort of America and our view of contributing to community and our volunteerism, our response to disasters, right yeah, we rely on the government. But as we've seen in disaster after disaster, people don't wait. They organize. They start helping their neighbors right away. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Michael Flood. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Michael Flood, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Brian Miller](images/brian-miller-207-thumb.jpg)
![Thriving in an Era of Automation & AI](images/brian-miller-207-thumb.jpg)
Brian Miller
Episode 207: September 21, 2023
Thriving in an Era of Automation & AI
Professionals, companies, and organizations everywhere are working to determine and refine the role automation and Artificial Intelligence play in their strategies and day-to-day activities. At BDO, one of the world's top accounting and advisory firms, embracing technology, AI, and automation is a way of life. Brian Miller is BDO's national audit, data analytics, and emerging methods partner. He works with the firm's leaders to set assurance innovation strategies, assurance data analytics, automation, and AI strategies. He visited William & Mary recently, where he was the keynote speaker at the business school's Accounting Edge Program. The next day he sat down with us to discuss thriving in an era of automation and AI.
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TranscriptBrian MillerPeople like to think that the bots are coming for the accounting jobs. I don't think that's true, but I think that the accountants who know how to take advantage of the bots and the accountants who know how to use the tools that are available are certainly going to replace the accountants that don't. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Professionals, companies, and organizations everywhere are working to determine and refine the role automation and artificial intelligence play in their strategies and day-to-day activities. At BDO, one of the world's top accounting and advisory firms, embracing technology, AI, and automation is a way of life. Brian Miller is BDO's national audit, data analytics, and emerging methods partner. He works with the firm's leaders to set assurance innovation strategies, assurance data analytics, automation, and AI strategies. He visited William & Mary recently, where he was the keynote speaker at the Business School's Accounting Edge program. The next day, he sat down with us to discuss thriving in an era of automation and AI. Here's our conversation with BDO's Brian Miller. Ken WhiteBrian, thanks very much for taking your time. It's great to see. I really enjoyed the talk last night. Brian MillerMy pleasure. It's great to be on campus. I really appreciate the opportunity. Ken WhiteYeah you know, my first reaction was, man, how accounting has changed compared to way back in the day because if I'd have heard somebody from BDO was coming, I would expect a three-piece suit, black wing tips, and you guys were up there rocking the jeans and the sneakers and the sport coats. I think the students were like, wow, this is pretty cool. Brian MillerWe were told Tracy was very adamant about startup chic, and it was not a stretch because that's how we are comfortable. That's how we get our most best work done. Ken WhiteYeah, it's great to see that change. You talked about automation in AI. Are the robots taking over? Brian MillerThe robots are certainly helping, for sure. We say all the time that people like to think that the bots are coming for the accounting jobs. I don't think that's true, but I think that the accountants who know how to take advantage of the bots and the accountants who know how to use the tools that are available are certainly going to replace the accountants that don't. We already kind of see that happening. Ken WhiteAnd you talked about some skills that you think accountants and new professionals need to have in order to work with the technology. What are some of those skills? Brian MillerWell, they're all soft skills. From my vantage point, I think being curious, learning, challenging the status quo. Is there a better way? So it just kind of depends. We spend a lot of time with our change management program. I have a colleague, Tara, who runs an entire enablement program. And what we learned is just hand-to-hand combat is kind of the only way to really get people over the hump. You can do all the lectures and all the town halls and all the webinars as you want, but we have some really senior partners in the firm who privately said, I know this is a better way. I know this is the right way to do it. I just need someone to show me. I need some help. So, we spent a lot of time doing job labs and individual kind of coaching sessions. And it works this way. It works that way. You push this button, you do these things, and they're all built to solve business problems. So it's not any sort of crazy coding. You don't need to be a data engineer, you don't need to be a comsci major, but you need to understand data extraction is happening and it's safe. These analytics mean these things and draw your attention here. We spend a lot of time on consistent user experience, consistent learning platforms, and learning education and change management programs so that it becomes increasingly familiar, which is a challenge because you're still in a profession that really is somewhat built around the billable hour. So it's really hard to find time to invest. Now, that's the users of the technology for the folks that have kind of come in and are building it. It changes every day. So we spend a lot of time on if it's Altrix or UiPath or data robot or robotx or whatever the application of the day is. We spend a lot of time looking at the business problem researching what the right tool for the job might be. Then, once you find the tool, you got to figure out how it works, is it safe, what the cyber consequences are. Because I have to prove to our regulator that everything that we use or adopt or build is fit for purpose, right? So if we start directing technology at our issuer client base, the regulator kind of comes in and says, okay, well, you took advantage of this, this, and this bit of technology. Show us all the ways that you either built it, stress tested it, QA, QC, and touch wood. We got a pretty good batting average around doing the requisite amount of QA and QC whether we build or buy. I'm really mindful of that because as soon as we stop if we ever were to mess that up, I know it's just going to be very difficult to kind of continue. So, we spend most of our time doing due diligence and QA QC. Ken WhiteWhen you were talking to the students, you talked about very specific examples of how automation and AI are being embraced at BDO. Can you tell us a little bit about data protection technology? Brian MillerYeah, so everything that we do, I was mentioning earlier that the managing partner of our tax firm basically says, you don't want to be the firm that gets their name in the paper for a data breach or a data leak. So we deal with a lot of sensitive information, whether it's personal information in a tax return or whether it's pre-market information in the conduct and audit. So a lot of times we spend with our clients doing direct extraction and basically say, all right, well, I'm going to tunnel into your ERP. I'm going to grab the evidence files that I need, I'm going to grab the ledgers that I need, I'm going to grab the subletters I need. Our really good, our really savvy clients, we need to kind of prove to them that we're going to take care of their information. What does that look like? It's either encrypted or it is stored in a particular environment, or it's purged after a certain period of time. Most of the conversations with our clients are not about what we're actually collecting. It's mostly about what we're not collecting. So we go in and say, well, I need your sales ledger, I need your inventory ledger, I need your warehouse details, whatever it is. But you have to kind of convince them we're not getting Social Security numbers or HR directories or HR kind of files. So we're seeing our savviest clients are the ones that are asking the right and the most intelligent kind of questions. And we have to get them with our cyber people, or we have to get them with our lawyers or whatever. One of the smartest things that we did very early when we got into deep into the extraction and data modes of working is we worked with our attorneys to lay out some pretty standard engagement letter language. So we are going to do these things in these ways and protect it in this particular way. And most of the time, we had a lot of questions about that language, and it continues to kind of evolve and live. But our clients need to be shown and proven that we're going to take as good of care with their information as possible. And again, we don't want to be the firm that gets their name in the paper for playing fast and loose with the data sovereignty the data protection. So we spend a lot of time and energy working with our cyber guys and our infrastructure guys to make sure that everything is just so so that it's safe. But it changes every day. Every day, there's a new threat and a new spam. We run phishing simulations. Like our cyber guys will send emails that are branded as from our CEO or, branded from me or branded from our learning department. Just have a question, please click here, fill out a survey, and it's a gotcha game. And if you click it, the pop-up kind of happens. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Brian MillerYou're assigned 23 hours of data protection, CPE, or whatever it is because you fell for it. Yeah, it's really working because our folks are now very mindful. Ken WhiteThat is working. Brian MillerI don't want to have to take all this homework, so I'll get a phone. Did you really send this email? Did you really ask me to? Yes, I did. Thank you for being mindful. That's an ominous kind of threat. Ken WhiteYeah. Oh, that's great. What's BDO harmony? Brian MillerMan, BDO harmony is the most special application to me just because I'm extremely biased towards hiring for reasons that I think will become clear in a moment. So, we started out by building our routines, and we realized pretty quickly that bespoke analytics for every audit client was just not a sustainable model. I couldn't have an analyst or a group of model architects for every kind of unicorn scenario. So we got pretty good at a common data model upfront, so, well, our clients are on QuickBooks. Our clients are on Oracle or SAP or Navision or Dynamics or a native ERP that was custom and invented the third season of Friends or whatever. We see it all. So the question became, how do we standardize our clients' data to a common language, a common convention, a common schema that all our tools will understand? So we started working on Harmony. We called it initially the front door. And the whole idea was drag clients' data in no matter size, no matter format, whatever, and codify it into a common data model that the tools universally recognize. So get in the front door. It's standardized. Everything kind of happens. So front door was going reasonably good. It's kind of an evergreen project at this point. And around the time it started getting really good and really exciting, my mother-in-law came over for lunch. She showed up unannounced. My wife is Korean. And so Julie showed up, and she said, I'm surprised I'm here for lunch, and my kids are running around, and my house is a mess. And I thought, man, I don't think we have any food, like, in the pantry or in the fridge or whatever. And Julie said, no, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. And so she went in the kitchen, and she called us in 20 minutes later, and there was this very nice, elegant kind of spread that looked beautiful, and I didn't know where she found half of it and whatever. And my oldest son started eating and said, thank you, Harmony. And Harmony is the Korean word for grandmother. So that it hit me like a bolt of lightning like that is what we're doing. We're basically taking mess from different pockets and different places in different corners of any kind of format. So Harmony is named after an 80-year-old woman who lives in Walnut Creek, California. Ken WhiteThat's great. Brian MillerThe logo is actually we had our marketing department take Julie's picture from our wedding and turn it into one of our Bots. So like the same dress and the same Versage. So, the Harmony logo. So now whenever we see her and Harmony is featured in a lot of BDO kind of collateral as the way we do analytics, I try to show her and explain to her. I mean, Harmony is in 31 countries now or whatever it is, but it all started with that kind of effort and that lunch, but it really started with the guys trying to understand how can we take all the world's data in every different kind of format and size and shape and codify it into something that we can use consistently? Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with BDO's Brian Miller in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year, the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Princeton Review, and US News and World Report all have named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has an outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with BDO's Brian Miller. Ken WhiteYou said last night do what you love and automate everything else. Brian MillerYeah, absolutely. Ken WhiteYeah. Tell us a little more about that. Brian MillerYeah, so last night, we talked a lot about what careers in accounting kind of look like based on the foundation of the type of education you get at the Mason School of Business. Or I went to Wisconsin at our school of business. Or we talked UCLA, North Carolina, whatever. If you got a really good accounting education, there's all sorts of ways that you can go. One of the guys that work in our firm that I speak with a lot is a gentleman named Rich La Marina, who runs our advisory analytics and automation kind of practice. And they do analytics and automation as a service, whereas for audit, we do our client base, or our stakeholders, or our engagement teams. Rich goes out and basically helps companies find inefficient processes, get them optimized, and then automate them so that people aren't just kind of pushing paper from one to another. So, we talk a lot about data lineage. Internally, what that looks like is we're looking at a CRM record. Here's an opportunity. Okay, now it's time to do click a button. Now, your portal provisions, your harmony provisions, your DMs provisions. You answer a couple questions, okay? Subject matter routing. The consultation's been reviewed. Click, click, send it to the next guy. So there's a lot of opportunity there as a service. So Rich has built an entire kind of client base around automation as a service. And his marketing tagline when he goes to his markets is automate everything else do what you love. One of the clients that I had years ago when I was still a client, Beijing practitioner, was these two doctors figured out a way to harvest shrimp membrane and turn it into a hemorrhage control bandage. So they were scientists. They were researchers. And these hemorrhage control bandages were the most efficient hemorrhage control bandages ever. They beat me and whatever off the shelf at Walgreens or whatever. And they ended up with a contract with the military where every servicemen and women deployed anywhere had at least four or five of these hemorrhage control badges. They were that good, and they were that efficient. But their accounting and finance was a mess, and their processes were a mess. And you talked to them about it, and they would say, look, we're doctors, we're scientists. We know we've got this wonderful kind of product, and so we're focused on that. But as a result, they weren't terribly focused on the business or process automation and all these types of things. But there are people who are really dialed into taking concept to opportunity, to action, to de-provisioning lather, rinse, repeat. So we spent a lot of time with clients as a service doing good data, good process, and automating and applying AI algorithms on top of good data and good process. Ken WhiteYou mentioned it a little earlier. We're talking AI automation. This is a massive time of change. Brian MillerYeah. Ken WhiteYou got to embrace it, right? Brian MillerOr else, well, it's hard. You got to be disciplined to keep up, just to keep your head above kind of water. So what we're finding now, the number one question that we get from our current clients and from our existing clients, is what does BDO do with respect to automation, analytics, innovation, artificial intelligence. In audit, in my world, in audit it's a little bit like going to the dentist, you know what I mean? Nobody really looks forward to going to the dentist, and they judge their dentist by making sure it doesn't hurt. So that's not that far from the service that we kind of do. We got to show that we're providing value in the conduct of the audit. And we also got to make sure that it's as simple and as innovative and as technology-heavy as possible. And if we can do that and we can show some value as a result beyond a compliance activity, here's where we see you compared to businesses like you. That's one of the main kind of jams of Harmony. Once you codify all your client data into a common schema, you can start benchmarking manufacturing, and retail, and bank clients against each other, and suddenly, the audit looks very different. Like we're not just kind of putting our thumb up in the air and saying, all right, this is the concentration of your assets, your revenue, your margin, your inventory turnover, your payroll, your headcount. We're basically looking at jobs now by saying, for a $50 million manufacturing company in the Midwest, you look oddly different in these areas and traditional in these other areas. So we'll go in, and we'll do a bid and say, the data is going to dictate to us how we're going to approach your job, and we have enough experience and enough KPI history now that we can approach clients differently, say, well, what do you care about? Here's what we care about here's, what you see here's, what's a matter of professional standards embedding our technology there. But when we get to a function where we say we're going to scope an audit in a particular way because what we see is atypical compared to, like, clients around this common data model standard, then you're in a really engaging conversation. If we're not doing the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, all our competitors are. So we got to constantly keep our foot in the gas because the stakeholder expectations are continuing to change. Ken WhiteWhat advice do you have for a young professional to have a successful career? Brian MillerStay curious. Stay curious, work hard, and be kind. Those are the three pieces. The colleague who's an alumni here, Tracy Lewis, who brought the opportunity to visit the school she and I started the same year in 2002. And back then, we carried work papers around in suitcases, you know what I mean? And so people were just starting to have their own laptops. Everything continues to change. And so the skills that you're learning on campus right now and the hard work and the rigor and everything you're putting in is going to be very different than two years from now. Very different five years from now. Very different ten years from now. The literacy, the financial literacy, and understanding the language of business, which is accounting, is valuable. We were saying last night it's way easier to teach the accountants the technology. As the world gets more low code and no code, that's going to increasingly be the case. We try to teach the technologists how accounting works and debits and credits and this and that. And one, it's not always terribly interesting, but two, it's also very difficult. But we find the best accountants. You give them the right education and the right curriculum around how the technology works. They could go out and do supply chain management. They can go out and do tax engineering. They can go out and do client advisory automation services or whatever. So, staying curious, and staying interested, and demonstrating leadership, I think that the way we closed the presentation last night. Anything that can be automated will anything that can't becomes more valuable. Leadership, empathy, conscientiousness, mentorship. We had breakfast with the dean this morning, and we talked a lot about well, how can we best prepare students for the rigors of a professional responsibility in your organization. I said we want good team members. We want people we can go to battle with. We want good people who challenge a status quo. Who are interested in is there a better way? People aren't just going through the motions. And so the vibe that I've gotten on campus here while we've been here is that the calibers of the students are that you got a lot of really, why is it this way? Could it be that way? And never lose that level of curiosity, and ingenuity, and philosophy. The other thing I would recommend to undergrads here is just getting off the reservation periodically. Like weave in the business school and take an art class. Take a literature class, take a history class. Round out your portfolio to the extent the curriculum allows. Because you'll find folks in the history department or the English department or the art department have a lot of perspective that may not always exist in the straight line that the business school kind of offers. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Brian Miller. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Brian Miller, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Cody Watson](images/cody-watson-206-thumb.jpg)
![Telling the Corporate Story](images/cody-watson-206-thumb.jpg)
Cody Watson
Episode 206: September 5, 2023
Telling the Corporate Story
Whether large or small, most companies and organizations engage with their target audiences on social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others. But what about podcasts? Many companies and organizations have stayed away from hosting their own podcast despite the numbers. For example, the number of podcast listeners in the US has doubled in the last ten years. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 62% of American consumers listen to podcasts. Cody Watson is the Director of Marketing at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at William & Mary. Before joining the Mason School, he worked in the ad agency space. He says companies should consider hosting their own podcasts because doing so can create solid relationships with customers and prospective customers.
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TranscriptCody WatsonI think the barrier to entry feels artificially high if you don't know what you're doing. If you've never been in that space before, it feels like something that would be it's too technically complex. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, whether large or small, most companies and organizations engage with their target audiences on social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others. But what about podcasts? Many companies and organizations have stayed away from hosting their own podcast, despite the numbers. For example, the number of podcast listeners in the US has doubled in the last ten years. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 62% of American consumers listen to podcasts. Cody Watson is the Director of Marketing at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at William & Mary. Before joining the Mason School, he worked in the ad agency space. He says companies should consider hosting their own podcasts because doing so can create solid relationships with customers and prospective customers. Here's our conversation with Cody Watson. Ken WhiteCody, thanks for taking time to join us on the podcast. It's great to have you here. Cody WatsonHey, thanks, Ken. Happy to be here. Ken WhiteYou certainly get social media, and you understand because you do it for the Mason School of Business. You're all over social media. Why is it that some companies are everywhere in terms of social media, but podcasting they don't seem to be there? What's up with that? Cody WatsonI chuckle when you ask that question. For me, I think podcasting is perceived to be difficult or a time suck. It's a very big time commitment, and I think the barrier to entry feels artificially high if you don't know what you're doing. If you've never been in that space before, it feels like something that would be it's too technically complex. Maybe I don't have the content. Maybe I don't know who to interview. Maybe I don't know what my topic is. It involves a lot more than just find a pretty image, come up with a caption, post it, move on to the next thing. It really is sort of a commitment to continuing and a commitment to content. Ken WhiteYeah, it's an investment in time, right? Cody WatsonAbsolutely. Ken WhiteWhy should companies and organizations think about launching a podcast? Cody WatsonI think for the same reasons that it's intimidating. As you research the topics for a podcast episode versus a social media post, you're going to spend so much more time in a podcast episode talking about that you're going to foster a deeper connection with the brand, with the host, with the content topic. And so you really need to be brushed up on the details. You have to have a guest that knows what they're talking about. Hopefully, that guest today knows what they're talking about. But I really do think that it's intimidating because it's not just a flash in the pan like a post can be. It's content that exists, it's long-form, you absorb it, and people revisit that more so than they would a social media post. Ken WhiteI remember when Facebook was somewhat new. You'd see a CEO or a leader say, hey, we have 100,000 followers or 500,000 followers or this is how many followers I want. They didn't necessarily know what that meant or why. What if a leader comes to you and says, I want our company to launch a podcast? What would you ask them? Cody WatsonI think you ground yourself in the same questions that you would for any content piece that you're looking at from corporate content marketing because that's really what a podcast is: it's content marketing. And so the first thing that you ask is, who is our audience, who are we targeting? And what do we want them to get out of this? Can we impact them? Can we push them in the direction we want to push them? Is this going to be the right platform to do that? I think thinking about podcasting as a type of content rather than just this big scary new world of podcast. We've been doing spoken word and audio for a very long time as humans, and I think podcasting fits in that niche. We just have to make sure that we're targeting the right people with the right message. Ken WhiteBut content can be frightening. I think back when blogs started up, one of the tricks was, okay, if you want to be a blogger right now, sit down and come up with 50 blog topics or 100 blog topics. Would it be somewhat similar for podcasts if someone came to you and said, I'm thinking about starting one for our organization? Cody WatsonYes, and I think you need to know who's in your space because if your Leadership & Business podcast, if someone wants to do what you're doing, then the first thing they need to do is look at this podcast and say, okay, there's 200 plus episodes. It's exhaustive. What is covered? What's not covered? What can I offer that's new here? I think that's not just to have a podcast. To have a podcast, but what are you going to bring to the table that's new, that's not already being addressed? Ken WhiteYeah, because of some podcasts out there. There are some incredibly good podcasts, and that's why, right, they're filling a void, or at least they're better than what's out there. Cody WatsonYes. And if you think you can do it better, by all means, give it a shot. But I think you touched on it earlier. Make sure you have enough content for this to last unless your idea is a limited-run series. Did you think you'd be at 200 episodes when you started this? I mean, the idea was to keep this podcast going for as long as possible, but if you're in a niche topic, you might not need a podcast series. You might just need a limited-run show. Ken WhiteYeah. Which might be the reason. When you look at many podcasts, there are very few episodes, and then they sort of go away. Cody WatsonAbsolutely. They covered the ground, and they didn't need to hit it again. Ken WhiteI think people are surprised to hear how small podcast. A successful podcast has a relatively small audience, especially compared to social media channels. Is that fair? Cody WatsonThat's fair. Obviously, we're going to remove our Joe Rogans and our Call Her Daddy out of this. Right. When you look at podcasting, you're going to get outreach for advertising at three to five thousand listeners per episode, which is astronomically tiny. Right. As we look at a massively successful podcast may have 10,000 listeners, but you're considered a micro-influencer with 100,000 followers. So, it's not a one-to-one. If you have 100,000 social media followers, you can't necessarily expect 100,000 podcast listeners. So it is a much smaller media but a more dedicated follower base because they're spending a large amount of time with you, potentially multiple times a week. Ken WhiteThat's a good point. Time. How long should a podcast be? Cody WatsonWhat's your topic? I guess that's the question. So, I'm going to shuffle some papers here. I got some stats for you. Ken WhiteOkay. Cody WatsonAs far as the time of a podcast is concerned, the average duration broken down by percentage, so 15% are fewer than ten minutes, which Ken WhiteWow, that's short. Cody Watsonyou're not going to cover very much in ten minutes. Right. But only 16% are over an hour. So everything else really lives in that ten to 60 minutes. And the biggest chunk is at 20 to 40 minutes, which everyone says 20 to 30 is kind of the sweet spot for a podcast episode just because the average attention span starts to wane after about 20 minutes as we think about sort of consumer behavior. So, really in, that sort of 20 to 40-minute time span is the really sweet spot if you have the content for it. Ken WhiteRight. So you said not only do you have to come up with the number of episodes that you're going to be able to do, but the amount of time you're devoting to each episode as well. Cody WatsonExactly. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Cody Watson in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year, the Financial Times, Princeton Review, US News and World Report, and CEO magazine have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now, back to our conversation with Cody Watson. Ken WhiteLet's shift gears a little bit. Equipment, right? Say someone say, yeah, we're going to do this. What does it entail? Cody WatsonWell, a microphone, a recording device, and a host and a guest, I think, all in for podcasting. You can go production studio, millions of dollars all you want, but if you wanted to start something at home, you could probably go on Facebook Marketplace and, I think, get the equipment for less than $100. Buy it brand new for 200, $250, and probably be in the market to start something. So it's really, as far as a capital expense is concerned, really not that much of an expenditure to get something started. Ken WhiteSo, a marketing team at any organization should be able to. Cody WatsonYou should be able to work it into pretty much any budget you're carrying. Ken WhiteRight. Would it fall under marketing in most places? Cody WatsonMarketing, CorpCom, PR. I think depending on what the purpose of the podcast is if it's an internal podcast, you could debate that HR could even be involved in it if it's for your own employees. But generally, it's going to be a marketing or a corporate communications function. Ken WhiteYeah. What about staff? Who do you need, how do you put it together? Cody WatsonHow many people do you need? I think it depends on whether you're going to outsource or not. Right. And if you have a jack-of-all-trades host for this, they could really get all of this done themselves if they know how to do the back end of the editing. Setup's not that hard. You need to have a personality that can connect with the audience. So, host, a producer, a lot of times that's sort of the same hat that gets worn. An editor. You can outsource that editing. So that could relieve your burden there. Anywhere from one to four people would be all the staff you really need to put against this. Ken WhiteYeah, because many people in marketing or PR comms they do know how to edit. Cody WatsonTo a basic level, I think that most marketers or PR people could probably get into an audio cut and at least get you a good podcast cut and not that much of a steep learning curve. Ken WhiteSo what we've sort of been talking about are the podcasts where it's like this one person's asking questions, and another one is answering. But they can be much more robust. Cody WatsonThey can be really expansive. There's an American History podcast. I think there's a company called Wondery that does this. And they've got sound effects for horse hooves, and they've got the turning of the page, and was it this American Life is another one where they can really make these as big of a production as you want, but then how many of them are just a bare bones interview? That's really all people are wanting. They want to have that true connection. And all the bells and whistles is good for storytelling, but maybe not for interviewing. Ken WhiteInteresting. So if a company doesn't have a staff, then what? The CEO I really like a podcast, the CEO says, but we don't really have anybody to do that. What do you do? Cody WatsonYou outsource it. If you have a good host, you have a good idea, and you have a buttoned-up strategy, you can outsource it for not very much money as well. Companies like Freedom, Castos for putting out in syndication, Libsyn just rattling off people that I know. There are a lot of companies that can really help take not just produce it for you, but even increase your production quality on the back end and make you sound a lot more polished than you maybe think you do when you're doing it in the moment. Ken WhiteAnd some of these companies will make sure it's out there on all the right channels, making sure you're getting listeners. Cody WatsonAnd they'll do all the syndications for you. Exactly. They'll do some of the promotions. You can outsource that if you couldn't do it internally. And syndication is not as difficult as a lot of people would think. A lot of the ways that you would push a podcast out are repeatable between Apple and Stitcher and, Spotify, and all. Ken WhiteRight. Expensive to outsource? Cody WatsonNot necessarily, no. I think you can do it for a couple grand a year, honestly, if you don't have that long of a show. Ken WhiteOn YouTube, when we're talking video, sometimes you hear people say, if it's a little rough, that's good. If it's a little professional, that's good. What about podcasts? How good do they need to sound? Cody WatsonI think it depends on the topic and who's doing it. I think this is me personally. I would have a higher bar of a corporate podcast if one of our local companies, Smithfield, was putting a podcast out. I would have a higher bar for Smithfield than I would for the guy in a shed that's doing a show. Right. And you expect them to grow over time. You expect them to improve. But I think this is where you have to know your brand and whatever the podcast is going to be a representation of your brand. And so if you are a company that's doing this, it needs to follow sort of what your brand impact is as well. Ken WhiteHow often should they publish or post? So, exactly when does a new episode be? How often are they released? Cody WatsonGenerally, with a podcast, I don't see anything go out less than once a month that people will say twice a month. Or weekly. And then there are shows that will do multiple a week. But you've really got to have a lot of content to cover that's probably more in the world of sports or entertainment that you can do a weekly or more than once a week or a daily podcast. But I would say every other week to once a month. As long as your content is good and you know people are going to come back to it, it's quality. I think that's the biggest piece. Ken WhiteAnd committing to that schedule is important, isn't it? Whatever you choose, once a week, once a month, really marrying into that is important. Cody WatsonBe predictable. You don't want people to have to hunt for you because, at a certain point, you'll be forgotten, right? You want people to know that I can expect on every other Tuesday, there's going to be X podcasts. And I know to listen to them because people, we're routine, we're creatures of habit, we want to know when this is, especially if it's part of your commute. We want to know when this is going to be there. Ken WhiteIt's funny you mentioned that because I was reading some statistics about podcasting and that's the big growth is during the commute. People are listening to them in their cars more than ever before. And I don't think when podcasts started, that certainly wasn't even an option. Cody WatsonBut how much different is it than talk radio? This is just talk radio on demand, right? Ken WhiteYeah. Interesting. So a company creates a podcast, they put it the link on their company website. Is that enough, or do they need to do more? Cody WatsonI wish it was enough. Don't we all? You really do need to push the content out for folks to make sure that you're discoverable. You really want to take advantage of some of this of trends of download and try to make it up to the charts. I saw a stat that said if you have 30 downloads within the first week of your show coming out, that puts you in the top 50% of podcasts. Just 30 30 gets you in the top 50. Ken White30 listeners. Cody WatsonAnd so, play the trending game, right? Make sure you have rankings. People are giving you five stars. Make sure you have people leaving good reviews, make sure that word of mouth. But push out on social media and then use that content to fuel other content as well. Ken WhiteIf a listener thinks they can produce some terrific content, but they just don't know where to start, we want to go with this. It'll be good for our company. What are the first couple of steps they should take? Cody WatsonIdentify the audience. Make sure your content connects with the audience. Make sure someone else isn't already doing what you think you're going to do. And then start to map out how much content you have. If you've only got three or four shows worth of this idea, this might not be the platform for it. Or it might be a limited-run series, but you need to be honest with yourself as to how far your content can go and is it going to connect with your audience. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Cody Watson. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats: the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Cody Watson, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Brian Mann](images/brian-mann-205-thumb.jpg)
![The Business of College Football](images/brian-mann-205-thumb.jpg)
Brian Mann
Episode 205: August 21, 2023
The Business of College Football
Some of college football's biggest and most influential teams and universities have decided to leave their longtime athletic conferences. For example, UCLA and USC—members of the PAC-12 Conference for decades are now a part of the BIG 10 Conference. To the non-sports fan, that doesn't sound like much. However, the ripple effects of such moves are gigantic. While some universities have already joined new conferences, others continue to seek new affiliations. Why? Television and money. Brian Mann is the Director of Athletics at William & Mary; he previously served as Senior Associate Athletics Director at the University of California Berkeley, a university at the time we recorded the podcast in search of a new conference. He joins us to talk about the business of college athletics, conference realignment, and where it all may end up.
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TranscriptBrian MannWhat I worry about is there's going to be relegation. Some of these major conferences are going to look at those schools that they don't feel bring the same TV value same media value, and they're going to have some hard decisions to make. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, some of college football's biggest and most influential teams and universities have decided to leave their longtime athletic conferences. For example, UCLA and USC, members of the Pac Twelve Conference for decades, are now a part of the Big Ten Conference. To the nonsports fan, that doesn't sound like much. However, the ripple effects of such moves are gigantic. While some universities have already joined new conferences, others continue to seek new affiliations. Why? Television and money. Brian Mann is the Director of Athletics at William & Mary. He previously served as Senior Associate Athletics Director at the University of California, Berkeley, a university at the time we recorded the podcast in search of a new conference. He joins us to talk about the business of college athletics, conference realignment, and where it all may end up. Here's our conversation with Brian Mann. Ken WhiteWell, Brian, thanks very much. I know you're busy. In fact, you were just at practice. Tell us what you were doing. Brian MannYeah, it's been a fun day. Normally, as an AD, I don't get out to practice nearly as much as I would like. There's other things in the way, but we're just welcoming back all of our fall sports. And this morning, I had a chance to go out to our field hockey practice and talk to the team for two minutes and then spent about an hour out of football as well. So this is a fun time of year. There's a ton of energy. Everybody's undefeated. Ken WhiteYes. Brian MannSo there's all kinds of optimism, and it's a lot of fun for me to get out there and not only reconnect with the student-athletes that were away for the summer but also meet all the new ones joining our teams. Ken WhiteYeah, and all that's going on. And you've got major renovation going on at the same time. Brian MannYeah, there's an old sort of joke in college athletics if you don't have a crane on campus, you're not moving forward. And we've got that in spades right now. So we're renovating Kaplan Arena. We're expanding off the back to add the McAfee Sports Performance Center, which will be a practice court, another weight room sports medicine. We're really putting a significant effort into upgrading our facilities. And what I love about the way that we're doing it is all 500 of our student-athletes are going to feel this in a positive way. They're all going to have access to two renovated weight rooms instead of one. A brand new world-class sports medicine facility, a new academic lounge. All those things over the next year or so are going to come online as we move forward. And as an AD, that's really exciting. Ken WhiteYeah, very much. Well, you played college football not that long ago. Now you're an athletic director. And think of all the change, especially in major college football, that has happened in that relatively short period of time. But what's happening now is just amazing. Everywhere I go, people are talking about the Pac Ten is no more, and so forth. Did you ever think this was going to happen at this extent? Brian MannI don't. First, if you could tell our current student-athletes I played not that long ago, I would appreciate it. They think I play with a leather helmet? No. And I think, as I was considering this before coming in today, I think one of the major tipping points was COVID, and a couple of things happened. Now, we could talk about conference alignment, which predates that, of course, but during COVID, a couple of things happened that I think have led to some seismic shifts at a speed that college athletics is not used to. You had student-athletes with a whole lot more time than they normally have, and they were able to get organized. At the time, I was at Cal in the Pac Twelve, and the Pac Twelve football players, in particular, organized in a way they sort of put like a Bill of Rights together to come to the leadership of the schools and the conference. We all remember what happened with the Big Ten when they were trying to get organized and play football, and it showed them that, hey, our voices are stronger than maybe we've realized at this point, particularly when we speak as one. The second thing that happened was they opened up the transfer portal, and it went from having to sit a year out. They call it a year in residence before you're eligible to play. They started awarding waivers to people based on being close to their family if someone was ill. COVID really opened the floodgates on that, and once it happened, they were never going to put that back in. This is not long after the Alston case was decided where we can start paying student-athletes up to $5,980 a year for education-related benefits. That was before COVID, but you take that with the organization of student-athletes alongside the transfer portal and then the name, image, and likeness effort that really propelled this forward, which means that there's more money than ever available to people involved in college athletics. And the movement around how colleges and conferences are organized was an inevitable change that was going to come as a result. So I think that though it's inside and outside of the COVID period, COVID exacerbated it and moved it forward in a major way. Ken WhiteYeah. Interesting. Very interesting. So as an AD at the FBS level, what are they looking for in a new conference? When you're thinking about a move, what makes it attractive? Brian MannWell, I think there's a couple of things to consider, and it depends on what's happening in the environment. Meaning if you're in a stable conference and you've got multiple years in front of you of a media rights deal, even if you're thinking about a new conference, you can do so in a thoughtful, strategic way. I think what we've seen happen over the last couple of years is it's probably safe to assume Texas and Oklahoma took their time and were thoughtful and strategic. It's probably safe to assume that USC and UCLA did the same thing. But once that happened, everybody else started scrambling and looking for their seat at the right table. And it frankly comes down to resources. I mean, everyone wants to be associated with schools and groups that have similar missions or makeups. Are you a large public-state institution? Are you a small, rural, liberal arts, private? I mean, those are some of the extremes. There are some conferences that are built around that. It tends to be Division Two, Division Three more than anything else. But what happens is when the pace picks up, you start looking around, and you start seeing, okay, where can I get the resources I need to provide as much support as possible for our student-athletes? There's a lot that goes into how you use that support to make sure that it's actually going to benefit the right people, and it's going to move you forward competitively. But I think that's what we've seen, and frankly, I think since we started this podcast, there could be updates on what's going on right now. It's moving at light speed, lightning speed. And what I worry is that decisions are made without giving it the right thought and care, and we're going to see groupings that just don't make much sense. Ken WhiteAnd so we talk resources. It's mostly television. The money coming from television. Brian MannYeah, that's right. And we had all assumed over the last several years that streaming was going to become a much larger deal than it has been. If you look at what Amazon, Apple, others are doing, they're being much more strategic in how they're spending those dollars. Amazon's going after Thursday Night Football in the NFL. Apple and others are looking at they're not as tied to United States sports as we might like them to be. They're looking at professional soccer. They're looking at f one. They're looking at international audiences that are going to drive subscriptions, which is what their bottom line is based upon. Whereas if you get ESPN or Fox or others that have a much more larger focus on US sports, they're going to think about how do we get content for Saturday afternoons and evenings where people are watching college football? So this idea that there was going to be an influx of capital from the streaming services hasn't worked out. The dollars that people are trying to get there are more available, but they are concentrating them more than ever. And they're not concentrating them based on traditional conference affiliations, which are based on geography, based on political affiliations. Right. Governors of state saying our two major state institutions are always going to be together. That used to happen, and there used to be political movement to force conference affiliation. Those days are just gone. And these television partners have incredible power because they have the resources that, if used well, can transform the experience of a student-athlete. And that's ultimately, hopefully, what we're all trying to do here. So they're the ones that are driving it. It's based on eyeballs and TV markets and everything else. And if you were to draw that up sort of on paper, it makes sense to go after different markets in every corner of the country. But then you look at practically what that means for your golf team because golf tends to compete on Mondays and Tuesdays because golf courses aren't giving up Saturdays and Sundays. They're now traveling on Sundays, competing on Mondays and Tuesdays, and traveling on Wednesdays because they can't get back quickly. And, oh, by the way, you're supposed to be looking at your studies and going to class. I mean, it's a really hard thing to do. Ken WhiteYeah, there's so many interesting things you just said there that the geography is one of the things that jumps out to me, how somebody at golf or lacrosse or field hockey has to go, who could potentially have to travel three time zones to play a game. Turn around, don't miss class, hurry up and get back in there. That's a heck of a lot on the student-athlete. Brian MannAnd look, it's obvious to talk about the Power Five conferences, but that's affected us as well. We are no longer in a conference in all of our sports with Richmond, with BCU, with George Mason, right? Old Dominion, all James Madison, all these schools were geographically the rivalries. And luckily, we still play them in some sports, and there's still a lot of really cool things that happen, but it's affected us as well. And so we are now at a position where geographically, we're located sort of in the central side along the Atlantic coast, which is nice, but there's a lot of schools that aren't easy to get to. So we're still asking our student-athletes to travel long distances, whether it's on bus or plane, to be away from campus, away from school more than we would like. And that's not about television money. Right, we're not getting the Big Ten payouts. But other schools have made decisions about conference affiliation for some of those reasons, some competitive, some financial. And so it's not just those major conferences. We're all feeling it in some way. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Brian Mann in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year The Financial Times, Princeton Review, US News and World Report, and CEO magazine have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Brian Mann. Ken WhiteWhat's the student-athlete look for in terms of a conference in your experience? Brian MannI think there's a couple things. I mean, I think any student-athlete who's competitive at all is going to want to play sort of at the highest reasonable level, and then what we look for those student-athletes that want that division One world-class competitive experience, and they also care deeply about what happens in a classroom so they can take care of the rest of their lives. And that's what we're trying to find here. But I think they look for things like, do people care about their sport? Are they coming out and supporting it if they're going to go away from home? Is there a school closer to home that maybe will come play once or twice while I'm here so my family can be a part of it? Is it available on streaming? Can you get access to it? What have other people done who have gone to that school and played that sport before? Or what is that conference known for? The NCAA, for us, we're really lucky. It's really strong. It's far-reaching. We can go into New England or the coasts or down south to recruit student-athletes because we can say, you're going to play down at Charleston or Wilmington, or we're going to take you to Northeastern or Long Island once or twice while you're here, your family will be able to see you. So that's a lucky thing for us. But those are some of the things student-athletes work with. But the reality of it is and the challenges our coach faces, every single kid has a different set of priorities that they're trying to solve for. So it's partly why I'm not a coach. I don't know that I could do it as well. And it's partly why I'm so glad we have some of the coaches we do that have figured it out as well as they have. Ken WhiteAnd Mom and Dad could be involved too, which is another wow. Brian MannYeah. It sort of goes back. When I was in sales, I had a boss who told me the things you need to look for are pain, power, and purse. Right. So pain is, do you have what they want? The purse is obvious. Do you have the money for a scholarship, or can they afford it? But the power, like, who's really making the decision, is an ongoing thing that coaches have to figure out. Is it the student-athlete? Is it Mom? Is it Dad? Is it some combination of the two? Again, it's a never-ending thing that I'm glad we have the coaches we do because I sure would struggle. Ken WhiteYou mentioned the money, the revenue, especially from TV. At that level, it goes back to the student-athlete. For those who aren't terribly familiar with college athletics, what kinds of amenities, what kind of support does a big school like in a Pac Ten have to provide for a football athlete, for example? Brian MannThere's the things you have to provide, the things you want to provide, the things you aspire to provide. So some of the things that the NCAA requires are sports medicine, right? Athletic trainers, doctors, medical care. In that way, everyone's going to have strength and conditioning coaches. That's sort of moving into more of an athletic performance-based space. So it's not just lifting weights and running, but you're thinking about all kinds of ways to get your body prepared. More and more now, there's mental health. That's an incredibly important part, and that's a higher-ed topic of conversation in addition to athletics because we're also thinking not just about their mental health but their mental performance, which can really be a way to move the needle on the field or the track, the pool, whatever it may. There's nutrition, and some of the bigger schools have full cafeterias and full-time staff that are providing that to them. So one of the things you're hearing some of the schools in the West Coast talk about now is how do they enhance the nutrition that we're providing for our student-athletes. There's equipment. There's a lot of those things. For us, things like academic support matter a lot. And what that means to us is that we have a staff that's helping our student-athletes think about what is it you want to study. How do you get those classes scheduled at the right time? Because there are certain classes, you simply shouldn't take in season. It's a bad idea. Some of us learned that the hard way, which I did as an undergrad, and also help them think about their long-term plans of, hey, is graduate school right? Is the Mason School of Business going to be in your future? If so, here's how we got to make sure you're set up to get there as a junior or as a graduate student down the road. And all that, and I still haven't talked anything about a coach and X's and O's getting you ready for a field, what happens on the field. So it's a lot. It's growing. The NCAA is studying this, and they're looking at long-term care for injuries sustained as a student-athlete. They're looking at further mental health support, and they're going to start mandating greater support services and staff around our student-athletes, which is right. Ken WhiteAnd it all takes money. Brian MannAnd it all takes money. Ken WhiteYeah. You mentioned rivalries. Some of these have been around for decades and decades, and those games will quite possibly disappear. What does an athletic director and a university president what do they think about that as they're going through some of the negotiations and saying, maybe we're going to leave a conference, and no, we're not going to play Team XYZ anymore? Brian MannYeah, I hope that's a big part of it. I mean, that's part of what being at a particular institution is about, are the historic rivalries and the competitions that you have with places that people know, they're familiar with, they care about. I think about us and the University of Richmond, for example. We're only affiliated them directly with football. They're NCAA football, but we try to play them in anything that we can. We're in the middle of a four-year series in men's basketball. Women's basketball isn't playing this year, but we're going to try to get them back because that just means something to our fans and our alumni, and so they'll try to do that. The challenge when you get to the top levels are if you're not affiliated in the same conference, your out-of-conference schedule becomes an incredibly important piece of the puzzle. Either you're trying to play at a really high level to make sure that you're going to get the best postseason opportunities, the highest seed, whatever it may be, or you're about to go through a gauntlet in conference, and you want to make sure that what you're doing at a conference is maybe something where it's a more reasonable thing to think hey, I'm going to win this game. Right? And so if you look at some of those schools, I mean, the big ones right now are schools like Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State. And all those ADs have come out in some way or another and said, hey, we're going to try to keep this here. But the realities are going to start to set in at some point. It's going to be hard to do because you only have a couple of weeks of the year where your schedules overlap. Everything else is taken care of by the conference. So you have to prioritize that at a level where you're kind of rising above the traditional way you would look at a nonconference schedule, and that changes too because if you've got a brand new coach who's rebuilding, you're going to think about your nonconference one way, and if you've got aspirations of a national championship, you're going to think about it a different way. And good luck with football, because we schedule so far in advance, it's really hard to do that. But for basketball and other sports, it's much more of an annual reevaluation of those schedules. So even if you can keep it in football, it becomes harder and harder in some of those other sports. Ken WhiteSo, pulling out your crystal ball, where do you see major college football in terms of conferences going? Brian MannBesides William & Mary and the Big Ten? Is that what? Ken WhiteLet's do it. Let's do it. It's a lot of travel, though. Brian MannYeah. I don't know, and I don't think that anybody does. I could tell you without any hesitation that it's not done. And I mean both in the immediate future where's the four schools in the Pac Twelve trying to figure out what's going to happen with them, but these television contracts, a lot of people now, a lot of conferences are signing shorter-term deals, right? I think the Big Ten signed a seven-year deal. I think the SEC did something similar. The ACC has a much longer deal that goes through 2036. And that's partly why you're hearing some of these difficult conversations with schools that feel as though they're going to start to fall behind in a way that can never a gap that can never be closed. What I worry about happening is after this next round, continuing to expand is almost not possible because everybody's going to be affiliated with a major conference, and that will continue to happen. But what I worry about is there's going to be relegation. Some of these major conferences are going to look at those schools that they don't feel bring the same TV value, same media value, and they're going to have some hard decisions to make because you're spreading that pot equally in almost every instance, not every. And they're talking about doing it differently. But I worry that, at some point, the only way these conferences are going to continue to grow is something like that. And that's disheartening. What I could also see happening is FBS football, particularly as the top level of it, breaking away and forming their own affiliation in some way, the top 30 to 60 in some way, shape, or form. A lot of people are talking about the independent model, right? Notre Dame has it all. Their sports are affiliated with the ACC. They play their own football schedule. Cal and Stanford, I think, are kicking that around. I don't have any insider information. It's what I read. And that could be a path. But it has to be a path where there's a large enough number of schools doing it right. Because if you're an independent by yourself, ask BYU. UMass, I mean, it's a really hard road, and you end up traveling all over the country to the schools that will pay you the most money because you got to make your budget, and Notre Dame obviously has a different setup than that, but I could see that being a path that comes down the road as well. Ken WhiteEither way, some interesting times ahead. Brian MannYeah. Hold on, right? And for those of us that are in the business, you know, I'm not even sure what to compare it to, but the minute we take our eye off it, we're behind. And look, all of this is coupled with NIL and the transfer portal, which continue to change college athletics, most of it for the better. I know that we need to have some more uniform approaches and insights into what's happening. I mean, we're participating in NIL in every way that we can. There's going to be more opportunities as collectives and other things continue to grow, particularly in our world. So get ready to take a deep breath when conference affiliation settles down, but then gear right back up for what's next, which is NIL and the transfer portal and collective bargaining and student-athlete rights and employee status. I mean, it's all right behind it, and it's not going to wait very long. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Brian Mann, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Brian Mann, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Erin Berube](images/erin-berube-204-thumb.jpg)
![Your Leadership Style](images/erin-berube-204-thumb.jpg)
Erin Berube
Episode 204: August 5, 2023
Your Leadership Style
You have control regarding the way you show up. And as a leader—or aspiring leader—you also have control over the way others perceive you, so developing your leadership style is important. It can work for you or against you. Erin Berube is a Managing Director and Executive Coach at Admired Leadership, a development program focused on the leadership behaviors that create loyal followership and exceptional results. She says the right leadership style will help you inspire others. She joins us today to discuss leadership style and some of its elements, including presence, influence, and advocacy.
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TranscriptErin BerubeWe like to say belief follows behavior. You know, maybe you've got some influence, and you believe that you're a little influential. You might not believe that you've got advocacy yet, but you start showing up more confidently, more powerfully. You start actually practicing advocacy as a behavior, and then the belief follows. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. You have control regarding the way you show up. And as a leader or aspiring leader, you also have control over the way others perceive you. So developing your leadership style is important. It can work for you or against you. Erin Berube is a Managing Director and Executive Coach at Admired Leadership, a development program focused on the leadership behaviors that create loyal followership and exceptional results. She says the right leadership style will help you inspire others. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss leadership style and some of its elements, including presence, influence, and advocacy. Here's our conversation with Erin Berube of Admired Leadership. Ken WhiteWell, Erin, it's great to see you. Thanks for taking your time and sharing your expertise on the podcast again. So nice to see you. Erin BerubeYou as well, Ken. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here. Ken WhiteWell, you are doing some real interesting work in coaching, coaching leaders, aspiring leaders. And one of the things you talk about is presence and sort of developing your presence and your leadership style. When you do that, who are you working with? Who are your clients? Erin BerubeIt's a good question because most of them are senior leaders. So these are your C suites, your VP level, and above. And it's an interesting question because they seem to need it more than younger leaders, people who are new and rising and upcoming. Not that it's not applicable to those folks, but when you become more senior in an organization, your competence is assumed. It comes with your title. People just believe that you know what you're doing in your role because you have a C-suite title or you have a Vice President title. The issue that we have with those leaders is that they haven't learned how to create followership, and leadership style and presence is a huge component to that, to creating inspiration and motivation in your team, so that it's not just about your competence, but it's also about your character that lends to your overall credibility as a leader. Ken WhiteSo how do you encourage leaders and explain that to them? Listen, some of this is because of your title. You need to work on these other areas. Erin BerubeYeah. So it's funny because leaders will come to me and say well, I received some feedback that I just don't have presence, and I don't know what that means. So that's a very common question that we get is what do I do with this feedback? I don't know what to do with it. And I started off by explaining I look at it as three rungs on a ladder of leadership style. The very first lowest rung would be leadership presence. And that's often described as this intangible quality that makes others perceive someone to be a leader. So it involves the ability to assert yourself, inspire, make a strong impression that encourages others to follow you. Leadership presence is largely about communication, both verbal nonverbal, and it's often associated with traits like charisma, confidence, emotional intelligence, and the ability to remain composed under pressure. So that's leadership presence. When we think of leaders, and we say, ooh, that person, they have presence to them, that's really what it breaks down to. It's their communication style. When we move up the rung from there, what we want to do is make leaders move from having just presence to giving them influence. And influence, as the next level, refers to their ability to affect the behaviors and the decisions or the actions of others. So you're moving from just having this presence, this feeling of credibility, to actually being able to evoke change in people, and it doesn't necessarily involve any formal authority whatsoever. Influence is often achieved through persuasion, inspiration, and building relationships. So leaders with strong influence, they are able to align their team towards a common goal and then guide their actions effectively. They usually inspire trust, respect, loyalty, which in turn empowers others to take action. So you've got presence as that first rung of the ladder you move up to influence where you're starting to create change in the behaviors of the people around you. The furthest level up the next one is advocacy. So that's your third rung, the highest rung of this ladder. And advocacy and leadership is about standing up for your team, your ideas, a cause, anything that you believe in. A leader who advocates effectively is able to represent and promote their team's interests and often in the face of challenges or opposition. So that could involve navigating organizational politics, negotiating resources, driving change. Leaders who are good advocates are seen as supportive and protective of their teams, and that, in turn, boosts morale, boosts engagement. These advocates are the ones that you would follow to the parking lot if they left. They would have a whole string of people just following them out the door. So you've got those three levels of presence and then influence after and advocacy as that top level. And in order to achieve advocacy, you have to get really good at influence and then understand where you stand on the spectrum of presence. Ken WhiteOh, how interesting. As you're talking about advocacy, I'm picturing people at C suite meetings and at board meetings, the great advocates and then the others who have the ability, they have the knowledge, they have the information, but they just can't get to that level. Is there one level that's more difficult to get to? Is it, for example, moving from presence to influence or influence to advocacy? Is there one step that's harder, or is it sort of just come along? Erin BerubeYeah, it comes along. They build on each other. So I think once you achieve influence, you start to look around and find out that you have advocacy without knowing that you even have it. So we like to say belief follows behavior. So maybe you've got some influence, and you believe that you're a little influential. You might not believe that you've got advocacy yet, but you start showing up more confidently, more powerfully. You start actually practicing advocacy as a behavior, and then the belief follows. You see what that impact has on people around you and your ability to promote interests and represent your team in a way that advocates for what they need. In the face of challenge, you start to believe, oh, I have advocacy now. So it's not really as important how you feel about how confident you are, how influential you are. I'm more concerned about how confident and influentially you're behaving in each moment. Ken WhiteLet's talk a little bit back down to presence. I've talked to people who say. I just don't have it. There's nothing I can do. They sort of give up. What are some of the things that people can do to establish presence? Erin BerubeYeah, I think the first thing to do is to recognize that it is not about your personality. It's about your behavior. So in a lot of leadership literature, there's typically a bias towards psychology. And while that's good context, we find it to be an excuse for bad behavior. So I'm an introvert. You can't expect me to be influential. You can't expect me to have presence, or I'm a blue or a red, so bear with me as I fly off the handle. These are all things that I hear as a coach very often. So we want to focus on the behavioral view of leadership, where I coach out of at Admire Leadership. That's the bread and butter of what we do. Leadership is comprised of our cumulative behavior. So while our psychology might color how we behave as a default, we get to consciously choose how we behave in each situation. So we're very specific and deliberate in our behaviors to drive outcomes. So that's the first thing that I would tell somebody who says I'm just not influential. I just can't do it. My question is, is it that you can't do it, or are you just choosing not to do it? We often mistake our personality with just strong habits. That we've practiced over time and have not been corrected for decades at a time. And so we think that that's personality or psychology when it's not. It's really just the behavioral choices. And then the question that I would have is, well, where do we need to move this leader? Are they too powerful? Do they need to become a little bit more blended in their leadership? Or are they too approachable attractive? On the other side of the spectrum, are they showing up as intimidated, as meek? And there are specific behavioral cues that are verbal, nonverbal, and status markers that we can teach leaders to help them achieve that sweet spot of being powerful enough to be heard and attractive enough to be followed. Ken WhiteThat's an interesting term. Status marker. Give us an example of what one might be. Erin BerubeSure. So let's say you walk into a meeting, and you're always sitting at the back of the room or far away from the power center because you're afraid of being called on. You're afraid to speak up. So you're just going to sit as far away from whoever is facilitating the meeting as possible. A status marker to be more powerful would be simply just to move closer to the power, move closer to the authority, and practice speaking up on one thing that's outside of the realm of your institutional knowledge that you have. Show that you have thought leadership around something that's different than what people expect from you. Those are very easy ways to show a little bit more status in that setting. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Erin Berube in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year the Financial Times, Princeton Review, US News and World Report, and CEO Magazine have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA program. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with executive coach Erin Berube. Ken WhiteWhether it's presence, influence, or advocacy, this is a lot of perhaps getting out of the comfort zone, correct? Erin BerubeIt is. It is. And it's like any muscle. The more you lift it, the more you practice it, the better you get at it. Ken WhiteWhat kind of feedback are you getting from your clients in terms of that comfort zone piece? I hear you, Erin, I get. Hmm, it's really tough for me to do X, Y, or Z. Is there some commonalities that you see? Erin BerubeYeah, you know, I think the leaders that I work with, I'm blessed to have a suite of clients that are just so committed to getting better. So it's not very often that I have a client telling me, I don't know if I'm going to do this. I don't think that I can because the folks that I work with really, they want to make their people and their situations better every day. So they are constantly having that growth mindset of sure, I'll try this, and sure, I'll practice that. And the behavioral skills that we teach are so easy. They're so bite-sized, and they come across as just obvious when you hear them that you think, wow, okay, yeah, that makes total sense, I can do it. And it's not a major shift. Authenticity is really about consistency of your leadership. Are you showing up the same way to everyone regardless of the triggers, regardless of what's happening around you? So we don't want you to sway too far from your range of where you are. We want you to just make subtle tweaks to the things that you say, the way that you say them, and then some behavioral status markers that you do to show up a little bit more powerfully if that's where you want to go on the spectrum. Ken WhiteYou're working, as you mentioned, more senior leaders. What kind of advice do you have for younger, newer professionals as they're just trying to make their way through and maybe build a personal brand? Erin BerubeYeah, advocacy is huge for those folks because I think there's a tendency to wait around for something to happen or to just wait for a promotion to be handed or to sit around and say, well, I'm doing a good job, and I believe that they are going to see it. And they forget how to have advocacy for themselves and what they want. So learning how to promote yourself in a way that doesn't feel icky, that actually feels very powerful but supportive and creates followership, that's a skill set that I love working with younger leaders on because it's something that's not often practiced with them. And it's incredibly important, especially when you think of women when you think of diverse talent and minorities. Advocacy plays a huge role in continuing to propel them inside their organizations. Ken WhiteYeah. And it feels funny, right? It doesn't feel natural. You're just trying to do your job and do good work, and it doesn't feel right saying, telling the boss, look at the great work I've done. But it's necessary, isn't it? Erin BerubeIt is. It's necessary. And again, it doesn't have to be done in a way that makes you feel like a used car salesman. There are ways to influence without authority, like you mentioned before, in very natural, authentic, generous ways that add value to everyone around you while also adding value to yourself. Ken WhiteBut that's a key point, though, not just yourself, but those around you, because leaders will recognize that, won't they? Erin BerubeYes, absolutely. Ken WhiteYou mentioned a couple of times belief follows behavior. Can you talk a little bit more about that? That sounds cool, and it makes sense, but can you give us a little more on that? Erin BerubeYeah, you know, one of my favorite quotes is from Senator John McCain, and when he was a Vietnam prisoner of war, he said that sometimes he had to act brave to be brave. And I might be misquoting him in that, but the message is that we don't always feel it on the inside. We don't always feel confident. And that's okay. You don't need to. All you need to do is act confidently, behave in a way that you want to show up, that creates that presence that you want to have, garners the influence, and then leads to the advocacy that you need to move things forward. Ken WhiteThere's a little impostor syndrome in all of us. Is that a correct statement? Erin BerubeOh, absolutely. I mean, when you study the literature around the psychology of imposter syndrome, it's typically formed in our formative years. So, for example, let's say I'm in the fifth grade, and I stand up to speak in class, and somebody makes fun of me, or my voice cracks or something happens. The imposter inside of me is going to say, oh, you can't speak up anymore. And that's going to stick with me for decades into my corporate career. Oh, I can't speak up because people might make fun of me. And it's designed as a way for your brain to protect you, to protect you from the onslaught of just ridicule, really. And the question that I always ask leaders who are still grappling with that today when they're far along in their careers is that protection mechanism was put in place at a time in your life when you needed it, but do you still need that protection today? You are an adult human being who is incredibly competent with a long list of accolades. Do you still need to be listening to that protection? Is that something that you really need to do? And if the answer is no, okay, so how do we behave differently? How do we show up and practice it? Ken WhiteOf all the people I've met through the podcast, through our alumni, through corporate connections, so many leaders and CEOs who are just doing incredible work will say, I can't even believe I have this job. It impresses them, and they're like, and they're going to find out about me sooner or later, and it's all over. So it seems like it's fairly human to feel that way. Erin BerubeIt really is. Especially when you're looking around, and you don't see anyone like you at the table. You can start to wonder, how did I get here? Did I luck into this? Or what exactly did I do? And what I found working with clients is that the more awareness you create with them around the intentionality of their behaviors, just making them aware of how they deliver their feedback, how they make decisions, what exactly it is that they are doing when they're communicating. Verbally nonverbally, making them aware of their intentionality, they start to attribute their success to what they are doing. And it doesn't feel like you're lucking into it anymore because you're starting to be more intentional and aware of your specific behaviors in these different categories. Ken WhiteHow do you coach leaders to get into their mindset that their leadership style not only affects them but affects the entire organization? Erin BerubeI love that question, Ken, because I always tell leaders they'll come to me. The ones who have this particular situation will tell me that they have a team problem. And I'll say, well, that's unfortunate because I don't help leaders with team problems. I help teams with leader problems. And it usually starts off the conversation immediately, like, whoa, okay, let's turn the mirror and let's look at ourselves and see what are we doing to create, promote, and allow the situation around you. Ken WhiteSo what advice do you have for leaders now who might be struggling a little bit with their leadership style, or they may not be able to even pinpoint who they are and how they lead? What would you tell them? Erin BerubeYeah, I would tell them to have a little bit more mindfulness around what exactly it is that they are doing. Sort of the cause-and-effect feedback loop where when I do this, this is the result that happens, and start to become more aware of that. A lot of people don't even think about that piece of it. They go, and they perform, and they speak in a meeting, or they might ask some questions of people, but they're not really thinking deeply about what the reaction is from others. That reaction will tell you everything. And then you could also ask for feedback. It's so important to have mentors above and below you in an organization because you want to be learning holistically from all of the different personalities mindsets of an organization and asking those questions. So, Ken, I would ask you what could I do differently next time we're on a podcast together. Just create more awareness around your personal growth and development and take ownership of it because it's ultimately your responsibility. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Erin Berube, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Erin Berube, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Mike Seiler](images/mike-seiler-203-thumb.jpg)
![Empty Offices](images/mike-seiler-203-thumb.jpg)
Mike Seiler
Episode 203: July 21, 2023
Empty Offices
Remember when working meant going to the office every day? Now, countless offices all over the US and the world are empty or partially empty, thanks to remote work. It's been over three years since the start of the pandemic, and there's no doubt its lasting impact on commercial real estate has been significant. And no one's quite certain what the future holds for the office market. Mike Seiler is a professor at William & Mary's School of Business. In addition to teaching, he's one of the country's leading real estate researchers. He joins us today to talk about the future of commercial real estate, as well as other real estate markets, and what we might expect to see moving forward.
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TranscriptMike SeilerPeople don't need to come in. And if you don't need to come into work every day, why do you need to live that close every day? And so now we're talking about a spillover effect onto the transportation system. If people are going to work from home now, you're talking about redesigning residential space. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Remember when working meant going to the office every day? Well, now countless offices all over the US and the world are empty or partially empty, thanks to remote work. It's been over three years since the start of the pandemic, and there's no doubt its lasting impact on commercial real estate has been significant, and no one's quite certain what the future holds for the office market. Mike Seiler is a professor at William & Mary's School of Business. In addition to teaching, he's one of the country's leading real estate researchers. He joins us on the podcast today to talk about the future of commercial real estate, as well as other real estate markets and what we might expect to see moving forward. Here's our conversation with Professor Mike Seiler of William & Mary's School of Business. Ken WhiteWell, Mike, thanks for joining us. It's great to see you. I hope you're having a good summer so far. Mike SeilerYeah, things have been going great. Anytime I have a chance to meet with you is always a good day. Ken WhiteI appreciate that. Yeah, thanks. And it's nice to have you back on the podcast. So many people seem to be talking about what's happening with office space, commercial space. We're going to offices and seeing a lot of empty spaces. Not many people. Just how empty are offices across the country today? Mike SeilerWell, of course, that's going to vary city by city, but if you walk into New York City, for example, people are talking about a day of reckoning that's coming very quickly. So if you're wondering, you know how many people are coming into work, I mean, for some folks, it's once or twice a week, and the companies are trying to adjust as best they can. They're trying to do things like hot desking or what they call hoteling, where you don't put your personal effects on your desk anymore. You come in, and you know that you're going to be there on a Monday and Wednesday, and then I'm going to be there on a Tuesday, Thursday. And if we're going to need a conference room, maybe we keep that big space. But yeah, the individual personalized offices are going by the wayside because there's just not an expectation that people are going to come in five days a week anymore. Ken WhiteYeah. Boy, psychologically, people like their own office space. Mike SeilerIt varies by person. So I think if you talk to older people, they absolutely want to come in five days a week. They want a picture of their wife and kids and their dog, and that's just how it's always been, and that's what they're used to. That's what they want. But if you talk to young people who graduated in the last couple of years, certainly during the COVID pandemic era, they just view things very differently. They're happy to never come into the office. The unemployment rate is super low right now. It's around 3.6%. And they just believe that they can do their job at a distance, and there's really no reason to come into work. Ken WhiteEver. Mike SeilerFrankly, some of them. Ken WhiteRight. Which leads to so many other questions about culture and learning and so forth, and finding mentors and so forth. But on the real estate front, what effects of hybrid and virtual work had on the commercial space? Mike SeilerWell, I think, first of all, people have been leaning towards this, right? I mean, there are folks who, with exception before the pandemic, they would say, well, we really wanted to keep this person for family reasons. They needed to move to, let's say, Pittsburgh. So we set up a unique remote working opportunity for them. That was a truly rare situation before, but nowadays, that's expected. And so, if you think about companies, there were whisper mandates. So when the pandemic shut down, everyone had to leave. There was no discussion. You just got out of the office, and then the employers wanted you to come back. The employees didn't, mostly, but the employers wanted you to come back, and they were publicly saying you don't have to. It's voluntary. We kind of want you to experience our corporate culture by coming in. But a lot of people just didn't want to do that. But they didn't want to say they didn't want to do it, and companies didn't want to say, well, you have to come in. So there were what we refer to as whisper mandates, where they're saying, hey, look, we don't want to publicly come out and say you have to come in, but we'd really love it if you did come in. And so it was a little of a subtle back and forth, ongoing, and right now we're seeing that really hit because the pandemic has been declared as being over, and what are you going to do about it? Where are we going to settle? The pendulum has swung too far to the right, too far to the left. Where is it going to settle? Exactly? That is the big question. Ken WhiteSo if you and I own a massive company, we have all of these empty spaces and empty offices. What are some companies thinking about doing? Mike SeilerWell, what they would love to do is they would love to reduce that space. So there are a couple of things you can do. Whenever you don't have as many employees that are coming in, you can try to fit them in a smaller area. So let's say if I have one employee per 250 sqft. That's what you would typically do if you are fixed into a lease. So remember, an office lease might be seven to ten years. You can't just expand and contract that with the ongoings of your business or with the contraction or expansion of the economy. You have to make do with the space you have. So if I'm a firm and I'm looking to renew my office lease, so I'm about to expire, I'm looking to renew that. In most cases, I want to downsize. But let's say I just signed a lease, and I've got seven years left. I'm kind of stuck. And so that's where we're talking about being creative with your space. That's where we're thinking, well, can we possibly go to our landlord and say, hey, what if we occupied a smaller space? What if we had maybe employees on different floors of a building? Because when you expand, that's what happens. There's not always contiguous space that you can put people in. So maybe I want to take two floors of people and put them on one floor. Maybe I want to rotate. As we talked about earlier, folks come in into certain days. But if you have too much office space, which is the case for a lot of companies right now, you're kind of stuck. The difference is I guess a lot of these landlords are struggling. So in terms of who has the negotiation power, who has the upper hand, you can test that by having a conversation with your landlords. But that's always a great first step. Lay the cards on the table, tell folks what you want. And you never know what a solution could be. And if both parties have an interest in finding a solution, which I would certainly think that they would, who knows what can happen. But I definitely would have that conversation. Ken WhiteYeah. So it's not just the company signing the lease. It's the owner of the property. And boy, not a great position to be in these days. Mike SeilerYeah, it's a terrible place. Great financial crisis. 2008, people saw office just get wrecked. Obviously, residential got wrecked even worse. But I have talked to many industry professionals, and a lot of experts say that office is headed for a massive just. I don't want to be too cataclysmic about it, but it's just not great, and there's really not a wonderful solution about it. There are a couple of things that folks are trying to do, but even those solutions are not great. Ken WhiteYeah. So many office buildings that are empty. What does that mean to cities? Mike SeilerWell, we've already seen that during the pandemic, people are moving to the suburbs. And if you are now talking about living in an urban dense area, people may be in a New York City or San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, one of these more highly dense areas. It's definitely going to hurt the cities because people don't need to come in. And if you don't need to come into work every day, why do you need to live that close every day? And so now we're talking about a spillover effect onto the transportation system if people are going to work from home. Now you're talking about redesigning residential space. At my house, do I have a dedicated office? I mean, I have a space that I use, but now it feels like I need a dedicated office. And if you're a new home builder, you need to factor that into your designs when you're building homes for the future. And if you're selling existing real estate, you're thinking, wow, can I reimagine the space? Is there anything I can do to seal off this room? Because having the kids in the background, having a dog run by or bark or whatever, that was fine during the pandemic, but now we're kind of reaching that long-term solution and that's not as acceptable these days. Ken WhiteYeah, what does that now that you brought up the residential market? What's happening there? Mike SeilerWell, just a real quick combining of the two markets. So normally, we say in commercial real estate, obviously, location is unique, so no two cities are the same. We also say that returns and risk vary by property type. But there's been an idea now of blending residential and commercial. So you have all this extra office space, and they're trying to do residential conversions. Historically speaking, if you have a hotel, it's pretty easy to convert that to a residence. And so you'll see that happen quite often over time. People are trying to do that right now with office space. But if you imagine the floor plates of this so, imagine that you're in one of these major cities. The floor plate of an office property does not look like the floor plate of a high-rise apartment. They're just very different. For one thing, you don't have the same bathrooms. You don't have kitchens on every level. Right. And so to redo that, to regut a building, is a lot more work than people think. Laypeople just think on the surface, oh, well, it's a shell. Just redo what's on the inside of the shell. It's just not at all that easy. So while that's an idea on the table, that is not a great idea, but of the ideas that are available, it's higher up on the list than you would normally think. In a regular situation, you would discount that offhand and say, that's just a dumb idea. Why would you even suggest that? Well, because we're kind of out of great ideas. Ken WhiteYeah. Is it possible that we will have cities that just have a number of vacant buildings or vacant floors? Mike SeilerWell, in the short run, unfortunately, yes. In the long run. See, that's the problem with anything that disrupts our structure. If there is a short-term change, it's very, very hard to deal with. We love stability. I mean, if you think about all of our governmental policies, they're all based on stability. We can deal with gradual change. What's really tough is when you have what's called a structural break that just throws everyone for a loop. It hurts returns. It increases volatility. It's really not good for anybody. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Mike Seiler in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year the Financial Times, Princeton Review, US News & World Report, and CEO Magazine have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA program. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Professor Mike Seiler. Ken WhiteHow about the retail market? What are some of the changes that you're noticing in terms of retail space? Mike SeilerWell, in terms of retail, we had already pre-pandemic seen a move towards online, right? I mean, people are shopping online and so forth. The pandemic accelerated what was already trending that way. And the question now becomes, how will people shop in the future? And one of the disturbing trends that we see just from an overall economic well-being and also from an environmental carbon footprint of leaving topic. A lot of people, now that they're used to buying online, they're going to buy, let's say, four different colors of the same shirt or maybe two or three different sizes of it because people complain these pants are not quite fitting the way they normally do. Or this shirt, this company calls it a large. To me, I felt like a medium. And so they understand this frustration. So a lot of people are just ordering too many items of, of the same, and then they're going to try it on at home, and they're going to ship those things back. And that is terrible for the environment, as you might guess, right? Between the boxing and the shipping and the gas and all the people who have to do that, it's just an incredibly inefficient system, and it's not really receiving that much discussion right now. But there's going to come a time when people recognize that and are going to be fed up with it and put a stop to it. Ken WhiteNow is that the industrial market? I've heard you use that term. What is the industrial market? Mike SeilerIndustrial real estate is the delivery of products from one place to another. And that can be very inclusive. Let's say that a container ship is filled in China, and that's going to come here to Los Angeles. And you might have remembered that during the crisis, a lot of these ships would back up into the port. I mean, they would just be literally anchored out in the port for a month waiting because we didn't have truck drivers. Remember, there was a labor shortage going on. And so, one single disruptor tends to spill over into many other areas. More recently, instead of these ships trying to get into the West Coast ports, they're coming all the way through and docking on the East Coast, that's caused an increase in demand there, and we don't have the supply to meet it. So there's now discussion of what about inland ports. So maybe we're going to build this industrial space where you want a port that's by a railroad or major interstate or some type of transportation. But the modality is going to change. Also, you can't just build a port inland and think, oh, let's just build it 50 miles inland. We'll railroad these 20-foot containers a little bit further inland, and then we'll be good. Okay, well, do you have a labor force that's going to be able to deal with it once you get there? Do you have the truck drivers in order to take that across the country? Do you have interstates that intersect? Because not everything goes to one place. It goes in all different directions. These are things that the industry is now trying to work on that we just didn't have to think about in the short run. Yeah, let's consider the long term of all these, but we just did not have to deal with that in a short period of time. So it's really causing everyone to put on their thinking caps and be creative. Ken WhiteAnd there's no quick solution either. Mike SeilerThere's no quick solution. And one of the other problems is they say, well, you have a need for cold storage or what we call last mile delivery. That means that I want things really close to where the population is. Because when people order something on, let's say, Amazon, they don't want it in a week. They want it tomorrow. And at some point, they're going to say, why can't I have it right now? And there's even a comedian who jokes about Amazon precog. We want you to send me stuff before I even order it because I don't know I want it yet. But you should know because you guys have all these algorithms, and you're so smart. But let's say that this last mile storage, we want it delivered in a very short period of time. But it's not like there's a warehouse in your urban center. So right now, the industrial space is trying to find either vacant land or property that can be converted into industrial warehouse so that these items can be shipped to you, and then when you order them, they're at your door the next day, or possibly even the same day. Of course, there's also the drone delivery, which is problematic for apartment buildings. It's great if I have a yard. You can fly something and drop it on my front porch. But what if I live in an apartment on the twelfth floor? How are you going to get that to me? And there are a lot of concerns about flying objects and what happens when they crash, or they have malfunctions. Of course, this is what happens to vehicles in real life. But these are all questions that are being answered now as quickly as humanly possible. Ken WhiteWhen you look at real estate, commercial and residential, where do you see things? What are the major changes we'll see in, say, two, three, four, or five years from now? Mike SeilerWell, on the commercial side, it's really all the property types that we've talked about, right? I mean, industrial has been red hot for quite some time. Office, we know there's going to be a contraction. What type of net absorption are we going to have? I mean, they're already slowing down the delivery of this. But if you think about delivering major commercial properties, you don't just decide you're going to build them, and then they're ready tomorrow. These things need permitting, zoning, the requirement of a lot of people getting together to work together. And so these wheels are put in motion many years in advance and then just the mere construction of it alone. We have constraints on our labor markets and on materials that go into these things. And so there's natural delays. It takes quite a long time to build things. If one ever questions that, then I would encourage you to drive with me over the HRVT as I come in this morning, and you see a bridge that's been being built for many, many years and will continue to go on for years. So these are things that we know we are in a post-pandemic era. However, this is not the only outbreak that we've had over the years. This is maybe the worst one. This is one that affected everyone on a global basis, whereas the others in previous years had threatened to do that. But we would be foolish to believe that this is the end of it and we'll never have another one. I think this was our shot across the bow. Maybe a little bit of a direct hit, you might argue. But there's no reason to believe this won't continue to happen again as we continue to cut into our rainforest and force animals that we did not interact with in the past. Now we have human interaction with them, and so forth. So I view that whatever we're looking at right now as something that we really need to wrap our arms around, not because it is a need today, but because it's absolutely going to be a need in the future. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mike Seiler. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Professor Mike Seiler, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![J. Singh](images/j-singh-202-thumb.jpg)
![Agility & Digital Transformation](images/j-singh-202-thumb.jpg)
J. Singh
Episode 202: July 5, 2023
Agility & Digital Transformation
When companies and organizations discuss digital transformation, they often focus on effective ways to drive technology adoption and transformation. Our guest today says there's much more to consider. After earning his MBA at William & Mary, J. Singh has spent 20 years working at some of the world's most recognizable companies, including Target, McDonald's, and now Sport Clips Haircuts, where he's the Chief Digital Officer. His experience is in analytics, merchandizing, digital innovation, and digital transformation. He says there are a number of elements to consider in terms of digital transformation, such as agility and speed, the competition, the customer, the employee, and more. He joins us today to talk about digital transformation and how companies and leaders should think about people, process, and tools as they move forward.
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TranscriptJ. SinghWhile you're doing the things you're doing today and you will continue to deliver value for your organization, the external pressures may change very rapidly on you. And if you don't have as an organization agility to respond to those pressures quickly, you may go out of business. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. When companies and organizations discuss digital transformation, they often focus on effective ways to drive technology adoption and transformation. Our guest today says there's much more to consider. After earning his MBA at William & Mary, J. Singh has spent 20 years working at some of the world's most recognizable companies, including Target, McDonald's, and now Sport Clips Haircuts, where he's the Chief Digital Officer. His experience is in analytics, merchandising, digital innovation, and digital transformation. He says there are a number of elements to consider in terms of digital transformation, such as agility and speed, the competition, the customer, the employee, and more. He joins us today to talk about digital transformation and how companies and leaders should think about people, process, and tools as they move forward. Here's our conversation with the Chief Digital Officer at Sport Clips Haircuts, J. Singh. Ken WhiteWell, J, thanks very much for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you here this weekend. J. SinghThank you for having me here. Ken WhiteSpecial weekend. You were just a part of a panel that you and I sat on about principled achievement and leading a life of principled achievement with alumni in the room. What'd you think? What are your reactions to that? J. SinghI think this is very good conversation to have. I think where we are all in our careers right now. It's important to think about not only what you're achieving but how you're achieving it. And I think, in my personal opinion, the leaders that I like to follow are the ones where there's achievement and also some principles and values behind it. And I think this is a very relevant conversation for folks our age in general and for leaders everywhere. Ken WhiteSo when you left William & Mary with your MBA, did Chief Digital Officer, was that on your radar? J. SinghAbsolutely not. And I don't even know if Chief Digital Officer was even a title back then. I think they were just CMOs, CTOs or CIO, or even COO and CFOs, and so on and on. And I think the Chief Digital Officer certainly is a newer title, so much so that sometimes I get approached by recruiters for a Chief Digital Officer role, and their definition of a chief digital officer is very different than what I do. And I think I'm seeing sort of two flavors of it. One is really more driven by technology, and the other is more around the marketing element of it is the digital marketing. So it is a newer title. I don't think I would ever be driving or leading a digital team. So it's been an interesting series of events which brings me here. Ken WhiteYou didn't necessarily see yourself as a quote, tech guy, quote unquote earlier, right? J. SinghYes. No, I do have an engineering undergraduate, but when we think about engineers or tech in our industry, we are thinking about folks who can write code. And I really never wrote a code, never an HTML page, not a Java page or any of that. The only code I ever wrote was VBA in Excel. And that's thanks to sort of my early days as an analyst at Cap One, where you had to get really good at Excel. But I never thought my career would be focused on how technology is either transforming or evolving organizations. And it's just a number of interesting opportunities I got in my career, which now put me in a place where I'm driving technology adoption and transformation for organizations. Ken WhiteYeah. Can you get a little more detail? What does that necessarily mean? J. SinghIn terms of what is a transformation using technology? Yeah, absolutely. So at the very basic level, I think the way I think about technology is it's more a response to our macro environment that we all work in as business. Right. So I'll take a bit of a theoretical approach to it, and then I'll explain sort of how digital transformation works there. So what we learned in our business strategy classes back in the day is for each organization to provide value, it has to have a unique capability. And the unique capability is a function of your people, processes, and tools. And technology is a part of that people, process, and tools. And whether you're a Target or a McDonald's or an energy company or a sport clips haircut where I work right now, your combination of people, process, and tools is a unique combination. And that's why you can deliver unique value and capture unique value. That's what makes one business different from the other. The thing about value, though, is it's not static. It evolves over time. It evolves because you're trying to save costs, and your CFO puts operational efficiency on the table, or your competition is doing something different, so you have to do something different, or your customers' demands changes, and you have to meet customers' demands and so on and on. Or something like COVID shows up, and you suddenly have to change the way you use your combination of people, process, and tools to deliver value and capture value. So the value is not static. It just keeps evolving. If you think about historically, think about Nokia. For example, as a company, they had more than 100-year history of providing value over time and delivering telephones. What ended up happening in the last decade or two their speed with which value evolved increased very rapidly. And as a result, if you could not match up the speed of how the competition is moving, or the customer demands are moving, or how the macroeconomic is moving, if you could not match that speed, if you didn't have that agility, you died. And that's a digital disruption. And so where digital transformation really works, and where technology really works, is at the end of the day, my job is to provide is to enable an organization with higher agility. And the idea is while you're doing the things you're doing today, and you will continue to deliver value for your organization, the external pressures may change very rapidly on you. And if you don't have as an organization agility to respond to those pressures quickly, you may go out of business. And the way you deliver that through digital transformation, it's really not just about technology. Technology is an element, right? Having access to your data rapidly real time helps you make fast decision that gives you agility, but it's also how you make decisions as an organization. Do you have an annual budget cycle? And so once you've allocated a budget to a project, and that's where you're going to spend your money, even if COVID happens. I think just giving agility on governance giving agility on budget decision-making is part of the digital transformation. And that's where you hear about sort of this idea of working on two-week sprints. You decide what you're going to do in two weeks, and that will tell you what you need to do in the future two weeks. So the planning cycle has shrunk a lot, and that gives you agility. And the third element of it is we always keep a close eye on competition, right? What's happening with competition? What's happening with macroeconomics? We all listen to CNN and all the NPR, and we know what's happening economically. We've all been waiting for a recession for twelve months now. Ken WhiteSure. J. SinghBut the most important stakeholder is really customer or the client. And one of the very important facets of digital transformation is becoming more customer-centric, which means every two weeks, you're making sure what you're doing your customers really care about it. So it's really, if you think about the customer centricity, the data, the speed of decision making, that's what combination gives you agility. That's what digital transformation is really all about, in my opinion. Digital transformation does not necessarily tell you the next big product to make. It tells you how quickly to evolve based on what your customer wants, what your data is showing you, what the competition is doing, what's happening macroeconomically. And if you don't have the agility, you always have the risk of dying with the next big change. Ken WhiteThat's excellent. That's great. Thank you. In terms of audience, you mentioned customer. Is that primarily who you're focused on versus maybe, say, employees, prospective employees, partners, vendors, and so forth? J. SinghYeah, it's a very good question. So I think a lot of the organizations start with the idea of customers. Who are my customers? How do I make sure they have a greatest experience? What most of the organizations which have gone down this journey has quickly realized is your customer experience will never exceed your employee experience. So your employee experience is a barrier to how good of a customer experience you can ever deliver. So to deliver a great customer experience, you have to deliver a great employee experience. Great employee experiences, for example. Think about Chick fil a, one of my favorite organizations, right? Because they treat their employee in a specific way, the clients or the customers get great experience. And there are other organizations where the employees do not necessarily feel that great. Even though they have great technology, the customers don't have greatest experience. So I think the focus on customers make obvious business sense. However, the path to achieving that is by starting with your employees, and that gets you to the outcome that you're looking for. And when we think about employees, and especially in the digital transformation space, your employees aren't traditional FTEs that you used to have, right? These are my people I've hired. They get wages from me every two weeks, and I do annual reviews. It's also the contractors that you cannot afford to hire full-time anyway. So your contractors are as much a workforce as your employees, but beyond that, your vendors as well. Because in the digital transformation, if I'm using, let's say, a combination of technology stack to deliver a CRM capability, I will written that code, and I will not know what's behind that code. But I need those vendor partners to deliver value for me, and I want them to evolve their product for my needs. And if I treat them as not my employees, a contract relationship, I'm going to kind of nickel and dime them, and they're going to nickel and dime me. That's going to become a barrier to a great customer experience. So you almost have to start thinking about your employees more holistically, everyone who is sort of working on your side of the fence to deliver a great experience for your customer. Whether it's your full-time employees, contractors, or vendor partners, they all are all on your team. And the better you treat them, the better you got the customer experience. Ken WhiteYeah, and we've talked about customer experience on the podcast. Yeah, it's so interesting. We all know everyone listening knows the companies that get it, and we all have examples of the companies that don't. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with J. Singh in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year the Financial Times, Princeton Review, US News and World Report, and CEO Magazine have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected the William & Mary MBA program. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with J. Singh. Ken WhiteIt sounds like you're also in the innovation world. J. SinghYeah. Ken WhiteYeah. What role does innovation play in what you do? J. SinghYeah, I think the topic of innovation, to be honest, is I would say this is a complex thought. And the reason I say that is a lot of the times, innovation is seen as just doing something different. And I think if we as leaders don't define innovation for ourselves really well, I think we land in trouble. Right. So what I mean by that, for example, I just love this two by two metric where you think about you have assets that you use today, and you have this operating model that you use today, and if your assets that you're using don't change, but you're just changing the way you use those assets, it's sort of what I'd call sustaining innovation. You're kind of just evolving a little bit, making a few changes. Maybe you're entering a new market where the financials are different, but you're not necessarily changing your assets. But if you don't change your operating model and just change your assets, maybe you're just upgrading. You used to do things with manual paper, now you're using Excel, now using SaaS, and so you've changed your assets, but you haven't really changed the value that you deliver. My favorite example is cloud. People think about cloud, and a lot of the time, you think about cloud as an innovation. It really is innovation for the companies that deliver value through cloud, as in the Google's, the Amazon's, of course, and then the Microsofts of the world. They have walked away from servers to cloud. But I, as a consumer of cloud, I as someone who actually gets cloud implemented in my business, there's no innovation there. I'm doing the same exact thing. I've just upgraded my asset. I don't have the in-house servers anymore. I'm just doing everything on the cloud. I've just upgraded my technology. But I'm doing exactly the same thing that I used to do before the technology change. So if you think about that two by two, real innovation happens when you not only change your assets but also change your operating model. Great examples. Airbnb, they use people's home as assets, and they change the way you pay for those, and they change the entire operating model for that. That's innovation. That's Uber, right? So when you think about innovation, you have to kind of really, in my opinion, as a leader, define what you think innovation is. So going back to your question more directly then, how does digital impact innovation? I think in a big way, but I think if you stay true to the idea that I'm driving innovation by not only changing my assets but also my operating model, then you have to give that team a different set of rules to play with. Right. If, for example, and one of the things that I have seen not work really well, at least in the organizations I've been in, where we try to kind of tell everyone, hey, innovation is everyone's job. You guys know the business. Go figure out what the next big thing is. You do get some operational benefits, you get some adoption of new technology, but you really cannot get to this kind of the idea of innovation. So, in my opinion, the way I've seen innovation work best is you have a select group of people where you kind of have almost this idea of bets, and you may have grand challenges, and you ask them to look internally and externally and find ways to get to those outcomes. And it doesn't matter whether our existing operating model works or not. It can be a new operating model. It doesn't matter whether the assets we have today work or not. It's a new set of assets. And then I think if you have a group like that, that's where digital, the idea of customer centricity, the idea of sprints, the idea of data can really help you be innovative. But you almost have to separate them from sort of what I call the exploit, which is the rest of my business. And this is my explore, and I have to get my explore folks a different set of rules to play with because if they're playing in the same rules as exploit, then they're not going to give me any innovation. They're going to give me a slight improvement in whatever I'm doing. Ken WhiteYeah, interesting. This is obviously in your wheelhouse, and everybody's talking about it. I have to ask you about LLMs Chat GPT. Where's it going? What do you think? J. SinghYeah, I think this is a space I'm watching very carefully and very closely. I do think it is a very, very interesting technology. And I'm looking for use cases, at least within my organization, to figure out where does it work really, really well and where we can apply it for real value. I think there is this initial tendency, I think, of figuring out, hey, is it a huge deflationary technology? And a classic example is, let's say you have this huge call center, and you have a lot of people taking calls and answering questions. Could a generative AI solution do that for you at scale much more effectively? And I think there is probably some application there, but I do believe that the folks on the call center who do problem-solving for our customers or clients. They have to use their brains a little bit more than just knowing what we've done in the past and what generative AI does. It knows what we've done in the past. So it's almost like maybe a combination of your actual call center individuals and a combination of generative AI that can help you get there. So I think there is this idea that it can save a lot of cost, and I'm waiting to see the real applications of those that are really impactful. I think it is also, at least initially, being explored as a way to have a companion who can crunch data for you, look for ideas for you, don't miss the obvious sort of an assistant for you. Whether it's in the legal space or medical space, or even as a writer, you can get inspiration. So I think there are some of those use cases where individuals and specific professions may find some unique value as a coder. What's wrong with my code? You can always use them as an assistant to what you're doing. I think there are probably some use cases there that can generate value. I'm going to wait and watch approach right now. Ken WhiteWhich area of an organization of the company should have its eyes on this? Is this the technology space? Is this marketing? Who should be looking? J. SinghI think it's a combination. I always feel where we get the most benefit from emerging technology is if business comes to the table with something they want to solve. If the business has a problem statement, I want to do this in a better way. Like my CMOs tend to be great partners in pushing the envelope on. I want to be able to reach a customer and do XYZ with them. Can you help me do it? And that's where someone from technology team can come to the table with a set of technologies which can allow you to do that. COOs are also a very good partner where they look at their entire organization and operating model, and they have some challenges and struggles. They come to the table and propose. I'm having this particular challenge with this particular group where I cannot get this thing to be done without errors. Do you have technology solutions? Right. So I think that's where it becomes really helpful. It always is a partnership. Whenever technology team tends to take a lead on this, then it becomes a solution looking for a problem. And while that can sometimes lead to great value, it's a lot of throwing it on the wall and see what sticks. And sometimes, that can get exhausting for those individuals internally who are trying to champion that technology. And I've seen that happen in multiple organizations that I've brought on, where the champion of the technology just gives up because nobody in the business is listening. And I think it's that initial partnership with the business to kind of explore areas where the business needs help and then bringing the right technology to the table, I think, is probably could be a slower process, maybe not that innovative, but it leads to better outcomes. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with J. Singh, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, J. Singh, Chief Digital Officer at Sport Clips Haircuts. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Rajiv Kohli](images/rajiv-kohli-201-thumb.jpg)
![A Breakthrough Technology](images/rajiv-kohli-201-thumb.jpg)
Rajiv Kohli
Episode 201: June 21, 2023
A Breakthrough Technology
Since we first heard about it back in December, the buzz has continued to grow surrounding ChatGPT and other LLMs, or Large Language Models. Companies and organizations are working to determine what role these LLMs will play. Our guest today calls ChatGPT "fast-moving" and "fast-growing." And more importantly, he says LLMs are a breakthrough technology with great potential—much like the internet when it was first introduced. Rajiv Kohli is a professor at the William & Mary School of Business. He's among the top 20 Management Information Systems researchers in the world and an expert in digital transformation. He joins us today to talk about LLMs, what they are, and where they might take us in the future.
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TranscriptRajiv KohliIt is an extremely smart machine that can process many lifetimes worth of experiences in a second and give you an answer. Female VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, since we first heard about it back in December, the buzz has continued to grow surrounding ChatGPT and other LLMs or large language models. Companies and organizations are working to determine what role these LLMs will play. Our guest today calls ChatGPT fast-moving and fast-growing. And more importantly, he says LLMs are a breakthrough technology with great potential, much like the Internet when it was first introduced. Rajiv Kohli is a professor at the William & Mary School of Business. He's among the top 20 management information systems researchers in the world and an expert in digital transformation. He joins us today to talk about LLMs, what they are, and where they might take us in the future. Here's our conversation with Professor Rajiv Kohli. Ken WhiteRajiv, thanks for being here. Great to see you and great to be with you. Rajiv KohliThank you, Ken. Pleasure to be here. Ken WhiteYou've been busy doing some global travel with students. What's that been like? Rajiv KohliOh, that's been wonderful. Particularly this last trip that we had to Israel. That was just an amazing trip, both from the academic perspective and then visiting Jerusalem was one of my dreams to be there, and it did not disappoint. Ken WhiteYeah, the students are still talking about it. Yeah, they said it was transformational. You can't beat that. Rajiv KohliI've heard words similar to that where it was moving, touching, transformational. Ken WhiteWow. Fantastic. So we ask you today to join us to talk about ChatGPT. It seems like everybody's talking about this, and no one seems to know really what's going on. What's your reaction? What are your thoughts in general about ChatGPT? Rajiv KohliIt's a breakthrough technology. It's one that I think brings in a lot of excitement, opportunity, and with that comes fear. But I'm very excited about ChatGPT and systems like those, which are called large language models at LLMs. ChatGPT is a brand name, and there are many others like that. But this is not a surprise, Ken. A lot of the building blocks of what's ChatGPT have been around for a very long time. We've been putting them together, and finally, they've all come together to create something that seems very amazing. And it has a lot of opportunity. It has a lot of promise. Ken WhiteSo when you say breakthrough technology, what's another one in the past that we saw that you would consider a breakthrough technology? Rajiv KohliYeah, there were several. So Internet, it was a breakthrough technology that connected the world. Then there have been others, like Nanotechnology. We've seen things that have kind of broken the mold and changed the way we do things. We live our lives. Ken WhiteWow. Rajiv KohliSo the Internet and Internet-based models, business models. Amazon changed the way we shop. Airlines, the way we book our tickets. When was the last time we went to a travel agent? Ken WhiteRight, so breakthrough. This is big. Rajiv KohliThis is big, and it has a huge potential that is not yet recognized. Those models will emerge much like when the Internet was first or worldwide web was first developed. We couldn't have imagined Amazon. We couldn't have imagined eBay. We couldn't have imagined Google search engine. These are all things that were built on top of that. Ken WhiteYeah. Wow. Have you used ChatGPT? Rajiv KohliYes, I have. I have played with it. I have used it for work. And it's exciting. Ken WhiteHow did you try it? How did you use it? Because that's what a lot of questions people will ask me, or rather, that is the question I'm asked. How do I start? Rajiv KohliYeah. So I used it in a slightly different way than most people use it. I've used it for asking questions or trying to find some underlying causes of things of what the research says about a certain topic. But the way I used it, and I found it very interesting, was I had written this paper, which is like 20-page long paper, and I had to then write an abstract, which is the hardest part, to condense 20 pages of ideas into a paragraph that's less than 200 words. So I asked ChatGPT, I put all this, everything that I had in the paper in ChatGPT, and I said, summarize this in 200 words or less. And it did a great job. Ken WhiteReally? You were pleased with it? Rajiv KohliI was quite pleased with it. It was something that a professional writer would write. Ken WhiteYeah. So how do you see that? Speaking of a professional writer, people in marketing, and other people who might use this, to what extent can they rely on it? Rajiv KohliThey can rely on it for general, basic kind of tasks. Once you bring in creativity, that's where it fails. It's not magic. It appears to be magic. What it is is really a system that has a very fast capability to absorb millions of pieces of documents it has seen. It's not much different than how we have learned to do things. When was the last time we remembered who taught us not to cross the road without looking on both sides? I don't remember that. But somehow, through stories people have told us, through parents telling us when we were kids, and the examples we've seen, somebody getting almost hit, we learned that. That's what ChatGPT is. It has seen a million examples of the question you are asking, and it is now extracting from that this knowledge that it's sharing with you. So that's really what the essence of it is. It is an extremely smart machine that can process many lifetimes worth of experiences in a second and give you an answer. Ken WhiteYeah. Wow. Now, you mentioned before we were starting to recording that you maybe found a mistake or a little error. Rajiv KohliYes. So I wanted to ask it what was the foundation of artificial intelligence or how did this term come about? I kind of knew the answer, but I wanted ChatGPT to explain the background and all of that. And that's what it does really well. It summarizes, gives you five facts, and then summary at the end. Oh, I know why I asked it because I knew that there was this conference at Dartmouth in the 50s, but I didn't remember what year it was. So I asked when was the AI as a term come about. And it says the Dartmouth Conference. I didn't mention three or four big names, Claude Shannon being one of them, person who's known for information theory. And I got the date. It was 1956. And then I said, did Herbert Simon have a role in artificial intelligence? Because this is a Nobel laureate who was at Carnegie Mellon. I had the good fortune of meeting him when I was a PhD student, and it came back and said, oh, that's right, sorry for the confusion. Herbert Simon was one of the key figures who was at the conference. He and Alan Newell, his student, wrote these papers. There were seminal papers, and thank you for correcting us. Ken WhiteWow. Yeah. So let's not rely on this. We have to do some fact-checking. Rajiv KohliThat's right. Ken WhiteYeah. Rajiv KohliFor general things, general concepts. It is good enough to get you started on. Ken WhiteHow do you see businesses using it? Rajiv KohliRight now, the low-hanging fruit for business is to be able to compose summaries of documents. There is a ChatGPT-like or similar technology-based tool that you can download for free on Apple Store, and it's called BlueMail. BlueMail will write an email for you in a very nice way. All you have to say is sorry, I missed the deadline. And it'll compose a very nice email. So that's the low-hanging fruit. You can start to compose emails. Salesforce is using it to replace cold calling on behalf of their salespeople. So it'll compose a nice email to introduce whoever is reaching out. So those are some of the easier things that you can use ChatGPT. The other things, as I described earlier, you can use to summarize a large piece of document, let's say, minutes of the meeting or board's discussion. And then, if you want to pass on that summary to everybody to press, you can say very quickly that this is what the summary of the meeting was. There are other good examples of ChatGPT being used by business. The concern, and we'll talk about concerns in a minute, is how much can we rely on factual information. So, for example, when I asked ChatGPT, who is Rajiv Kohli? It said Rajiv Kohli is at George Mason University is an associate professor of marketing. Everything was wrong about that. Even when I said, here is Rajiv Kohli's web page, it still didn't recognize me. So these simple things that you would think that it would be able to recognize. So my point is that ChatGPT is good to do things that require automation summarization. It will get better. It is getting better as we speak, and it will be able to do more higher-level tasks. Ken WhiteYeah. Imagine where it'll be 5-10 years from now, right? Rajiv KohliOh, imagine where it'll be in six months. Ken WhiteWow, it's moving that quickly. Rajiv KohliYeah. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Rajiv Kohli in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year the Financial Times, Princeton Review, US News and World Report, and CEO Magazine have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA program. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Rajiv Kohli. Ken WhiteYou and I talk to businesses all the time and executives, and I recently talked to a number who said, I think it's time that businesses start thinking about having a chief AI officer. We had a discussion on that. What do you think about that? Rajiv KohliYeah, so that's a novel idea of having a person appointed for that. I'm not quite sure we are at the point where we need a chief officer. But I think what businesses are thinking about dedicating resources for ChatGPT and ChatGPT-like tools is a great idea. Some of those functions already exist. So, for example, the chief data officer is responsible for data and data use and data summarization and how people can implement the use of data assets that they have. Others may be in the marketing department, for example, people who do statistical analysis on customer behavior, consumer preferences, and so on. So I like the idea that we have somebody who's dedicated to looking into that technology and exploiting some of the opportunities the business has. I think we're a little bit of ways away from having a chief ChatGPT officer. Ken WhiteYeah. I think, at least in the discussions I had, it was more of we're not sure where this is going or what to do. Let's put somebody in charge is sort of where it went. Rajiv KohliThat's for sure. A lot of people who are more closely involved with ChatGPT and similar technologies are not quite sure where they're going to go. It's not that they're not sure. It's that they can't imagine the possibilities. Ken WhiteWow. Rajiv KohliThe possibilities are tremendous, immense, and huge that we cannot imagine where this will go and how it will build upon itself. So the keyword in ChatGPT, G, is for generative, and that's what's distinct about it. It can create more knowledge based on itself. And that's where the excitement is. That's where the opportunity is. Ken WhiteAnytime a new technology comes along, people worry about jobs. And will it take jobs? What do you think? Rajiv KohliYes. So the way I like to think about it, Ken, is that it won't replace jobs. Any technology does not really replace jobs. What it replaces tasks. So unless a person who's in that job is so tied, so married to those tasks that they cannot do any other task, yes, it'll eliminate those jobs. But the way I like to think about it, it's pushing us as individuals, as human beings, to move up the value chain and do things that are more sophisticated and do things that really leverage our intelligence and then seed or give the tasks that can be done by a machine. And this has happened over every technology that has automated things, that we've given the monotonous things, the easier things to technology, and we've then reskilled ourselves to move up the value chain and do more higher level intelligence work. Ken WhiteYou are known to be an expert in digital transformation. I think that's how a lot of people think of you when they hear your name. Where does this fit in? Rajiv KohliYeah. So it's very exciting from a transformation perspective because transformation means, at the very basic level, to take or squeeze the inefficiencies out of a process. And so any place where it's taking me longer, or I'm investing more effort, or I have to deploy more people to do that, I can then replace with a piece of technology. It's transformed that process, and it ties with your earlier question about people losing jobs. As I said before, I don't think that they will lose that job, they will lose the task to ChatGPT, but then it frees them to do more sophisticated stuff. So I think that's where we will see some disruption. From a transformation perspective, it's a wonderful piece of technology that can be inserted into different points in any transaction. And transaction doesn't always mean business transaction. It could be a conversation that you and I are having. It's a piece of information that you want to exchange with me. That's a transaction. If I can make it efficient and quick and low-cost, that's where digital transformation is affected by this. Ken WhiteInteresting. It's like using a bot, right? Rajiv KohliThat's right. Yeah. Ken WhiteIt takes care of tasks that other people can then move on to things that where they really need to be. Rajiv KohliAnd bot was one of the technologies that has created what we know as ChatGPT. So there was bots, there were these Grammarly had this technology. Grammarly is sort of like that because it can process language and put it in. So when all of these and the neural networks and so on, they all kind of came together to create where we are today as large language models. Ken WhiteI probably should have asked this right off the bat. We hear the term artificial intelligence. We hear the term ChatGPT. What do they mean? What do they have to do with one another? Rajiv KohliYeah. So artificial intelligence is an umbrella term which, as I was saying earlier, was 1956 when Dartmouth conference came up with that. Before that, they used to call it simulated human thinking. So it was a term that was created to encompass many different technologies as we know them today. And the key ingredient that makes technology artificial intelligence is that it should behave human-like and it should have the ability to learn from itself, which is also a very human quality. So under artificial intelligence umbrella, you have expert systems. You have computer vision. You have a neural network. You have natural language processing and many other things like that. So ChatGPT is a brand name that is a large language model. So it comes under the umbrella of artificial intelligence, as are many other technologies. Ken WhiteAnd as you said, it's one LLM. It's just one. It's the one that seems to be getting all the press and all of the notice. Rajiv KohliThere are many, many others like that that are more, sometimes more focused on certain areas, some that are subscription based, as ChatGPT is also now. Ken WhiteYeah. Where do you think a professional or a business should start in terms of learning about ChatGPT and kind of getting comfortable with it? Rajiv KohliI think it'd be good for businesses to not be afraid of it, first of all. Second, start experimenting with it before putting it in production. Use it for simple things, as I mentioned earlier, summarizing things, writing an email, just double-checking the facts. If you are unsure about something as to what the basis of that was, let ChatGPT summarize that for you. But then again, take it with a grain of salt because it is known to make errors, and sometimes very basic information, it can go wrong on those. So if businesses have an opportunity to start playing with it, but very soon, I think the fun and games part will stop. And in some cases, like universities, it has already stopped because we are now beginning to see students taking advantage of ChatGPT and doing their assignments. And now it's getting serious to the point where we have to say, all right, we need to put some guardrails around it. And that's what I would advise businesses to experiment with it, see where it works well for them, see where it does not work well for them, and then start to think about how they can bring in their own data, information, history to customize ChatGPT for their uses. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Rajiv Kohli, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Professor Rajiv Kohli, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![AnnaMaria DeSalva](images/annamaria-desalva-200-thumb.jpg)
![Principled Achievement](images/annamaria-desalva-200-thumb.jpg)
AnnaMaria DeSalva
Episode 200: June 5, 2023
Principled Achievement
Succeeding and doing so in the right manner. That's leading a life of principled achievement. The William & Mary School of Business defines the principled achievement leader as one who values people, diversity of thought, empathy, humility, and success. This leader listens and inspires. To recognize this type of outstanding leader, the Business School created the Principled Achievement Award. It's based on four pillars: Serving as a role model for principled leadership, promoting diversity of thought, demonstrating ethical, compassionate behavior, and embracing the tenets of the William & Mary honor code. Last month, the 2023 Principled Achievement Award was presented to AnnaMaria DeSalva, chair and CEO of Hill+Knowlton Strategies, one of the world's leading global communications companies. Before the award ceremony in Washington, D.C., DeSalva sat down with us to discuss her thoughts on leading a life of principled achievement.
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TranscriptAnnaMaria DeSalvaIf you want to go fast and you want to have a big impact, and you want to do well, and you want to have alignment and support, it's so much easier if your currency is trust and if that's supported by ethical behavior and a standard for ethics. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Succeeding and doing so in the right manner. That's leading a life of principled achievement. The William & Mary School of Business defines the Principled Achievement leader as one who values people, diversity of thought, empathy, humility, and success. This leader listens and inspires. To recognize this type of outstanding leader, the business school created the Principled Achievement Award. It's based on four pillars. Serving as a role model for principled leadership, promoting diversity of thought, demonstrating ethical, compassionate behavior, and embracing the tenets of the William & Mary Honor Code. Last month, the 2023 Principled Achievement Award was presented to AnnaMaria DeSalva, chair and CEO of Hill+Knowlton Strategies, one of the world's leading global communication companies. Before the award ceremony in Washington, DC, DeSalva sat down with us to discuss her thoughts on leading a life of principled achievement. Here's our conversation with AnnaMaria DeSalva. Ken WhiteAnna Maria, it is so nice to see you. Thanks for sharing your time and being on the podcast. AnnaMaria DeSalvaIt's my pleasure, Ken. Thank you for inviting me. Ken WhiteWe have a big night coming up as we record. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But yeah, so very excited to see you. And, of course, with my background, I just love what you do. I'm so interested in your field. How did you get into strategic communication, public relations? AnnaMaria DeSalvaThank you. At William & Mary, I was really compelled by two fields. One was English and English Literature, and the other was business. And it was my special riddle as a college student how I was going to reconcile those interests. And I managed to do that. I had a lot of confidence and faith that I could do that. And, of course, William & Mary is a great environment for combining disciplines and taking an interdisciplinary approach to the world. But really, it was my mother who was a little bit ahead of her time. She had had an interesting international career before she married and had children. And she put it in my head, she said, you know, AnnaMaria, I think you would be good at public relations. And I was like, what's public relations? Because at the time, this was quite some time ago, obviously, it wasn't much of an academic field of study. So she tried to explain it to me, and I guess she explained it well enough that it made me curious. And I got myself an internship between my junior and senior years at Ogilvy, the extraordinary legacy company that it is, and still a creative force and company I know very well now as a client and as a colleague. But they hired me as an intern. I was 20 years old, and they gave me the most extraordinary experience, and they sponsored me. They saw what I could do, and they gave me lots and lots of opportunities as an intern. And then they hired me right out of school, and I got the bug, and I thought maybe I would go to graduate school. But actually, I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I just wanted to keep going. So I was, you know, to answer your question, I was blending my interests at William & Mary. I had a little help from my mother, and then I happened to find myself just the right internship, and then I was off and running. Ken WhiteYeah, moms play an important role. AnnaMaria DeSalvaYeah, absolutely. Ken WhiteSo how did you make the shift from public relations professional to a leader? AnnaMaria DeSalvaGreat question. You're a communicator and a management professor, so you will really understand and appreciate this. In my career, one of the things that was so compelling and so exciting was understanding the role of communication in business transformation. And because I spent actually decades in healthcare, in healthcare, there's a lot of stakeholder pain, and those companies have came to understand early how important communication was. And so communication had the proverbial seat at the table decades ago. Communication was well-funded decades ago, and smart, accomplished, driven people would go into communications in healthcare because they could have a big impact and they could learn a lot about science and medicine and business and finance and communication. And so I really think that as I began to do really difficult work in healthcare around transformation, I was at Pfizer when we acquired Wyeth, and that was the biggest still, I think, the biggest biopharmaceutical merger in history. And we were having to reinvent the innovation model at Pfizer. And it was like the communications Olympics. I was full on all the time for years at a time. And I was involved in every aspect of integrating the companies, planning the innovation model, making the hard decisions, communicating to stakeholders, making sure employees were informed and, engaged and confident. And then, it started to get interesting because we started to move into adjacent disciplines like public affairs or government relations and public policy. And we started to think about new ways to partner with the public sector to bring drugs to market. So it was very rich. And someone at Pfizer at that time, I remember, said to me, you know, you're like a business person with a communications competency. And that was true, I think, of many of us in the field. But it was an interesting inflection point for that person because they started to see a communicator as not someone who was performing a function but someone who was solving business problems. And so that made it really interesting to me to start to move into bigger roles. Ken WhiteWas there anyone you tried to emulate? Anyone, you kept your eyes on in terms of leaders? AnnaMaria DeSalvaWell, when I left Pfizer, and I crossed over into industrials, and I went to DuPont, I ended up working. I didn't know this would happen, but I ended up working for a CEO who came off of our board to run the company as CEO. And that's Ed Breen. And Ed is well known for being a transformational CEO and a serial value creator and someone who saved Tyco from the depths of despair and bankruptcy, or near bankruptcy, I should say, the risk of that, and transformed Tyco over the course of a decade and then really has played an outsized role at DuPont over the last seven or eight years. And so, really understanding what it means to think about sustainable value creation and all the choices and the types of decisions that go into thinking about long-term value creation was just a tremendous opportunity for me to kind of ride shotgun with him. As his chief communicator, also going through the biggest industrial merger in history, the merger of DuPont and Dow, the combination of those portfolios, and the subsequent breakup into three new publicly traded companies, once again, I was, like, in the crosshairs of a fairly extraordinary experience. I really learned a lot working with Ed, and I think he gave me the awareness and the confidence that there was more I could do in terms of leading businesses. And then shortly thereafter, I got the call from WPP to see if I wanted to be the next CEO of Hill+Knowlton. Ken WhiteThat had to be a pretty big call. AnnaMaria DeSalvaYeah, right. It was a big call. Yeah, it was amazing. Ken WhiteAnd before that, how would people have labeled you as a communicator? Some people have an area of expertise. Some are generalists. What was your bread and butter, so to speak? AnnaMaria DeSalvaI think I was a strategist. I think I was someone who could really look at the context and really understand what outcomes we were driving towards and what problems we had to solve for and was very kind of open-minded and agnostic about ways to get there and would take a lot of inputs from people inside and outside the company and synthesize approaches and test approaches that had a high probability of being successful. So I think that's probably how I was seen. Ken WhiteGrowing up. Would your friends and family be surprised? What could they have predicted? What you do now, and where you ended up? AnnaMaria DeSalvaWhat a great question. Probably most of them no. And maybe a couple of them, yes. And in fact, I was just corresponding today with a friend of mine from middle school or high school who's here in D.C., and she's had a big career in government, and she now leads the McCain Institute for Character Driven Leadership. And she was a big Department of Defense official on the Obama administration. She had a huge career in diplomacy and international relations. And when we were kids, we used to talk about what we wanted to be when we grew up. And she said that she was going to be a career diplomat, and I said I was either going to be an advertising or a chief marketing officer. And every once in a while, I think about that and how close to the mark we both came. So maybe she would. I don't know about everybody else. Ken WhiteAmazing when you make that choice so young. That's what you're looking at from that age. So it kind of comes naturally. Yeah, right? AnnaMaria DeSalvaTotally. Ken WhiteWell, we're meeting today, we're in Northern Virginia for the Principled Achievement Award ceremony, and you are our recipient. We're so very excited about that. When you hear principled achievement, just those two words, what comes to mind for you? AnnaMaria DeSalvaWhat comes to mind for me is sustainable leadership and sustainable outcomes, and sustainable value creation. Because to me, the combination of principles and the type of behavior that creates trust and supports trust and that lifts that elevates and lifts others and elevates talent and converts risk to opportunity, that type of leadership and that type of achievement is what makes real progress possible, durable, meaningful, important progress in the world. So to me, it coheres when you think about people who have outsized impact, impact, many of them, hopefully, most of them, are principled leaders, and they've delivered that impact through, whether by design or not, but through principled achievement. So I think it's an extraordinary strategic platform for the business school at William & Mary. I think it aligns directly with the character of the university and the purpose and the heritage of the university. And I am humbled and honored and have a bit of disbelief that you chose me this year, and I'm very grateful. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with AnnaMaria DeSalva in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year, the Financial Times, Princeton Review, U.S. News and World Report, and CEO magazine have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the U.S. and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you the full-time, the part-time, the online, or the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with AnnaMaria DeSalva. Ken WhiteYou know, the principal achievement award is built on four specific pillars. One is embracing the tenets of the William & Mary honor code. What does that mean to you as a graduate? AnnaMaria DeSalvaWell, when you really look at the honor code, what it tells you is that there is an expectation of behavior that does instill trust and that it's sort of a high-trust environment that the founders wanted to create and that we uphold at William & Mary now, high trust environment. And what are the benefits of a high-trust environment? High trust environment? Trust is kind of a currency. It allows you to innovate. It allows you to take risk. It allows you not to get bogged down in bureaucracy. It allows you not to get bogged down in regulation. A high-trust environment unlocks a lot of possibility and opportunity. And so if we teach our students to adhere to a code or to a set of principles that helps them trust each other and helps them learn and understand what it means to be trustworthy, then they are. And that becomes really fundamental to who they are as people and as leaders in the wider world. That has a multiplier effect, and I think that's one of the reasons why we're able to have such an impact. Ken WhiteSecond pillar is serving as a role model for principled achievement. Is that something you think about? AnnaMaria DeSalvaI'll be honest with you. I don't think that actively about being a role model. I try to live up to my own personal code and to the values that I have about what I'm doing with my life and how I'm doing it. And if that means that I become a role model, then great. But I think, like most of us, I'm always focused on what I can improve. When I do that examination of self, I always see a lot of room for improvement. Right. So I'm not thinking too much about being a role model. I'm thinking about how I can be a better human being and a more effective leader. And I always see a distance to travel still. Ken WhiteThat's great. AnnaMaria DeSalva100% true. Ken WhiteI think most people we would consider successful think that way. Right. That's what drives people. Promoting diversity of thought. How important is that in your role? AnnaMaria DeSalvaExtremely important. And as you know, as CEO of Hill+Knowlton. Hill+Knowlton is an almost 100-year-old strategic communications consultancy. It was one of the originators of the category. So the whole exercise of helping companies or other types of organizations connect to their stakeholders effectively, by definition, that entire endeavor has to reflect a diversity of perspectives. Like, if we don't have a diversity of perspectives, we can't produce the product, and we can't succeed. And especially in today's world, it's so multistakeholder. There's such a richness and layers and layers of stakeholder needs and expectations. And so we have to have a very diverse workforce at Hill+Knowlton. And we as leaders have to set a tone that we want lots of diversity, cognitive diversity, diversity of thought, diversity of action, diversity of background, diversity of beliefs. And by the way, I mean, we it's urgent for our business, and we still don't always hit the mark. You know, we have to work as hard as everybody else to ensure that we are as diverse as we need to be. Ken WhiteFinal pillar is demonstrating ethical, compassionate behavior. Tough to do when there's a lot going on and goals to be met. Do you think much about that? AnnaMaria DeSalvaYeah, here's the thing about ethics. It does go back to trust. It does go back to the point I made earlier, that if you want to go fast and you want to have a big impact, and you want to do well, and you want to have alignment and support, it's so much easier if your currency is trust and if that's supported by ethical behavior and a standard for ethics. And with respect to compassion, to me, that links very much to talent. And I'm in a talent business, and talent is people are our product in my business. And so you're always scouting talent, sourcing talent, mining the talent, elevating the talent. And there's a commercial reason to do that, but it's an incredibly human endeavor. And really what you're doing is you're putting your arms around people, and you're putting your arms around their abilities and their limitations and their blind spots and their towering strengths, and you're saying, you know what? I love all of it, and I'm going to help all of it, and together we're going to be bigger and better than we could be individually. So I think I benefited from compassionate people who are very compassionate with me and very generous leaders. And also, I think communicators have to be compassionate. I think one of the great communicators, Mike McCurry, who was actually President Clinton's press secretary for a time. And I remember working with Mike on a few things, and Mike saying, talking to me about how great communicators are compassionate, that they have compassion for their audiences, and they want their audiences to understand and both tonally and in terms of what they say and how they say it, that if they're guided by that compassion, they are so much more successful. So, anyway, perhaps I digress, but same zip code. Ken WhiteThey're other-centric, right? Yeah, very much so. The award is principled achievement. Achievement is part of it, not just principled. What drives you? What gets you fired up and going? AnnaMaria DeSalvaWow, well, I want to make a difference. I want to have lived a life that, you know, where I delivered, you know, and I delivered, and I helped get important things done, and I left everything on the field like, that's the life I want to live. And, you know, so that does for me, that translates a little bit to definitely to a sense of achievement and wanting to get big things done and to help transform the things that need to be transformed. And I suppose sometimes that also comes across as like having points on the board or having a competitive spirit. I compete with myself. That was something that my friends used to say to me quite a bit when I was younger. They would say, you know, AnnaMaria. You don't really compete with other people. You compete with yourself. And that is really true. And by the way, I think that's a William & Mary trait. But equally, I like to win, and I think there's really nothing wrong with that. I know that we don't like people to over-index into a fixation on winning, but I like to perform, and hopefully, that shows up in our results. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with AnnaMaria de Salva. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. By the way, today's episode is our 200th in the Leadership & Business podcast series launched back in 2015. Each month, we post two episodes that feature conversations with CEOs, leaders, and subject matter experts. As we celebrate episode 200, we'd like to thank all of our terrific guests who have been kind enough to share their time and expertise with us. Also, a big thank you to Victoria Trujillo at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business, to our editor Ben Lawrence, and our colleagues at Freedom Podcasting. Most importantly, thanks to you for listening and for sharing your comments and suggestions with us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Amanda Eversole](images/amanda-eversole-199-thumb.jpg)
![Influencing with Integrity](images/amanda-eversole-199-thumb.jpg)
Amanda Eversole
Episode 199: May 21, 2023
Influencing with Integrity
Energy; it's always a hot topic. And the American Petroleum Institute is happy to be a part of the discussion. API is a 100-year-old trade association that represents all segments of America's natural gas and oil industry. It's 600 members produce, process, and distribute the majority of the nation's energy. Amanda Eversole is API's Executive Vice President and Chief Advocacy Officer. Among other things, she's the face of oil and gas in Washington, DC, interacting with influencers and government officials to inform them about the issues pertaining to American oil and gas. She visited William & Mary recently and after spending time with business school students, she sat down with us to discuss the American Petroleum Institute, energy in the US and abroad, and influencing with integrity.
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TranscriptAmanda EversoleMy job is not to try to convince every single person in this country, 330,000,000 people, to love oil and gas. But what we want to do is to provide some level of energy literacy. So there's an understanding of the importance of being able to produce energy in this country. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Energy, it's always a hot topic, and the American Petroleum Institute is happy to be a part of the discussion. API is a 100-year-old trade association that represents all segments of America's natural gas and oil industry. Its 600 members produce, process, and distribute the majority of the nation's energy. Amanda Eversole is API's Executive Vice President and Chief Advocacy Officer. Among other things, she's the face of oil and gas in Washington, DC. Interacting with influencers and government officials to inform them about the issues pertaining to American oil and gas. She visited William & Mary recently, and after spending time with business school students, she sat down with us to discuss the American Petroleum Institute, energy in the US and abroad and influencing with integrity. Here's our conversation with Amanda Eversole. Ken WhiteWell, Amanda, welcome. Thanks for joining us. You've had a long day, but thanks for taking the time to be with us. Amanda EversoleIt's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteSo you've been in a couple of classes today. Amanda EversoleI have. Ken WhiteWhat was that like? Amanda EversoleFascinating. And honestly, I feel like I get more out of it than even the students. Being around the optimism of youth and being able to take time to focus on yourself and your leadership trajectory and the impact you're going to make on the world is such a gift. And if I knew then what I know now, I would have focused more on it at the time. Ken WhiteGood questions from the students. Amanda EversoleTerrific questions. Students at William & Mary, I have to say, are so smart. I do not think I would get in if I had to apply today. Ken WhiteWhich is what I think all of our alumni say and feel that. Yeah, they are definitely special. It's truly a joy to walk into these doors every day. Yeah, they're so fun. So, the American Petroleum Institute, I find the mission is interesting because it lists a couple of different specifics, and one is promote safety across the industry globally. What does that entail? What's that mean? Amanda EversoleYeah. We were founded more than 100 years ago to help our industry, and our employees understand how to do what we do, get oil and gas out of the earth, and bring it to markets in a safe and, believe it or not, sustainable way. And one of the most amazing parts of this industry is that we, and again, made up of so many engineers. We know how to optimize molecules, and we continually want to improve and get better, and we want to share those learnings with each other. So inside the beltway, people look at me, and they want to talk about the latest bill in the House or what's going to happen at EPA. Outside of Washington, people look at me and say, oh, you're from API. Thank you for keeping me safe. And that is an extraordinarily important responsibility that we have because we, the industry, want to continually get better. Not just for our employees, for their families, for our communities, but because it's the right thing to do. Ken WhiteSo I think when the average person hears safety, I'm not sure they know what that entails. Amanda EversoleWell, a lot of what we do in oil and gas is working with heavy machinery and equipment and things at high pressures and in places that can be quite dangerous. And so it can be something at the beginning of as simple as the beginning of every meeting that we have. We give a safety moment. And so if we're in a corporate office, it could be something as simple as there are no planned drills that are scheduled to happen in the next hour. So if you hear any sort of alarm, treat it as a real-life issue, and here's where our muster point will be. But if you're in the field, the safety moment can be we had an incident, and here's how we're going to adjust because this happened, or the weather may be doing this, and here's how we're going to adjust our operations. Or here's something I read, and this is something that it would be important for all of us to consider. People don't fully appreciate when they think of oil and gas. They have this default narrative of what it looks like. Dirty and something that just is maybe not so positive, but when you really get to know the people of this industry and the ambition to continually get better and smarter. But at the core, we are about safety for our people and safety for the environment. Ken WhiteIt's interesting if someone has not seen an industry with sort of a safety briefing in a corporate office. I remember the first time, and I went wow. If you don't come from that sort of a background, it's an interesting culture, isn't it? Amanda EversoleIt sure is. And I'll tell you, I learned early on things like holding the handrail when walking up to the stage to give remarks. I could give the very best presentation of my life. But if I'm in front of my members and I don't hold the handrail properly, somebody will say something to me because a safety incident, if it means tripping on a stair or a safety incident that could have ramifications in the field, they are treated equally. Safety is safety, and we have to take it really, really seriously. Ken WhiteAnd those in industries who take it seriously know exactly what you mean. Yeah, that's so interesting. Also, looking back at the mission, what does a strong, viable US oil and natural gas industry look like? Amanda EversoleRight now, there is a lot of debate about energy. Some even say we are in a global energy crisis, in part brought about by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which sent supply and demand into a tailspin. Supply was depressed. Demand continues to increase in a post-COVID world. And so my job is to help ensure that the American companies producing here and around the world have a climate in which they can continue to do that. We have an obligation to do it in a way that is environmentally responsible, that our product is both affordable and reliable. I think of that as the trilemma because if any one of those three things is out of balance, then we have a problem. And so we are continually working across the regulatory space, across federal, state, and local levels of government, to ensure that there is a good understanding of the role that American energy plays, and specifically oil and gas, in helping our citizens live the daily lives that we rely on energy at every moment of the day and night. Ken WhiteSo those messages do you target the quote-unquote, average citizen? Is that part of your advocacy? Amanda EversoleAbsolutely. So we talk to government officials, and we talk to the American people. My job is not to try to convince every single person in this country, 330,000,000 people, to love oil and gas, but what we want to do is to provide some level of energy literacy. So there's an understanding of the importance of being able to produce energy in this country. Presidents dating back for more than 50 years, Republicans and Democrats alike, have called for American energy independence. And the great news is that we have it today in this country, and unfortunately, in some cases, government is working at odds to try to accelerate a transition. And we can talk about that, but a transition away from oil and gas to something different and at a time when that's not technically feasible. And so my job is to try to make sure we understand the role that energy plays, the role that the importance of being energy independent. And there are things geopolitically, like the war in Ukraine, that give us a moment as a country to step back and say our allies in Europe were far over-levered in terms of dependence on Russian gas. And once again, the United States of America and our private sector has stepped up to make sure that they did not have to suffer this winter. But it's not going to stop there. We are now a net exporter of petroleum around the world. That is an important responsibility. But we have to ensure that we can continue to produce so we can continue to help our friends and allies around the world. Ken WhiteDo most people understand how much we do produce? Because I was surprised on the website to see the graphic for the year 2040. Wow. Almost half of the energy oil and gas. Do most people get that? Amanda EversoleI don't think so. I think energy is one of those commodities that, unless you are out of it, you don't think about it. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Amanda Eversole of the American Petroleum Institute in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year the Financial Times, Princeton Review, US News and World Report, and CEO Magazine have all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that has outstanding faculty, excellent student support, and a brand that's highly respected, the William & Mary MBA program. Reach out to our admissions team to learn which of our four MBA programs best fits you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Amanda Eversole of the American Petroleum Institute. Ken WhiteSo, obviously, so much talked about in the vehicle space, electric vehicles. So in your job, how do you address that, and to whom do you address that? Amanda EversoleSo electric vehicles are certainly a topic of a lot of discussion, and I should say that a number of my member companies have great investments within the EV space, whether it's a charging station, whether it's in battery storage, any number of different aspects. And so we are, at our core, one of our principles. We can see on our website, api.org we have a set of ten principles. And one of our principles, of course, supports free markets and free trade. And what's so important about that is that when we talk about EVs, there is an inherent market distortion that's been put in place through subsidies. And I believe personally that there's a role for subsidies in incubating new industries and new markets and new growth, but at some point, there should be a level playing field. And so, there is a question right now around the long-term viability of the internal combustion engine versus EVs. And fundamentally, we don't often think about when you turn on the light switch or when you plug something in. You expect energy to come out. But people don't often think about where does that energy come from? And so it's not a zero-sum game. It's coming from somewhere. Sometimes it's natural gas-powered power plants and natural gas. The switch from coal to natural gas in the generation of electricity is the single biggest reason why the United States have had 20 years of decrease in emissions and have beaten the world by a long shot. And that's because of natural gas, which is a fossil fuel. And there is a reason why where there are groups and others who want to see fossil fuels being kept in the ground, for example, to try to demonize natural gas because they see it as a way to keep fossil fuels around for longer. I'm an optimist, and I happen to believe I want to get the largest benefit for society using the best technology that we have today. And that best technology and that best way, if that involves natural gas, then by golly, I think we should continue to do it because it's the right thing, and it just makes good sense. Ken WhiteSo you have a story to tell, obviously. Right. And you are a lobbyist. That's part of your role. Amanda EversoleThat's right. Ken WhiteYeah. Do you enjoy that? Amanda EversoleI love it. Ken WhiteYeah. So what's that like? I'm so surprised by how many people don't understand that role or don't think a whole lot about that role. So what do you do as a lobbyist? What are some of your goals? Amanda EversoleAt my core, I'm an advocate. I represent the members of the American Petroleum Institute. We have 600 member companies ranging from very large, integrated global energy companies to smaller, single basin upstream providers to mom-and-pop service and supply companies that may have just a couple of employees. And because we represent that entire value chain when we internally amongst our membership come up with a policy position, and we have a very complex set of governance and committees and ways of coming up with various policies, but when we externally go out and say, this is what the industry thinks. It allows members of Congress. It allows regulators. It allows people to say, okay, this is where the industry is. Now they may not always agree with us, by the way, but then my job is to bring the facts to the table. My job is to bring the folks impacted by the policies to tell it and explain unintended consequences so we can come up with the best possible outcome. In my view, to have a free and vibrant industry that upholds that responsibility to the public to provide affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy. Ken WhiteSo the role sounds like part scientist, part negotiator, part educator. Amanda EversoleChief diplomat. Ken WhiteYeah. Wow. A lot of balls in the air for that particular role. Amanda EversoleAbsolutely. Ken WhiteHow did you end up with the advocacy part of the job? Amanda EversoleI started at API almost five years ago as the chief operating officer. And so I really looked internally the CEO, and I sort of joked that he was up and out, and I was down and in. And so things like putting in new technology systems, understanding the financial systems that we had that needed to be upgraded using really the finances to drive better decision making internally. How do we help educate, really think about our trade association like a business? And what I would say to my CEO very frequently is we should be running our business just exactly like you expect your teams to be running yours. And just because our product is information or our project is advocacy or standards or certifications doesn't mean that we shouldn't have that same level of discipline in running the business. So I did that for almost four years, and then we had some leadership changes on the team, and I was asked to step into this advocacy role. We had fixed a lot of the internal systems and, structures, components, and so I have an opportunity to now be much more externally facing, and I love being the face of oil and gas in Washington DC. It is my great, great privilege. Ken WhiteThe lobbyist environment ecosystem is interesting. It's not nearly as big, I think, as many people think. What is it that you like about it? Amanda EversoleI like convincing people of why oil and gas is so important. And it's funny because when I came to the industry and when I came to API, I did not have a careers background in oil and gas. In fact, I knew almost nothing. And so sometimes people joke and say, well then, how did you get that job? Well, I knew how to run large, complex trade associations, and so that COO role made a lot of sense. And one of my first jobs was to put together a strategic plan for the organization with a huge amount of input from the industry. And at that time, and one of the reasons why I was drawn to oil and gas is we were in an inflection point. Really the debate in society had moved to a point where it wasn't if climate change or talking about the science. It had really moved to what are we going to do about it? And companies and business models, and investment strategies were evolving at a rapid rate, and the trade association, which is a reflection of that broader industry, needed to change and evolve too. And I felt like my skills of bringing my voice to the inside and helping to be part of a solution again back to that optimist part of me being part of a solution inside without 30 years of experience in the industry allowed me to ask the simple, innocent question that sometimes was the very hardest. And that has been an unbelievable pleasure and gift in my career. Ken WhiteAnd I would assume a lot of those questions that you were asking, you get asked now. Amanda EversoleI do. Ken WhiteYeah. So, you got the answers before the questions are asked. There's obviously passion in your voice. I can tell by looking at you there's a real passion. And we often ask guests on the podcast how important is it that you have a love for the job in order to succeed. How do you feel about that? Amanda EversoleThank you for noticing. I do love my job. I feel so lucky every day that I can get up and represent the men and women of this industry. And yes, I spend a lot of my time in Washington, but some of my most valuable time is people outside of spending time with people outside of Washington. And the reason is, and you and I were talking about this beforehand is, it's not just we're really powerful lobbyists, or we are able to influence, though we work hard at that, and we do it with high integrity and respect and all of those things. But when you look in the eyes of somebody on an offshore platform and says, thank you for being at API, you keep me safe, man. That keeps you going because they mean it, and it's true. And so people think of us for lobbying. Half of what we do is that safety and sustainability of our operations, our people, and our communities. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Amanda Eversole, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Amanda Eversole, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![JD Due](images/jd-due-198-thumb.jpg)
![Transitioning in Life](images/jd-due-198-thumb.jpg)
JD Due
Episode 198: May 12, 2023
Transitioning in Life
People in the business world have become acclimated to changing jobs and employers. It's a different picture, though, for those serving in the military. For those in uniform, a change in career or employer are rare. And when the time comes to leave the military, the transition can be an overwhelming experience. That's where William & Mary comes in. Next month, for the second time, William & Mary is hosting "Flourishing Through Life's Transitions," a two-week long certificate program that teaches military personnel how to flourish in their new careers and in their personal lives. JD Due is Executive Director of William & Mary's Center for Military Transition and joins us to talk about this unique and successful program that helps veterans and members of the intelligence community flourish in their transition and beyond.
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TranscriptJD DueAnd this element of starting with positive psychology, I think, allowed for a series of paradigm shifts, for people to move away from the fear that's associated with uncertainty and really look at different skills they can link into, as well as other community assets that are there, too. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, people in the business world have become acclimated to changing jobs and employers. It's a different picture, though, for those serving in the military. For those in uniform, a change in career or employer is rare. And when the time comes to leave the military, the transition can be an overwhelming experience. That's where William & Mary comes in. Next month, for the second time, William & Mary is hosting Flourishing Through Life's Transitions, a two-week-long certificate program that teaches transitioning military personnel how to flourish in their new careers and in their personal lives. JD Due is Executive Director of William & Mary's Center for Military Transition. He joins us to talk about this unique and successful program that helps veterans and members of the intelligence community flourish in their transition and beyond. Here's our conversation with JD Due. Ken WhiteWell, JD. Thanks for sharing your time. Wasn't James Brown the hardest-working man in show business? I think you're the hardest-working guy in the military transition space, but it's nice to have you here. JD DueI am. And I try to do it with as much coordination of rhythm as possible. No promises, but we are staying busy, and it's great. Ken WhiteYeah, no question. It's been fantastic to watch what you've done with the Center for Military Transition in a relatively short period of time. You've been here? JD DueYeah, I've been here. It's been 18 months, but it's been, I think a productive 18 months. And it's certainly, I think, been a fulfilling 18 months for all the different sort of folks that we've been able to collaborate with as well as to empower. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. It's been really terrific. Well, let's talk about the transition process. Say someone who has been in the military 10-20 years. They're ready to move on. What's available to them? What's the transition picture look like to them? JD DueWell, there's a wide array of sources that are there, which is important because the transition process, particularly when the longer one's been serving right, it's really a question of identity, and some of the very sticky and sometimes tricky questions one has to maneuver their way through. And so the process can be exceedingly difficult. Now, that said, there's a number of different resources. There is a congressionally mandated transition assistance program that each of the different services provide at different bases. It's one of the unique things about William & Mary because we're so close to a large concentration of serving service members, right? Whether that's at Norfolk, the naval station that's there, Oceania Naval Air Station just out in Virginia Beach, some additional naval assets that are there, as well as Fort Eustis. Now Fort Craig outside of Richmond, which used to be recently renamed from Fort Lee, as well as in the DC area. All of those spots will provide some assistance. One of the challenges, however, is because one of the key things that the services are concerned with is finding somebody a job. And those transition assistance programs sometimes tend to be overly focused just on that next step of employment. And there, when you're talking about identity, a huge number of other opportunities that we can empower people with that, again, will help them ease not just finding a job but perhaps making sure that they're on a good trajectory for the right job or really a new chapter of service even though they might be outside of uniform. Ken WhiteSo why, then, did William & Mary, the business school, the Mason School, and the Center for Military Transition start this program? JD DueWell, we looked at it with, in some cases, the transition space is, ironically, a little bit underfunded. It's interesting in the fact that in terms of federal funds so just a few years ago, in the same year that the national defense budget was somewhere north of 700 billion dollars, the combined spending of the DoD, the VA, the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, and the Small Business Administration was actually less than $1,000 per transitioning service member. So there are some key needs that aren't being fully addressed, and we were actually approached. The Commit Foundation, which is a world-class nonprofit that supports veterans in the transition process. They work with a really innovative program at Tuck and Dartmouth, which provides folks with business skills. They work with Stanford, that actually provides folks with entrepreneurial skills. But they came to us because of where we are located and a key aspect of the culture of the Mason School as well as the broader William & Mary spirit because they wanted a specific program where people were still wanted the opportunity to explore their own values as well as then sort of see where those values might lead them in an initial career search. So they asked us to be a part of this sort of trifecta where someone could potentially go through all three of those programs. But ours was really important because it had so much of an emphasis on self-discovery and then alignment of personal values with career and future service opportunities. Ken WhiteSo you may have touched on it. The program that you lead is two segments, so to speak, one week and then the next week. And they're quite different. JD DueAbsolutely. The first week, they both focus on this notion of flourishing, which, again, I think, resonates with transitioning service members because, in the service, there's a huge emphasis on resilience. Right. There's a huge emphasis on cohesion. But this notion of flourishing is a slightly different twist on that. And we start with the individual. So that first week is actually developing specific skills of how one does flourish as an individual. And it's led through artfully, artfully by the brilliant Kelly Crace, the university associate vice president for wellness. We use the assets of his wellness center. And again, it's an aspect of really having a series of paradigm shifts that allow someone to move away from being motivated potentially by fear to then really look and boil down to these aren't only the values that prompted me to serve in uniform, but these are the values that define me as me. And they address this question of identity that's there, and then we're able to immediately pivot. And again, we put it in the hands of, again, world-class, nationally ranked, and leading business school professors that are then looking at, okay, if these are my individual values, how might those values be congruent with future civilian employment? And then Professor Dave Long is masterful at that. I mean, we look at the science that we know about employee engagement. Typically, that's looked at from a perspective of a managerial or leadership perspective. How can I do certain things to keep my employees engaged? But in this context, particularly on the heels of a week, is flourishing as an individual, the participants are able to see what's congruent in terms of what might keep them engaged. So that second week is then flourishing as a professional, and the two together really go hand in hand. Ken WhiteI remember watching last year, that the first year with Dr. Crace, as you were saying. I remember things like yoga and getting out into the woods, and I said, oh, Kelly, no one's going to go, and everyone in the program just jumped in feet first with such enthusiasm. You know more about transitioning than I do. That surprised me. Did that surprise you at all? JD DueYes and no. It was a pleasant surprise. But the other key thing of what actually happened throughout that process was a degree of community building and cohesion that was there. Of all the surprises, I think that was the most pleasant surprise that existed. Because, again, you have human beings that are coming under organizations that use cohesion as a survival mechanism. Right. That's one of the challenges when we think broadly about transition difficulties with the transitioning service members in America, and that added context allowed them to really, really come together. Yeah. And again, and with all the cohesion that comes from there, right? We're on paddle boards out on the lake right behind, right behind the business school. And then, as luck would have it, it's the Coast Guardsmen who falls in the water. That's whose boat capsizes, right? Which, again, folks from the army particularly relish, maybe not as much as some of the Navy veterans, but that was a really, really important sort of component of things. And this element of starting with positive psychology, I think, allowed for a series of paradigm shifts, for people to move away from the fear that's associated with uncertainty and really look at different skills they can link into, as well as other community assets that are there too. Ken WhiteLast year was the pilot. That was the first time, and it seemed to go extremely smoothly. But any takeaways or changes that you think about when you think about that pilot year? JD DueMore than anything, we want to make sure that as we grow the program to be able to help more people. In this particular piece is looking at being able to match up and have a couple of different sort of breakout groups that are there. So more than anything, it's a minor modification, really on the fringes of the program that, particularly when we're looking at that second week, is flourishing as a professional. If some people already have some ideas of different types of industries or roles that they might want to go in, to expand out, whether it's through executive partners, alumni of the program as well, to have some one on one connections with them, to again help confirm these different sort of shifts of transition that they're starting to make. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with JD Due of William & Mary's Center for Military Transition in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. This year the Financial Times, the Princeton Review, US News and World Report, and CEO magazine all named the William & Mary MBA program one of the best in the US and the world. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider one that's student-centric, well-known, and highly respected, the William & Mary MBA program. Reach out to our admissions team to learn more about our four MBA programs the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with JD Due of William & Mary's Center for Military Transition. Ken WhiteYou mentioned a little bit ago fear. What are some of the fears and concerns, and questions that the quote-unquote, average transitioning military professional might have? JD DueIt's an interesting piece. I think through the lived experience of it, it actually sort of starts with its not full gaps, but it's some question marks on some aspects of just basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right. Whenever you're looking at particularly the strong cultural indoctrination that occurs over time in each of our military services, it's a question of, okay, where will these skills specifically fit? I have been successful in the past, but what I'm going to in the future is so different that's really those aspects of the fear that exists that's there. Now that's not different from other career transitions and people that might take a pivot within their own sort of professional development. But to do so in a very different way is really, really significant. And then the seriousness of it all. A couple of folks have remarked that they were asking the question what do they want to do when they grow up? However, now they're potentially into their 40s when they're asking that question, and they have all those different sort of uncertainties that sort of revolve around that. Ken WhiteThe transferable skills is what really strikes that's what strikes me. The people in the cohort last year and all the transitioning military we have in this business school. They have such skills and such experiences that the business would love, but they don't always see it. `Why is that? JD DueYeah, I think it comes back down to this question of identity. If that's the first order question that they're trying to realize with that sort of shifts all different sort of aspects of context of what they're looking at in that because of those questions of identity, they then have a little bit of different gaps in confidence and just seeing where those different sort of congruencies might fit. In many ways, the cohort process, and particularly each day they, became a little bit more cohesive. They're able to share and provide feedback amongst themselves, which again was huge. That was another wonderful sort of pleasant surprise that emerged throughout the entire process. But then I think it's just helping them visualize what that new context looks like. And then it's an aspect of minor translations of making sure that as other-centric as they have been in a life of extraordinary service, they can continue to be other-centric and that other-centricness can then help them to communicate, tell their own story. But again, we're just starting to plant some slight seeds for these slight paradigm shifts. It's not an earthquake, but it's just a slight shift to help them focus on that new context. Ken WhiteAre you in touch with some of the folks who went through last year? JD DueAbsolutely, quite a few. And they're doing great. A couple of chose a couple are actually in our executive MBA program. So they saw what the Mason School had to offer, and candidly they wanted more. Others actually have been able to transition into with some key partners. One of our coasties, a veteran of the Coast Guard, retired out of the Coast Guard immediately after the program. And then we are able to actually connect him with Dominion Energy. So he's now again. He found a new sense of purpose. He's working on Dominion Energy's offshore wind project. Again, which was an alignment of his values but something he wouldn't quite visualizing when he started the program. And it's that value alignment with specific opportunity that's absolutely just wonderful, wonderful to see. And all of them have actually reached back out and have been great in terms of recruiting this new class and plan to help out as well to include one that has actually started to connect us with Ukrainian veterans who are then asking the same broad question when they look forward as they are dealing with some unimaginable issues. They're also asking this question, how can we have similar programs that empower our veterans to help rebuild something new? And again, a stark contrast from the challenges we have, but I think a very meaningful continuation of a virtuous network that this whole program pieces together. Ken WhiteSo you mentioned the two weeks and how they're different, sort of the individual week one and then the professional week two. What about all the rest? Do they stay on campus? Where do they stay? What do they do throughout that whole period? JD DueYeah, they stay on campus. Actually, we're quite intentional about the timing of the program. And again, it'll start on June 11 and go through June 23. So on their first day here to campus, it's also Williamsburg's second Sunday, so they can then see a very contextualized community event. And we introduce that, not to assume that everyone's going to move to Williamsburg, but to highlight, hey, here's something that's unique that's here, and empower them to ask the question of what's unique in the community that they are going to serve in in that next sort of chapter. So we bring them in on that second Sunday, we get them situated, they have the opportunity to stay in dorms here, and then we host them throughout that entire sort of process. And one of the other key things that we'll actually add to this year, too, is we'll have a more array of what we're going to call dinner time discussions. And as we work through the day, we're just going to, over a meal, have additional guests come in and talk about different topics. One of those dinner-time discussions will be on entrepreneurship, right? We'll work with Graham and his expertise out of the entrepreneurship center to help empower and really inform that conversation. Another one we'll look at our partners with the Virginia Department of Veteran Services to come in and talk about, hey, everyone's really usually well aware of what the VA provides, but here are state-based benefits again to provide people with information and empower them to navigate different ways to find that information wherever their next chapter service may be. Ken WhiteSo the program is open to whom? JD DueThe program is open to really sort of three categories of folks. One, it's what we sort of term as a transitioning service member, and that's somebody even within about 24 months of departing the service. The second one is a recently transitioned veteran. So again, someone that might be up to about 24 months on the far side of that transition. And then the third element that we'll have in there are military spouses. Military spouses are a wonderful empowering spot and factor within the broad transition experience for many transitioning service members. And they have to go through these transitions a lot. And sometimes, while that service member is continuing to serve, there's so many different moves that military spouses have both some experience in living through that and then also have that particular need as well. So that's who it's open to. Ken WhiteFantastic. Now, I'll share the website in just a moment, but is that where people should go and check it all out on the website? JD DueThey can. They can, absolutely. There's a couple of links off the Center for Military Transitions wing of the Mason School website, and then they can also send an email to flourishing@wm.edu. That email gets routed into our team, and we can direct people from there. And that's for participants and or different organizations and companies that also might want to participate as well. Again, this is, I think, a wonderful convening of resources for a really remarkable and talented group of people that are looking to continue to serve even after they depart uniform service. Ken WhiteYeah, a great opportunity for companies and employers to see some potential employees right in front of them. JD DueAbsolutely. To see those employees, as well as to continue in with meaningful connections and meaningful relationships after the two weeks. That's probably the third sort of piece that exists here in that the Center for Military Transition. As people come through the program, we can then provide some really, really important networking services, professional development services to the folks that come through there. But at the end of the day, it's not just about connections. It's about making those connections meaningful and making them congruent again with the values of the individual and then the professional skills that this entire program can piece together. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with JD Due, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at Wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, JD Due, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Jeff Barna](images/jeff-barna-197-thumb.jpg)
![Culture & the CEO](images/jeff-barna-197-thumb.jpg)
Jeff Barna
Episode 197: April 21, 2023
Culture & the CEO
As all leaders know, leadership comes with opportunities and challenges. But leading an organization whose parent company is located in another country poses a different set of challenges, especially when the cultures of the two countries are quite different. Jeff Barna is President and CEO of Yokohama Tire Corporation. He oversees the organization's business in North America. The parent company - Yokohama Rubber Company - is in Tokyo, Japan, where it was founded in 1917. Under Barna's direction, the organization has experienced solid growth, and the relationship between the leaders in the US and Japan has contributed to the success. While visiting William & Mary last week, Barna took time to join us to talk about the importance of company culture, the tire industry, and how liberal arts education prepared him for leadership.
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TranscriptJeff BarnaI want to make sure that we're the most self-aware company in our industry. Self-awareness to me is critically important because if you practice it well, you're brutally honest about the mistakes you've made. You're brutally honest about your gaps and deficiencies. And in earnest, you start to fortify the business with action plans to address those gaps and deficiencies. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. As all leaders know, leadership comes with opportunities and challenges. But leading an organization whose parent company is located in another country poses a different set of challenges, especially when the cultures in the two countries are quite different. Jeff Barna is President and CEO of Yokohama Tire Corporation. He oversees the organization's business in North America. The parent company, Yokohama Rubber Company, is in Tokyo, Japan, where it was founded in 1917. Under Barna's direction, the organization has experienced solid growth, and the relationship between the leaders in the US and Japan has contributed to the success. While visiting William & Mary last week, Barna took time to join us to talk about the importance of company culture, the tire industry, and how a liberal arts education prepared him for leadership. Here's our conversation with Jeff Barna. Ken WhiteJeff, it's great to have you here. Welcome to Miller Hall. Jeff BarnaKen, it is an absolute pleasure to be here. I'm blown away by the Mason School. It's my first time in the building, and just what an environment for learning. So thank you for having me here today. Ken WhiteIt's our pleasure. And you're right. Every day I walk in this building, I'm grateful. And I've been coming in for nine years, and it never changes. Yeah, we're very fortunate to be here. And, plus, the students are phenomenal. Jeff BarnaThat's great. Good to hear. Ken WhiteSo, Yokohama. Interesting company. For those who don't know much about it. What's your elevator pitch, or what's your 30-second summary? Jeff BarnaYeah. Yokohama is a company that's based in Tokyo. We are predominantly in the tire product business. The top line for the business globally is about six and a half to $7 billion dollars. We are actually in the process of making a major acquisition, which could push us as high as 10 billion in revenue annually. I'm responsible for the North American business. We are a priority entity within the context of Yokohama Rubber Corporation, Japan. The North American business does about one and a half to $2 billion dollars in sales annually. And I'm responsible for all operations and sales and marketing, and the growth of the company. So we have two manufacturing plants in the US. We have four major distribution centers, an R and D technical center in Charlotte, North Carolina. And corporate office for me is Santa Ana, California. So we're spread pretty well. And, yeah, it's a great company. The company has been in business for over 100 years. And reputationally, I think the company stands for endurance, quality, innovation. And we absolutely try to tie those themes to the value that we extend our customers in this marketplace. Ken WhiteIt's got to be interesting working with the Japanese company. What's it like for someone who was born and raised in the United States, now working with a completely different culture? What are some of the lessons and some of the experiences you've had? Jeff BarnaYeah, the lessons are I came into the company in January '17, and we had a bit of a reputational challenge in terms of the way Japan viewed the US market. And for years, the business had been underperforming. We were known as an entity that would overcommit and under-deliver. So there were some trust issues, and the company really wanted to take a look at how they could build out a truly independent, autonomous American leadership team, which hadn't existed prior to me joining. The company was being managed at that time by a group of Japanese national ex-pats that were on a rotation program. And unfortunately, the results were a bit underwhelming. So I came into the company, and to the credit of Japan, they had benchmarked other companies and realized that the American leadership was going to be important in order to break through and make progress. So since 2017, I would say the first two years were really spent on how do you establish that trust and reliability that had been lacking before. So I also felt it was important to create a bit of a cushion to allow my team to operate independently and really focus on the business while I was managing, repairing the reputation, or the relationship with the parent company. And the good news is, over a period of about two years, we went from, I would say, a period of high scrutiny. They were very, very interested in everything that we were doing here, to the point now where we have a tremendous amount of latitude and freedom to operate. Ken WhiteThat's got to feel good. Jeff BarnaIt feels really good. And I think if you look at it, Japan or the parent has been rewarded in so much as we're on a great run right now. If you look at the pandemic period up until now, we measure market share. The last 36 months, I think we've taken market share gains in 32 of the last 36 months. So them relaxing a little bit in terms of their intensity on how a local entity should be managed and providing me the freedom to operate, I think, has benefited all parties involved. Ken WhiteYou did mention innovation. And I think when most people think tires, they've got to be thinking electric vehicles that's got to be at the top. What does that pose for you? Challenges or opportunities? Where's that? Jeff BarnaIt's probably right now at this moment and subject to change because we're in a very transformational time within the tire industry. But the dynamics of tire construction on electric vehicles is more of a challenge than opportunity at the moment. And what I mean by that is that while electric vehicles by design are masterpieces in technology, I think that the tire application, when they push the car down the manufacturing line, was a bit of an afterthought. And what was not taken into consideration, Ken is that electric vehicles are about 30% heavier in respect to weight, and the torque from the front wheel drive shreds tires prematurely. So every tire manufacturer today is having difficulty with wearability. And the consumers are a bit frustrated because what they used to get in terms of tire life, which would be 50, 60, 70,000 miles on a set, they're now getting 15 to 20,000 miles. And it's posing reputational issues with not just the electric vehicle manufacturers but also the tire companies. So there's a mad scramble underway for the tire companies to try to innovate to a solution that accommodates this heavier weight, more torque. It's easier said than done because the science is somewhat limited. You can do interesting things in the way of compounds or tread design. But if you think about it, electric vehicle companies are selling range. How many miles can I get on one charge? And that is not conducive to the tires that are being put on the cars today. If you want more range from a tire, you're actually going to have a tire with less tread. If you have a tire with less tread, it's going to wear quicker in a high-torque environment. So the whole tire industry, especially the technology and as it applies to EV, is quite dynamic and quite exciting, to be honest with you. Ken WhiteYeah. Great opportunity. Yeah. So let's talk about you a little bit. You started in sales. How does that help you today, and how does that help you through your career? Jeff BarnaYeah, I think I'd like to just veer off for 1 second because it's interesting. Coming into the Mason School and coming back on campus, and it's been a long time, created a lot of opportunity for self-reflection. And selling has always been the ability to communicate and socialize and create relationships. That always came naturally. And that was part of the inherent toolkit that came along with my undergraduate degree from William & Mary. But what I've realized, and it just struck me hard yesterday in coming in here, is that when I look at the events of the past two and a half, three years and leading a company in a post-pandemic, or during pandemic and post-pandemic environment. I have arguably had to dive into my William & Mary liberal arts education toolkit more over the past two to three years than prior to that. And while those building blocks were always in existence in terms of it was natural for me, I was comfortable for me to be in a selling environment. What was required from a leadership standpoint to be super creative, be resourceful, be innovative, be a critical thinker in dealing with truly unprecedented events that were happening in our business, not just with manufacturing plants and distribution, but people and talent attraction and retention. I mean, all of these things conjured up a need to really go back to my roots where William & Mary was so formidable in respect to the creation of some of that baselining for me. Ken WhiteYeah, it's great to hear. Yeah, that's great to hear. Was there a moment when you said I'd like to be a CEO? I think that's in my future. Jeff BarnaThat's a great question because I can remember early years being in different elevated positions in the way of, let's call it, middle to senior sales management. And I'm going to drop a name, but I do so with a fond memory. I can remember being sitting in a meeting with Roger Penske and his executive team, and for whatever reason, I was the only person in that representing my company at that time, sitting across from twelve guys that were all buttoned up and super impressive. And we had about a three-hour meeting, and I walked away from that meeting felt that not only did I hold my own, but I made an impression on the people on the other side of the table. And that was the trigger point for me where I said, maybe I can do something more expansive beyond that of sales. I will also say, and I call it crazy, or whatever the case might be, I was always that guy. Now remember I was in the automotive business back during the hardship times of 2007, 2008, 2009 the recession. And during that period of time, the automotive industry was shrinking and consolidating. And so I often found myself in an environment where someone would say, hey, we have a gap here. We have a need. Does anyone want to volunteer to do this work? And oftentimes, it was work that was not core to who I was, but I found it very interesting, and I felt I could learn something and. I also felt if I did that, it would help me from a springboard standpoint experientially be able to be more fluent in other aspects of the business. So again, I took on more opportunities for less pay, and I did that for, and those are concepts that are a little bit abstract for those that are going through college and business school today. But it's what I did, and I think it most definitely has led me to a place where I have confidence now in my decision-making and strategic thinking and those type of things that I feel that I'm on par with anybody of a leadership level that I compete against anyway. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Jeff Barna in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before, and that means change for business and your role in it. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you can be a part of creating the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, we invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA all taught by the number one ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with the President and CEO of Yokohama Tire, Jeff Barna. Ken WhiteI would say most CEOs we've had on the podcast have said the same thing. Take those opportunities. Even the projects that look like you can't win take them because you learn. Jeff BarnaYeah. And I want to be careful. I'm not a big fake it till you make it, guy. But I always felt that there were ingredients somewhere. And again, that toolkit that I was trying to build out that gave me the confidence that look. I'm going to get knocked down. I'm going to be put in my place. But it also put a premium on knowing that within a growing network, there were people who had the expertise that could help me navigate. And that was so there was on-the-job learning within the context of the role, but there were also people beyond that that were highly influential and gave me the confidence that I could do things in the way of manufacturing or supply chain or finance or legal, whatever the case might be. That was not core to an English degree that was tailor-made for a sales guy. Ken WhiteRight. We should mention Penske. I don't know that there's a bigger name for those who don't know in racing. Right. So that had to be an incredible moment for you. Jeff BarnaIt was. It was terribly intimidating to be, to be honest with you, because I didn't realize they'd have twelve people at the table. But at the end, I didn't feel outnumbered. So something happened, something triggered on that day where I felt that there could be something more. Ken WhiteCulture is very important to you. When you think that, what do you think? What comes to mind? Jeff BarnaThe first thing that comes to mind is we have very in the North American business, which again, we have to satisfy a very deliberate, intentional, purposeful Japan parent, but we're also able to put our fingerprints on the way the North American business is. So we want to personalize that as ours. So we have a tendency to come up with some very simple themes. Like as an example, I want to make sure that we're the most self-aware company in our industry. Self-awareness to me is critically important because if you practice it well, you're brutally honest about the mistakes you've made. You're brutally honest about your gaps and deficiencies. And in earnest, you start to fortify the business with action plans to address those gaps and deficiencies. So again, self-awareness is key. The other thing that's important to me is organizationally. We make sure that the team is all aligned with all we want to do is make sure that our business, at some point, can meet its potential, its true potential. And I'm not saying I'm not interested in metric-bound objectives, but things like market share growth, profit delivery, hitting a budget, and so on and so forth. We believe strongly that if we focus more on just getting the company to meet its potential, that all those other things will fall in line and then some. We found that to be the case. The other thing that I want to mention, I apologize if it sounds braggy, is that for years, for 103 years, our Japanese entity was always the number one entity worldwide in terms of net sales and operating income or profit delivery. And in 2022, when we wrapped up our financials, we found that the North American business actually eclipsed Japan for the first time. So it just seems like we have a nice marriage of culturally, Japan is allowing us to do our thing, putting the American spin on it. Being self-aware, we're kind of speed, guys. We like to move fast. But again, you can move fast in a business. But if you don't have that self-awareness so, moving fast, I could make a bad call. My team can alert me to that bad call. I would accept the fact that I probably made a bad call, and we can make a course correction and head in a better direction, maybe before some of our bigger competitors can even have that first meeting on that particular subject. So it's kind of exciting to be everyone on the same page in respect to we're in this together, and it's not about titles, and it's not about an attitude. Other than being selfless and being highly self-aware. Ken WhiteHow do you get the team to the point where they are willing to take chances, and going out there is okay once in a while? Jeff BarnaHow did you get that question? Because that's outstanding. Because again, imagine the parental relationship that existed before was US can't be counted on, exaggerates what they can do, under delivers that type of thing. Well, that would naturally, as you might imagine, would breed hesitancy. There was a lack of confidence. The decisions were not made in terms of bold or daring. They were made in terms of conformance. And that's what I said is in the early years when I said I'm going to dedicate of running myself to running interference and getting that loyalty and trust factor up with Japan. Meanwhile, you're going to start making decisions that you feel benefit our business on composite, whether that's leading with being more customer-focused taking some educated risks. But let's have a forum that we can monitor what these risks or these bold moves are actually meaning in terms of, again, not just wins in the way of performance or achievement but also lessons learned from, hey, let's not do that again. So that is still something that we can do more of. But again, winning breeds confidence, breeds a different application to the strategy you create and the way you make decisions, and how you empower people down the chain or down the line to make decisions on behalf of the company. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jeff Barna. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the Executive MBA. If you are ready to take charge of your future, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Jeff Barna, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Kurt Matzler](images/kurt-matzler-196-thumb.jpg)
![Lessons from the World's Toughest Bike Race](images/kurt-matzler-196-thumb.jpg)
Kurt Matzler
Episode 196: April 5, 2023
Lessons from the World's Toughest Bike Race
Outdoor Magazine calls it "the toughest sporting event in the world." It's the Race Across America: A 3,000-mile bike race from Oceanside, California, to Annapolis, Maryland, completed by cyclists in under 12 days. Last June, 34 cyclists began the race, 14 finished. After cycling 300 miles each day, Kurt Matzler was among the top finishers. Matzler is a strategy professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. While competing in the race, he saw a number of parallels between his experience racing across America and leadership. His new book, "The High Performance Mindset: What We Can Learn From The World's Toughest Bicycle Race," has just been released in German. The English version is expected in the US later this year. He spoke to our MBA students recently, and today he joins us to talk about the race, his experience, and how it generated leadership lessons.
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TranscriptKurt MatzlerAnd that visualization must be very concrete. You must feel it. You must smell it. You must even feel the emotion. So you must, when you think about it, about this big goal, when you achieve it, it must cause a goosebumps. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Outdoor magazine calls it the toughest sporting event in the world. It's the Race Across America, a 3000-mile bike race from Oceanside, California, to Annapolis, Maryland, completed by cyclists in under twelve days. Last June, 34 cyclists began the race, 14 finished. After cycling 300 miles each day, Kurt Matzler was among the top finishers. Matzler is a strategy professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. While competing in the race, he saw a number of parallels between his experience racing across America and leadership. His new book, the High Performance Mindset: What We Can Learn from the World's Toughest Bicycle Race, has just been released in German. The English version is expected in the US later this year. He spoke to our MBA students recently, and today he joins us to talk about the race, his experience, and how it generated leadership lessons. Here's our conversation with Kurt Matzler. Ken WhiteWell, Kurt, it's great to see you again. Thanks very much for joining us. Kurt MatzlerThanks for the invitation. It's a great pleasure. Ken WhiteSo Race Across America. What an interesting athletic event. How did you get involved with it? Kurt MatzlerWell, I'm a Rotarian, and I'm a cyclist. And a few years ago, Bob McKenzie from Tulsa, Oklahoma, founded the team Rotary Rams Polio. His idea was to combine the passion for cycling with racing donations to eradicate Polio. And so I became part of the team. Ken WhiteYeah, but in this particular race, you raced solo. Why did you make that decision versus racing it as a part of a team? Kurt MatzlerYeah, so we did it four times on a team of four, and I'm really a passionate cyclist. And Race Across America is the greatest thing and the most difficult and toughest bike race you can do. And so I got fascinated by the idea, and so one day, I decided to do it solo. Ken WhiteWow. I think one of the things in having heard you share your experiences before, one of the things that really struck me among many was the fact that you slept very little as you competed. In fact, 2 hours a day. Most people can't even fathom that. How did you come to that conclusion to do that? Kurt MatzlerYou have to do that because you have a maximum of twelve days to cross the continent, 3000 miles. So you cannot sleep more than two or 3 hours per day. You have to be on the bike for the rest of the day. For the rest of the day. And it took me eleven days and 5 hours to finish the race. Ken WhiteWhat about the training for it? How long did you train to get ready? Kurt MatzlerYou need about five years to train, and five years means a lot of training. Overall, it was about 60,000 miles of cycling in the last five years. So between 15 and 30 hours of training a week for five years. Ken WhiteWe've had so many CEOs and leaders and people just like you on the podcast, and so many of them are dedicated to working out every morning. They know that's a major key to success. When were your workouts? How did you do them? Kurt MatzlerI did it mostly in the morning during the week. So between one to 3 hours per day during the week. And on the weekends I had my long training rides. And long means up to seven or 8 hours per day. Ken WhiteYeah. Wow. And it obviously paid off. And, of course, you had a terrific support team. Can you tell us about the group that was with you? Kurt MatzlerYes, you need a great team first, support team. And you need a lot of people because it's very tough for them to support you. I had four cars, four follow vehicles. They have defeat you. They have to support you. They have to give you water. You need a physician with you, a physiotherapist. And basically, everything you need is your responsibility because there is nothing provided by the organizers of the race. Ken WhiteWow. And you had a heck of a team. Yeah. When you look back at the race, what state in the United States or what region of the country was the most difficult as you were racing? Kurt MatzlerFor me, it was the desert in Arizona because it is it was very hot, 120 degrees for almost two days. That was very hard. Rocky Mountains, of course. And then a mental challenge was Kansas, Missouri, the Great Plain. Ken WhiteWhy were those two states such a challenge? Kurt MatzlerBecause it's just flat, you paddle and paddle, and you think you don't make any progress because the landscape does not change, and there is a lot of crosswinds and headwinds. So it's basically a mental challenge there. Ken WhiteYeah. Having heard the talk that you presented to our students, it seems like doing this race is a lot like running a company or leading an organization. And as a result, you've created some leadership lessons from this experience. And I thought our audience would enjoy walking through them, and you have five in particular. Actually, you can have more, but you have five that you always like to share. And the first one is know the why. Can you explain that? Kurt MatzlerExactly. It's a very hard race and it gets really hard. And when it gets hard, you really need to know why you are doing this. And hard means you are sleep deprived. You are physically exhausted. Especially the Rocky Mountains. It was hard for me climbing the Wolf Creek Pass. It was raining, it was cold at night. And there I started to think, why am I doing this? Why am I here? And then we have a motto we are raising donations to eradicate Polio. And then a thought came to my mind. Children that have Polio, they cannot quit. They are in for life. And our motto is we ride so that others can walk. If you have such a great purpose, this is where the motivation comes from. And there is a very good book about purpose written by Viktor Frankl, who has survived four concentration camps in Nazi Germany. And there, he made an interesting observation. Those prisoners who still had a project to finish or a why to live, they had a higher chance of survival. And so he framed the following quote those who have a why to live can bear with almost any how. If you have a good why, you can really go through the hardest sufferings and hardships. Ken WhiteYeah. Wow. Fascinating. Number two, use the power of visualization. Kurt MatzlerYes. That separates the top athletes from average athletes. And that also can be traced back to Viktor Frankl I just mentioned. Because those prisoners who, when they went in those concentration camps when they went through all the sufferings and hardships, they all visualized the outcome of the outcome. How will it be when I see my family again, my friends again? So they visualize this and this is what top athletes do as well. How will it be when I reach my big goal? And that visualization must be very concrete. You must feel it. You must smell it. You must even feel the emotion. So when you think about it, about this big goal, when you achieve it, it must cause a goosebumps. So that's the power of visualization. That is where your motivation comes from when it's hard. But I have also learned never think how far you still have to go. When you start thinking in Kansas, still 2000 miles, that leads to frustration. Instead, define small wins that give you a sense of achievement, little progress. And for me, it was the next crossing, the next village, et cetera. So define many small wins along the way that give you the sense of achievement. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Kurt Matzler in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before. And that means change for business and your role in it. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you could be a part of creating the future if you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead. We invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA all taught by the number one ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation on leadership lessons from the world's toughest bike race with Kurt Matzler. Ken WhiteNumber three reframe problems into positive challenges. Kurt MatzlerYes, that was one of my mental trainings I did before the race. You know, there is a lot, a lot of difficulties. It is the heat in the desert. It is a sleep deprivation. It is pain, horrible knee ache, for example, physical exhaustion. So what I did is I tried to reframe those difficulties into positive challenges. So what I tried was see these difficulties as challenges I have to overcome. And that went so well that I really was looking forward to be in the heat of the desert because I knew once I'm there and once I have that overcome, I have accomplished a very big thing. And then I was looking forward to be in the Rocky Mountains because I knew once I have accomplished this, it's another milestone. And that is a very simple mental technique. And it's also known in psychology. There are many studies, for example, that have shown that students who see test anxiety as something positive are found to do better on tests. So refrain problems into positive challenges. In every difficulty, there is a positive side. So emphasize the positive side. Ken WhiteNumber four adopt or adapt rather a different strategy. What do you mean by that? Kurt MatzlerYes, for such a race, you need a strategy that is clear. And I'm a professor. I'm 53 years old. I'm not a professional cyclist, but I was on the podium of this race, and I was among the world's best ultra cyclists. And when I thought about the strategy, I, of course, analyzed how others do the strategy. And there is one strategy that is adopted by almost everyone. It's the winner strategy. Strategy of Christoph Strasser, who set the world record and has won the race six times. So he sleeps less than 1 hour per day. That's almost nothing. His first sleep break is after 36 hours. He has a motor home where he sleeps, and he sleeps. If he sleeps, he sleeps at night. And everyone copies this strategy. There is a finisher ratio of 50%. The finisher ratio of rookie is less than 30%. And it's in my belief because everyone tries to copy the strategy of the champion, which does not work because it works for him. It works for his objective. He has optimized this strategy. It's based on his unique skills and competencies. And I adopted a totally different strategy. My first sleep break was after 20 hours. So I knew I will fall behind because the other racers will go on. I stopped for 4 hours per day, two to 3 hours of sleep break. I had my sleep break at noon when it was so hot. And I did not have an RV, I had a hotel. So I did it totally different. So my lesson was, as an underdog, you can be among the champion, but not if you copy their strategy. You have to find your own way. And sometimes, it needs an outsider to see what makes sense and what does not make sense. And sometimes, it needs an outsider to have the courage to do it differently. It was not my intention to win the race. It was to finish the race. And it worked very well. So don't copy the winner, don't copy the champions. You need to find your own strategy based on your own goals and based on your own strengths. Ken WhiteYeah. Terrific, terrific advice. And finally, number five, the team is more than the sum of its parts. Kurt MatzlerExactly. This is also very hard for the crew. I had twelve crew members. It's not a vacation in the United States. They also suffer from a sleep deprivation. It's very hard work. And when I assembled the team, I did not what most companies do, most companies, when they recruit employees, they hire for skills and train for attitudes, which in my view, usually does not work because you cannot change attitudes or values of people. So what I did was I recruited for attitudes and trained for skills. So hire for attitude and train for skills. And what I was looking for was, first, how well do people get along with others? That is extremely important in such extreme situations. Second, how optimistic are they? Because you depend on the crew, you depend on their motivation because they have to motivate you. They're extremely important. And then skills are important as well. But my lesson was hire for skills and then train for attitudes. And this creates a world-class team because if you have such a team that shares the passion for the big goal for the project and if they share the value, they will do more than 100%. Ken WhiteYeah, the whole thing is fascinating. The race in itself is fascinating. But the leadership lessons that you've created. What kind of a response do you get from leaders and executives, and companies when you share these? What are their reactions? Kurt MatzlerThere are so many executives that love sports, and now when you talk about leadership in such a context, it's much more accessible to them first. And second, some of the lessons are a bit surprising, others are maybe not that surprising. But when they hear it from this perspective or this context, they are much better received. Ken WhiteDo they seem to be more interested in the race part of the story or the lesson part of your story? Kurt MatzlerActually more the race part of the story, but that is storytelling in education. You always need to tell stories, and then in these stories, in an ideal world, in each story, there is a lesson. So they might remember the story and hopefully also the lesson that comes with it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kurt Matzler, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're ready to take charge of your future, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Kurt Matzler, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Kim Lopdrup](images/kim-lopdrup-195-thumb.jpg)
![Serving on a Board](images/kim-lopdrup-195-thumb.jpg)
Kim Lopdrup
Episode 195: March 21, 2023
Serving on a Board
Serving on a board, whether corporate or non-profit, is a goal for many professionals. But how do you get there, and what's required of board members? A Havard Business Review article titled "Are You Ready to Serve On A Board?" lists five types of intelligence aspiring board members should possess. They include a financial IQ, a strategic IQ, the ability to build relationships, understanding where you add value, and having a 'get it done' attitude. Kim Lopdrup is the former CEO of Red Lobster. He currently serves on multiple boards, including Wawa and Bob Evans, and he has experience on non-profit boards as well. He joins us today to discuss the role of the board member, the time and talent required, and how members of the board benefit from their experience.
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TranscriptKim LopdrupI've been fortunate in that the boards I've been on have had, at least well, they haven't been directly competitive with the companies I've worked for. They're dealing with many of the same issues, and actually, I have learned a lot from hearing about the same issues from different perspectives, and I've always found it's helped me in whatever business I'm running day to day. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Serving on a board, whether corporate or nonprofit, is a goal for many professionals. But how do you get there, and what's required of board members? A Harvard Business Review article titled Are You Ready to Serve on a Board lists five types of intelligence aspiring board members should possess. They include a financial IQ, a strategic IQ, the ability to build relationships, understanding where you add value, and having a get-it-done attitude. Kim Lopdrup is the former CEO of Red Lobster. He currently serves on multiple boards, including those at Wawa and Bob Evans, and he has experience on nonprofit boards as well. He joins us today to discuss the role of the board member, the time and talent required, and how members of the board benefit from their experience. Here's our conversation with the former CEO of Red Lobster, Kim Lopdrup. Ken WhiteWell, Kim, welcome to the podcast. Nice to have you back. Kim LopdrupGreat to be here, Ken. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteAnd right before you and I are sitting down, you were with some William & Mary students in class going through a case. How did that go? Kim LopdrupIt was fun. We were with Dawn Edmiston's strategic marketing class doing the Red Lobster case. So that was one that didn't take a lot of preparation. So that was fun. Ken WhiteI think you were ready for that. Yeah. How did you find the students? Kim LopdrupVery sharp and engaged. It was a fun session. Ken WhiteDid it bring back memories of being in the classroom for you? Kim LopdrupOh, absolutely. I was an undergraduate here, and certainly, William & Mary helped change my life. I came here as really having no clue what I wanted to do, and William & Mary helped me figure out what I really liked and got me on the right track. And I am hugely grateful to William & Mary. Ken WhiteAlways so nice to hear. And again, welcome back. We've talked to you before about turnarounds. We've talked to you about leadership as well, and we were looking back at all of the various topics we've discussed on the podcast, and we've never talked about boards. What are they? How does one get on a board? And so forth. And you are on some boards right now. Why? What is it about that position that makes you say, yes, I'm in? Kim LopdrupThere are several types of boards. One of the early ones was just getting on the boards of Boys and Girls Clubs. And Joe Lee, who was chairman of Darden Restaurants at the time, a CEO and chairman of Darden Restaurants at the time, was so passionate about Boys and Girls Clubs, and I respected him hugely. And I did have a passion for kids, and particularly from disadvantaged circumstances. But it was really Joe who got me focused on the organization. And I think because Darden was a supporter, they kind of made me Darden's representative on the Boys and Girls Club board. But boy, oh boy, did I learn what makes that organization so effective and became incredibly passionate about it. And that helped me a lot later. In terms of for-profit boards, I think the first one was Hiram Walker and Sons. I worked for Allied Domecq Plc at the time, which is a big British large-cap company. They were the number two spirits company in the world and then owned Dunkin Brands as part of their management development program. Because they, you know, viewed me as having potential. They said it would be good for me to get experience on the board of one of their other one of the other companies they own, which was Hiram Walker and Son. So that was probably my first for-profit board. Probably the second one was Rubio's Baja Grill, which is a fish taco chain based in Southern California. At the time, I was in charge of M&A for Dunkin Brands and was looking at different things. I saw Rubio's, and it didn't fit what Dunkin was looking for, but I thought it really had some special things, and I actually contacted the company. I said, Are you looking for investments? And they said, well, yes, as a matter of fact, we're doing a round. We've got Rosewood Capital in, and we're doing another round. If you'd like to invest, we'd love to have you. And you know what? Why don't you join our board too? And since I was with a large restaurant company, they were smaller. They were happy to have me involved. But certainly, when you're making an investment in a private company, often they're very pleased to have you on their board, particularly if it's an earlier-stage company. And then the third one would be Wawa, the convenience store chain. They found me through an executive recruiter and my company-owned restaurant experience. I was president of Red Lobster at the time, so the company ownership, the cultural fit, was important. My prior experience at Dunkin Donuts was relevant for their business as well. Ken WhiteSure. What do you learn from an experience like being on a board? Kim LopdrupYou really do learn a lot. And I've been fortunate in that the boards I've been on have had at least while they haven't been directly competitive with the companies I've worked for, they're dealing with many of the same issues. And actually, I have learned a lot from hearing about the same issues from different perspectives. And I've always found it's helped me in whatever business I'm running day to day. In terms of the nonprofit boards, I've also learned a lot, and we were very successful at diversity at Red Lobster and named a Forbes list of America's Best Employers for Diversity. That is entirely because of what I learned from Boys and Girls Club entirely. And I've often made helpful connections through work on different boards, and actually, particularly nonprofit boards, made helpful connections I wouldn't have otherwise made that ultimately wind up being important in ways I never would have expected. Ken WhiteSo I would assume some of our listeners, mid-career professionals, maybe even early career professionals, have the chance to be on a nonprofit board. Your advice would be? Kim LopdrupAbsolutely. What I would say is try to pick something you're genuinely passionate about and also expect with a nonprofit. Yeah, they want you there for board governance. But usually, at least for a nonprofit, at least 50% of your time is going to be helping with fundraising and certainly an expectation of making a donation yourself, which is great as long as you've chosen something you're truly passionate about. And I would say with a nonprofit or a for-profit, choose something you're truly passionate about. Ken WhiteHow do you find out what responsibilities you'll have, and what responsibilities did you have on some of your boards? Kim LopdrupWell, you start out by asking, generally, you ask, what are the responsibilities, what are the time expectations? How often do you meet to make sure you can fulfill the expectations? The purpose of a for-profit board is not to run the company. It is to provide governance and make sure that shareholders' interests are protected. So, for example, public company boards will almost always have an audit committee to make sure the financials are being reported accurately. It will almost always have a compensation committee to make sure executives are being paid fairly. And you will almost always have a nominating and governance committee to make sure that the oversight is truly independent and not being controlled by the CEO or insider forces. So the goal of a public company board is to protect shareholder interests. They will also approve major capital projects, look at the risks the company is facing, things like that. A nonprofit board actually has largely the same responsibilities, but typically with a nonprofit, there's an expectation that you're personally donating and or raising money in other ways. Some nonprofits actually have a very specific target. You need to give or raise this amount to be on our board. So it's perfectly appropriate to ask what the expectation is when you're signing up for something. Ken WhiteYeah. What kind of time commitment? Kim LopdrupOh, it varies dramatically for, you know, and some nonprofits are less disciplined than a for-profit in terms of enforcing attendance expectations. But for a for-profit company, it will typically range from. I would say twelve days a year. If you've got a well-oiled machine, they'll probably have quarterly board meetings. They might be two-day board meetings, and you have to put in another day of, you know, preparation and other, other things you're handling. So I'd say twelve days would be best case. But if there's a crisis, all of a sudden, it can become almost a full-time job while navigating through that crisis. So it varies a lot. And the better managed, stronger companies, frankly, are generally easier than either a new company or a company that's going public or a company that's going through a crisis. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Kim Lopdrup in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before, and that means change for business and your role in it. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you can be a part of creating the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, we invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA, all taught by the number one ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Kim Lopdrup. Ken WhiteYou mentioned committees. Do you want to be on a committee where you have expertise, or do you want to be on one where you might learn? Kim LopdrupActually, it's probably a combination of both. And if somebody's new to being on a board, they're probably all situations where you'd learn. But actually, I think it's very valuable to try to get experience on all the key committees. Ken WhiteWhat about education? On the boards you've been has there been training and education for new board members? And is that something people should seek out? Kim LopdrupThere are organizations that do provide training and even certificate programs. To be honest with you, I kind of picked it up as I went. And rather than go through specific training, there is a lot to learn, particularly with a public company there's SEC guidelines and rules are really, really important. And if somebody's going to do that for the first time, there actually are training programs available that I'm sure are quite good. Ken WhiteHave you ever chaired a board? Kim LopdrupI am a chair of a board, Botrista's board. Ken WhiteAnd what kind of responsibility does that entail? Kim LopdrupThe chairman is really, I mean, a director but is the person who does the coordinate sort of the leader among the directors who's calling board meetings, who is developing agendas, is leading the meetings, often working behind the scenes to understand what the issues are, what people's perspectives are, talk people into position ahead of a board meeting. So they're the leader among the directors, but like other directors, they get just one vote. Ken WhiteRight. Fun. What's been the most fun board you've been on? Kim LopdrupI would say it's been Wawa because they are so remarkably driven by their values and really trying to do the right thing at every turn. And it's a fascinating company. It's something like 230 years old that's made such remarkable pivots from being an iron foundry to, you know, when that, you know, making fire hydrants and cannonballs and that dried up. So they went into textiles making diapers and stuff, and that dried up. So they became a dairy farm that brought milk to your door. The economics of that got a little shaky. So they went into dairy stores, and that morphed into convenience stores. Then they decided to add fresh food. Then they decided to become a fuel retailer, and it just keeps morphing and changing in astounding ways. But the secret to it is their employee stock ownership plan, which employees own about 40% of the company. Somebody who is working at the counter making your coffee but has never been promoted but has been there for 30 years has a million and a half dollars in their ESOP account for retirement. And those who've gotten promoted have done considerably better. But I love that it's a company that just has incredible values, cares about its employees, and it's really an opportunity for people who weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth to actually retire comfortably. But at every turn, they do the right thing first. It's really a joy to work with them. Ken WhiteYou seem to have a place in your heart for that particular kind of worker because I remember when we talked about Red Lobster, you saying what a great place to be and to succeed where you do not need a college degree. Wawa sounds quite similar. Kim LopdrupYes, actually, it is. And there's just a huge percent of the population that were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth and maybe didn't have the means and opportunity to get a William & Mary degree. But they're good people, and if you give them an opportunity to make a positive contribution and work hard, they actually are very excited to have that kind of opportunity and tend to be very loyal and tend to have great values and do a great job serving the customer and ultimately creating a success story that will serve shareholders well. Ken WhiteI assume you would have had some fun with Boys and Girls Club working there. What are some of the memories you have there? Kim LopdrupAgain, that one was special also. What is amazing Boys and Girls Club of Central Florida? We had 17,000 members, most of whom were growing up in single-parent households with low incomes and not a single successful role model anywhere around them, mostly minorities. And yet, out of 17,000 members, we found that typically you'd have maybe two pregnancies a year, maybe four get in trouble with the law out of 17,000, again, growing up in drug-infested, gang-infested neighborhoods, which was astounding, and the high school graduation rate was better than that for the general population. And here's what I learned that was the key. Number one, make it a fun place that people want to be because in, particularly after school hours, which is when kids get in trouble because there's no one home to supervise. Secondly, have the club director. Actually, club directors and employees get to know the kids and see what their strengths and dreams are and actually affirm them. You know, Jamal, I think you've got real potential, and you're really good at this. And you're really good at that. Tell me about your dream for your life, and I think you can really do that. Well, let's talk about how let's build a plan for how to do that. You're right, and here I'm going to help you. And the fascinating thing is, once kids have a dream for their lives and believe it is achievable, they will walk through walls to make that dream come true. The kids who don't believe they can have a bright future are the ones who live for today and make stupid decisions that undermine their potential to have a bright future. Things that get them arrested or pregnant or whatever. Helping a kid believe they can have a bright future is key, and Boys and Girls Clubs does that so well. And it is 100% positive messaging. These kids hear so many negative messages, often from people who are well intended about why they're not going to be successful, why they don't have an opportunity that is so harmful to kids. Boys and Girls Club is a 100% positive message focused on the individual. You, Jamal, have potential. Yes, your dream is achievable, and I'm going to help you. Incredibly effective. And by the way, that's part of why we were so effective at diversity at Red Lobster. When I retired, we had four executive VPs who report to me. Three were black. We had no quotas, no chief diversity officer. But yeah, I did work harder to recruit, mentor, retain minorities. But you know what? When it came time to decide who got that job completely level playing field. Those who got it earned it. But again, if someone believes a dream is achievable and you're helping them, they will walk through walls. They will do whatever it takes to make that dream become a reality. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kim Lopdrup, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're ready to take charge of your future, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Kim Lopdrup, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Dawn Edmiston](images/dawn-edmiston-194-thumb.jpg)
![Taking Stock of Your Personal Brand](images/dawn-edmiston-194-thumb.jpg)
Dawn Edmiston
Episode 194: March 6, 2023
Taking Stock of Your Personal Brand
Now that we're settled into 2023, it's a good time of the year to take stock of your personal brand. The way you're perceived by others is important. Yet many professionals rarely take the time to ensure their brand is up-to-date, relevant, and visible. For example, when was the last time you carefully reviewed your LinkedIn profile? Your brand and the tools you use to promote it require your attention. Dawn Edmiston is a professor of marketing at the William & Mary School of Business. She's an author, researcher, and personal branding expert. She joins us today to discuss your personal brand: How you can be sure it's relevant, and why this time of the year is a good time for a personal brand update.
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TranscriptDawn EdmistonIndividuals should think about their personal brand as what people say about you when you walk out of the room. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, now that we're settled into 2023, it's a good time of the year to take stock of your personal brand. The way you're perceived by others is important, yet many professionals rarely take the time to ensure their brand is up-to-date, relevant, and visible. For example, when was the last time you carefully reviewed your LinkedIn profile? Well, your brand and the tools you use to promote it require your attention. Dawn Edmiston is a professor of marketing at the William & Mary School of Business. She's an author, researcher, and personal branding expert. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss your personal brand, how you can be sure it's relevant, and why this time of the year is a good time for a personal brand update. Here's our conversation with Dawn Edmiston. Ken WhiteDawn, thank you for joining us. It's great to see you. Thanks for being on the podcast. Dawn EdmistonIt's always so good to see you, too. Ken WhiteAnd you are pretty special. We should lay this right out for our listeners. You have now appeared on the podcast more than any other guest. How about that? Dawn EdmistonI will take that. That is a great compliment. I appreciate it. There's no place I'd rather be. Ken WhiteWell, thank you. We're almost at 200 episodes, and this is the fourth time you've been on, partly because it's you and partly because of your expertise. And this is something that really resonates with the listeners of the podcast is your personal brand. For newcomers to that term, what is a personal brand? Dawn EdmistonI like to share that individuals should think about their personal brand as what people say about you when you walk out of the room. And I think it's important to understand how it is that you're perceived. It's somewhat ironic that we even refer to it as a personal brand because it really is about how others perceive us. So it's not about you. It's about your audience. Ken WhiteBut you have some control over the audience. Dawn EdmistonAnd you should take control of your personal brand. In this era of online environments and digital technologies, if you do not choose to explicitly develop your personal brand, it will be implicitly developed for you. Ken WhiteGreat. Yeah. Just like a business, if you don't have your brand, your competitors will be more than happy to create one for you. Dawn EdmistonYes. Ken WhiteYeah. Wow. How do you suggest people create their personal brand? Are there some steps? What do you recommend? Dawn EdmistonA personal brand should have two elements to it. You should have an introspective element where you've thought about your why. Why is it that I do what I do? What is it that I want to do? Why is it that I contribute the value that I do? And then you should always have that external perspective. So once you have an understanding of what you believe that you do and the value that you contribute, you should confirm that valuation with others. So individuals that know you well, whether it's family, friends, coworkers, ask them to share three adjectives to describe you. Ask them to share if you can talk about one experience that I made an impact on you. What was that experience, and why? And then, you need to determine what I thought I was representing. Is that truly what's being understood? And then refine your personal brand as needed. Ken WhiteSo you create it, and then you have to live it, of course, and demonstrate it. And then promotion then is a piece of that as well. Dawn EdmistonYes. It's even hard at this point to refer to it as a personal brand because that seems to be a tactic, where a personal brand is actually a journey. And it evolves as you evolve. Which is one of the reasons I think you're able to continue to invite me back because we're never having the same conversation twice. Because as the market evolves, we evolve or we should evolve. Ken WhiteSome say it's good every once in a while, whether it's annually or some period of time to sort of take stock of the personal brand. Do you agree? Dawn EdmistonYes. Yes, I do agree. And I think sometimes that individuals are hesitant to pursue personal branding because they think it will take significant time. And, you know, we live in a world where 24/7 just doesn't even seem to be enough time to do what we need to do. But I reassure individuals for a few minutes every week, even a few minutes every month if that's all you have to give it. If you're intentional about your personal brand. Meaning, let's use LinkedIn as an example since that is a platform for expressing and networking, expressing our personal brand, and networking through professional development if you can just spend a few minutes every month making a connection, engaging with other individuals, sharing an article that you found of value that month, that's what you need to do. And it doesn't have to be that you're engaged in social media 2 hours a day, 4 hours a week. It literally if you can dedicate a few minutes to it, intentional minutes, that can be very helpful to ensuring that you continue to have a personal brand that evolves with you. Ken WhiteLinkedIn, is that number one? Dawn EdmistonLinkedIn still does tend to be the professional development platform. That has not changed. In fact, when Microsoft purchased LinkedIn a few years ago, that somewhat cemented LinkedIn's position as a platform because Microsoft has continued to invest in them. They don't want LinkedIn just to be seen as the place that you go to when you need a job. They want you to view LinkedIn as a place for professional development, where you network, where you now have LinkedIn learning, where you can learn how to build your skills and promote your skills and connect with others. So it's really become a very powerful community. And yes, if you only have a few minutes to dedicate to your social media efforts for personal branding, LinkedIn is the place to start. Ken WhiteYeah, it really has changed, hasn't it? When it launched, it was a Rolodex. Dawn EdmistonYes, in fact, yes, it was very simple. But when we think about Facebook, when Facebook launched, it really was a yearbook, the days when Facebook and Yearbook. And now it's become a community. And really that's how social media has gained value and it's all about building community. So it's not enough about simply please do not think of LinkedIn or when you're personal branding, it's about what you're posting. It's about how you're engaging with others. And it's not about the quantity, it truly is about the quality. Yes, you do have to have a certain quantity. You do have to be involved. You do have to be there. But I don't want you, or don't need you, or don't even recommend that you post six times a day, six times a month. That would be just fine. And again, if it takes a minute each post, that's that six minutes that you've dedicated to it. Ken WhiteSo if a listener is saying, I really haven't looked at my personal brand for a while, I'll go, I'll check on LinkedIn, what should they look for? What are some of the things they need to clean up? Dawn EdmistonThe first thing that you need to think about is where you are from a professional perspective. Your personal brand should be reflective not only of who you are but who you want to be and what you want to become. So, for example, in 2023, you know, as we move from, you know, the great resignation into, you know, all of these new opportunities that individuals are starting to pursue. I often talked about the importance of being able to reframe our experience. So, for example, you might be an accountant who is looking to move in an entirely different field. And there are some real skills, transferable skills that accountants can use in a multitude of fields. The keen attention to detail, being able to work with diverse clientele, project management, those are all skills that could also be transferred into arts management. I mean, something so very different but very valuable and transferable skills. So if you haven't taken the time to look at your LinkedIn profile or really thought about how your personal brand is perceived, now is the time to do that. And again, audit not only where you are but where you want to be. And be certain that it's congruent. Be certain that your LinkedIn profile is reflective of that individual and that value that you want to contribute moving forward. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Dawn Edmiston in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before, and that means change for business and your role in it. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you can be a part of creating the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, we invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA all taught by the number one-ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Dawn Edmiston. Ken WhiteHow much do employers go to LinkedIn to look for new employees? Dawn EdmistonNearly 100%. I don't, I don't know, and even if an organization is telling you that they do not, the likelihood is that they are. And their HR department perhaps told them that they should not have stated that publicly. And that is the truth. And individuals will search for you. It's part of our daily lives. And so, again, if you do not choose to have a presence, your presence will be built by others. So and LinkedIn, for it being one of the most reputable, well-known platforms, also means that if you're on that platform, you tend to rank high naturally in the Google organic searches. And Google still owns 92% of the search market. So if you have a LinkedIn profile, there is a very good chance, and a personalized LinkedIn profile, a personalized URL, there is a very good chance that when your name is searched, that will be one of the first responses that's returned in the search. Ken WhiteYou do some interesting things and have your students do a very interesting project regarding video and LinkedIn. Can you tell us about that? Dawn EdmistonI do. In fact, we call it the perfect pitch. So it leverages actually YouTube and LinkedIn to your comment earlier about how marketing has evolved, how personal branding has evolved, and LinkedIn has evolved. So LinkedIn now encourages you to embed video, embed media, have featured media within the LinkedIn platform, and in many ways, is serving that you no longer have to have your own website. For example, you can have your own LinkedIn profile, and it can really serve to be a portfolio of you and your work. So The Perfect Pitch video is a 60-second video in which I challenge students to think about how they would convey their value to others in a very creative manner. And of course, William & Mary's students constantly serve as a source of inspiration for me. These videos have now received more than 100,000 views. And I like to think that it's because not just about the content, but about how the content is delivered in a very engaging environment. So in many aspects, individuals would rather engage with you on video than on a one-page static resume. And so if we can create that experiential element of it, it really elevates your brand to the next level. Ken WhiteSome of these videos are fantastic, right? Wow. You look at that and say. I'd hire that individual. Dawn EdmistonAnd that is the point. Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn EdmistonAnd it really becomes a distinct competitive advantage for our students because they can use these videos not only in their LinkedIn profiles but if they happen to have networked at a professional event. They can follow up with a recruiter and include a link to that video and share with them. Use it as an opportunity for another touch point and another chance to tell their story. Ken WhiteYeah, great differentiation. Dawn EdmistonYes, yes, yes. Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn EdmistonAnd it also emphasizes the value of storytelling. Individuals can share with you their credentials their titles, but what you're truly going to recall about individuals are their life stories, and what matters to them and, what is it that they did that mattered to others, and how could they potentially bring that value to your organization. Ken WhiteAs our listeners are doing, they're taking stock of their personal brand and their social media presence, taking a look at LinkedIn, making sure that looks great. What else? Any other channels? Where do you recommend people go next and do next? Dawn EdmistonYou need to know your audience, and you cannot be all things to all people. I get exhausted just thinking about that proposition. And it's really important that you know your audience. Who is it that you want to reach? And there can be instances where it might not make sense for you to be on Twitter, for example, because your audience is just not there. But if they're on Instagram, then that's where you need to be. So if you're very visual, if you're working in a world where visual and video and those elements are important, then you need to be on Instagram. If you're working in an environment where you want to be able to share resources and insights, and quick thoughts, then Twitter is a good channel for you to be there. I think it's just so critical that we understand who our audience is because we all have limited resources, and that could just simply be the number of hours in a day. And so we want to be really focused upon making the most with what we have. Ken WhiteI don't know that people do that very often. Think of the audience first. They tend to think of, at least in my experience, they think of the channel, the outlet first. Dawn EdmistonSure. And again, I think that as a marketer, it's always audience-customer-driven. And I recall having read many years ago how Oprah Winfrey, perhaps one of the most famous, if not one of the most famous personal brands in the world, really did not want to be associated with that term. She did not want to be known as a personal brand because it really commercialized her intent, her soul, her spirit, her the impact that she could have in the world. But when she realized that her personal brand was a tool to reach her audience, that became a different way of thinking about it. And so I hope that our listeners hear that and understand that as well. Ken WhiteA great point because some people just roll their eyes, oh, this is promotion. I don't want to do this. But if you put the audience first, makes a great deal of sense. Dawn EdmistonYes. I know that many of my students often find it hard to believe that I am a true introvert. I'm a true introvert at heart. I prefer to be in the library. And what I recognized that if I am not putting myself out there, if I am not developing my own personal brand and sharing that with others, then I'm losing really special opportunities to share value. And once you start to appreciate it, not from the promotional aspect, but from the exchange of value aspect, I think it really does make an impact. And I think it really does allow you to see personal branding as a very different and perhaps even valuable concept. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dawn Edmiston, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're ready to take charge of your future, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Professor Dawn Edmiston, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Matt Williams](images/matt-williams-193-thumb.jpg)
![The Leadership Shift](images/matt-williams-193-thumb.jpg)
Matt Williams
Episode 193: February 21, 2023
The Leadership Shift
As the world evolves, leadership also evolves. There's no doubt the leader of today and tomorrow will be different from the leader of the past. Qualities and approaches that defined yesterday's high-quality leaders won't work moving forward. Our guest today says a fundamental shift is occurring, and leaders must adapt. Matt Williams is a clinical professor at William & Mary's School of Business and an experienced and successful leader. He's the Managing Director of Brand Federation and the former CEO of The Martin Agency—one of the top advertising agencies in America. He says in order to succeed, leaders have to change their way of thinking; about themselves, their organizations, and their employees.
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Show Notes
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TranscriptMatt WilliamsOur ability to grow knowledge has now crossed over humankind's ability to assimilate that knowledge. It's growing faster than we can deal with as a species. And when we cross over that line, it fundamentally changes the world we live in. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, as the world evolves, leadership also evolves. There's no doubt the leader of today and tomorrow will be different from the leader of the past. Qualities and approaches that defined yesterday's high-quality leaders won't work moving forward. Our guest today says a fundamental shift is occurring, and leaders must adapt. Matt Williams is a Clinical Professor at William & Mary School of Business and an experienced and successful leader. He's the managing director of Brand Federation and the former CEO of the Martin Agency, one of the top advertising agencies in America. He says in order to succeed, leaders have to change their way of thinking about themselves, their organizations, and their employees. Here's our conversation with Matt Williams. Ken WhiteMatt, thanks for joining us. It's nice to see you. Welcome. Matt WilliamsThanks for having me, Ken. Great to be here. Ken WhiteIt's been a few years, actually. The last time you were actually on the podcast. Once upon a time when I met you at the Martin Agency. It's been a few years, and it's great to have you here at the Mason School of Business. Matt WilliamsYeah, things have changed, but it's great to be back. Ken WhiteGreat. And we had a class over the winter break, our winter break at William & Mary is long, and so I hosted a class called Leadership Forum, where we had CEOs and leaders come in and talk. And you were one of the speakers, and the students just greatly enjoyed what you talked about. And I thought, let's have Matt on the podcast to talk about some of that and share what you were discussing with the students, with our listeners on leadership, of course. And you started out with talking about the point of leadership. What is the point? Why does leadership matter? Matt WilliamsI think it's always mattered, obviously, but it matters through time for different reasons because the context shifts. The context within which we do business shifts over time. And I think right now, leadership matters especially much because of all the changes that are going on in the business world and in the world in general. So that if you think about the advent of technology, the societal disruption that goes on with the murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, and the rise of values-based conscious consumption. Right. All of a sudden, leadership matters, not just because we have to run companies that are profitable and contribute to the world in the right way, but because things are asked of us as leaders that maybe weren't asked 30, 40, 50 years ago. Now we have to serve not just as leaders of commercial enterprises but we have to serve as leaders of communities because our companies have really taken the shape of communities. And that puts a whole different level of responsibility on leadership. And that's interesting to me. Ken WhiteSo do you see different types of people leading now versus maybe 10-20 years ago? Matt WilliamsI think so. I think there are people who are oriented toward leadership that is not just directive, not just operational, but values based. And it requires a different kind of relationship between the leaders and the organizations they lead now. It's not just do what I say when I say, and your paycheck won't bounce. Ken WhiteRight, right. Matt WilliamsNow it's we need to work together to create a company that is commercially viable, and that represents a set of values we can all, as members of this commercial community, that we can all rally around and believe in. And that's a whole different level of responsibility for a leader than just an operational responsibility. Ken WhiteA completely different mindset. Matt WilliamsYeah. It requires a different relationship with the people, different relationship with your customers, different approach to how you work together with both those groups to move your organization forward. Much more collaborative, much more dynamic, much more creative, much more vulnerable in some ways. And it's interesting to watch. Ken WhiteYeah. It seems to me check the ego at the door today. Matt WilliamsI think so. And the expectations of leaders are different because of that. So not only are the activities that I, as a leader, have to display to the people I lead, the expectations those people have of me are different. So now it's not just I want to look to you as the sort of the stiff upper lip, forward, ever forward kind of person, but I want some collaboration from you. I want to see you as a human being who can have empathy for the things that I'm going through as an employee. And that's a very different level of expectation between a leader and the people they lead. So the things that I learned about leadership when I was coming up in the business world was all about strength. And this leader always knows where he or she is going or he it was usually a man. They always know where the organization is going. And I can look to them for granite will and strength. And now, if you bring those things, people look at you sideways and think there's something inauthentic about you. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt WilliamsAnd now they don't follow that as much as they used to. Now they follow that kind of vulnerability and collaboration, and humanity that a leader has to show. It's very different. Ken WhiteVery different. A major shift. And you had talked in the class about how part of the shift is due to the fact that knowledge is outgrowing our ability to manage it. Can you talk a little bit about that? Matt WilliamsYeah, there's a guy at Google. I don't even know if he's still there, but his name is Astro Teller. So he's an aptly named guy. And his job is basically just to think big thoughts about Google's moonshot unit and how they can change the world. And Teller has an idea that mankind's ability to deal with new knowledge rises at an upward but relatively slow upward slope. We're evolving as a species, and we're getting smarter. Our brains are getting bigger. But our ability to grow knowledge over time is increasing at a very rapid pace. Right. Not hard to understand. Technology is growing. All those things are happening. AI, you look at what's happening there. It's crazy. But the idea that he put into the world is our ability to grow knowledge has now crossed over humankind's ability to assimilate that knowledge. It's growing faster than we can deal with as a species. And when we cross over that line, it fundamentally changes the world we live in. Right. So where we used to be experts at things because we knew what there was to know in our discipline, and we could carry that expertise into the world, and people could trust us to know these things. Now even those things we think we're expert in are changing faster than we can keep up with. The organization and the category that our companies operate in are more dynamic and changing faster than our company, and our people can keep up with. And what it means is we have to completely change the orientation of our organizations and the way we lead from practicing the thing that we are expert in to always learning and acknowledging that we don't know everything that can be known because the knowledge, even in our area of expertise, is growing faster than we can keep up with it. So you see the rise of the learning organization. You see the acknowledgment that our brains have to be more plastic than they've ever been, and we have to find new stimuli that changes the way we think about the world. Because the world is changing so fast, we have to surround ourselves with people who know complementary things to what we know because we can't know everything. So we have to bring that knowledge in from different places and different people. So the way we populate teams and the way those teams work together has to change. All that has a tangible and fundamental impact on the way we lead. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. And the way we follow. Matt WilliamsTotally. Exactly. Ken WhiteI mean, you think as a younger professional, you just wanted to know you had to have your area of expertise. That's what gave you the confidence to make you feel a little bit better. But now, that's not the case. Matt WilliamsNo, that's right. And as a follower, I remember looking at these mentors that I had and thinking, okay, if I can just be more like them. Well, now the expectation is they're looking at their followers and saying, okay, help us out here. What can you bring to the table that I don't have? Because I don't have everything. And that's a really interesting dynamic. Now the expectations are different on both sides. Ken WhiteYou created four sort of pillars of leadership in the organization as we move forward. These shifts we have to make. And in the first one, you had talked about what regarded work-life balance, which is such a popular term. Right. Everybody talks about that, but you've got an interesting take on that. Can you share that? Matt WilliamsYeah. It's rooted in the idea that in this world, that is so dynamic. If we look at the world, we're competing in. Our companies are operating in, the things that will set us apart from other companies are not the same things as they used to be. Right. It used to be things like access to raw materials and, access to capital, and even access to information, knowledge. Right. Well, now money moves around the world more than more seamlessly than it ever has. So access to capital is less differentiating. Access to knowledge is certainly not as differentiating as it used to be. It's growing faster than it's ever grown. So we can't know everything. And if I need a piece of information, I can go to OpenAI or Google and figure that out really fast. So it's not really that. Raw materials are moving faster around the globe than they ever have. Supply chains work outside of a pandemic. Supply chains work really well. It's not really that. The thing that will set us apart is whether we're able as an organization to do what's never been done with the things that everyone has access to. And what that means is we have to be more creative, we have to be more innovative. We have to see things that have never been seen in that which everyone knows, which is like my favorite Schopenhauer quote, actually. But we're in an age of creativity, and if our job as leaders is to unleash the creativity of our organizations, we have to change some things. Like, really fundamentally, we've learned the wrong thing. One of the things we have to change is this kind of futile pursuit of work-life balance. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt WilliamsAnd if you Google work-life balance, you're going to find 18 million hits because it's such a huge issue. And what I like is if I can lead an organization in a way that is less about helping you achieve work-life balance because I think it's a unicorn. I think it's almost impossible to do. But I can lead in a way that says my job as a leader is to help your time at this company contribute to the aggregate joy you feel in your life. That means I'm not buying a timesheet. I'm not saying give me 8 hours of your day. I'm saying give me the time you need to give me to do amazing work. That's the value exchange between us. And let's make sure that that work contributes joy to your life and to the collective life of our organization. Ken WhiteRight. Matt WilliamsLet's do what makes us happy. If this makes us happy, we're going to do amazing things together, and you're going to have great ideas. And maybe those ideas are going to come on a Saturday morning. Maybe they're going to come at 02:00 on Wednesday. Maybe you're going to come and say. I need to take off on Thursday afternoon because my daughter has a dance recital. Awesome. All that's great. So rather than buying your timesheet, I want to buy your notebook. I want to buy what's in your notebook. That's the value you bring me. And if we can do that in a way that contributes to the joy that we feel of the work we're doing and the joy we have in our lives, and we can manage in a way that's flexible enough to allow that joy to happen where it needs to happen, and when it needs to happen, that's a better way to manage today. Ken WhiteAnd imagine a lot of people are unhappy at work if there's some joy in work. Wow. Matt WilliamsRight. Ken WhiteI mean, wow. Matt WilliamsLet's not kid ourselves. We do better work when we're having fun and enjoying the people we're doing it with. Let's try to do that. Ken WhiteCorporate families. That term is changing. That's your second point. Matt WilliamsWell, it's funny. We've all been in that meeting where we start on our first day, and the CEO or the head of our team stands up and says, welcome to the XYZ family. We're not a family. Let's not kid ourselves here. Right. A company is a set of people who believe the same things about what they do and have a shared definition of what great work is, and believe in the foundations of the culture of this company. How we work, who we work with, the way we work, the way work goes through the place. But it's conditional, right? Our relationship is conditional. I've got two kids and a wife whom I love unconditionally. I'm not going to lay them off if my revenue drops. The relationship between me and an employee or a leader and a follower is not the same. It's conditional. You expect some things from me as a leader, and I expect some things from you as a member of this community. If we satisfy each other in that value exchange, things are going to be great. We're not a family. Ken WhiteRight. Matt WilliamsWe're a community of people. And the membership in that community, membership of the leader, and the membership of the people in the community are conditional. So let's not kid ourselves here. Ken WhiteCelebrate work. Matt WilliamsYeah, we love to win. Nobody loves to win more than I do, and nobody hates losing as much as I do. Right. We all hate that. But I think we've gotten so focused on celebrating the wins that we've forgotten to step back and say the outcome, win or lose outcome, is part of what's important. Let's not kid ourselves about that, either. That's important. But what's also important is making sure that outside of the outcome, we have a clear shared definition of what great work looks like. And if we can objectively or as objectively as we can step back and say, let's not focus on the win or lose outcome, let's focus on the quality of this work. And regardless of whether we won or lost, let's decide whether this is great work, and if it's great, celebrate it regardless of the outcome. Ken WhiteRight. Matt WilliamsBecause I want to continually reinforce to the people on this team what great work looks like if we didn't win. It's not going to be quite as much of a celebration as it would be if we do win. And there probably are negative consequences associated with that. I don't want to be Pollyanna about that, but at the same time, I want to help my team look at the quality of that work outside of the outcome and say, this is great. If we do more of this, we're going to win a heck of a lot more than we lose. Ken WhiteCulture. Matt WilliamsYeah. Always important. Always has been important. I remember when I took over as CEO of the Martin Agency, the culture there is incredibly strong. It still is. It's incredibly strong. And my predecessor had codified sort of the values of the company, and they were beautifully done, beautifully done. But I remember talking to people, and they were saying we like the values, and we understand it, and we believe in them, but we don't know how they translate to our day-to-day behavior. So the team that I worked with kind of sat down and said, let's not change these values. The values are our values. They're inside us. But let's go further in how we translate them to expectations of day-to-day work. And we created a set of behaviors around them. Right. And they were, you know, creativity, collaboration, agility, and courage. Those are the four things that we said these values translate into every day. So creativity means we're going to celebrate the creative activity and the creation of ideas. That's our currency. We're going to celebrate that every day. Right. Collaboration. We're going to collaborate more deeply and more often with more people than we ever have. We're going to do that every day. Agility, we're going to move fast, we're going to learn, and we're going to act on that learning. And then courage is we're going to have a strong point of view, and we're not going to be afraid to stand up for it, but we're also not going to be afraid to admit when we're wrong. And those kind of behaviors connected with our values in a way that we could build them into performance reviews, we could build them into operationalizing these values in a way that people said, oh okay, I can walk out of the building at 530 and say, did I do this today? Ken WhiteYeah. Matt WilliamsI think I did. And that was really powerful. Ken WhiteYeah, that's a great advice. A great challenge for every organization, actually. Matt WilliamsIt's not easy to do. Ken WhiteNo. Matt WilliamsRight. Ken WhiteExcellent. We're going to shift gears a little bit. You're doing an interesting video podcast that our listeners might want to check out on YouTube. Tell us about beer and brands. Matt WilliamsYeah, so my partner, Kelly O'Keefe, and I started a consultancy right after I left the Martin Agency about four and a half years ago. And we were sitting around thinking, how are we going to market this consultancy? And we were having a beer at one of the breweries in Richmond, and we were talking about creating content, but then it drifted into a conversation about brands and strategy and marketing, which is kind of where our conversations tend to drift. Ken WhiteSure. Matt WilliamsAnd then we realized, what if we just put a camera on this conversation? That'd be kind of fun. So we started a video podcast where we travel around from brewery to brewery in Richmond, and we talk about topical subjects related to brands and marketing strategy and advertising, and it's been really, really fun. Ken WhiteAnd so the next one, who's your guest, and what's the topic? Matt WilliamsWell, the next one comes out this week, maybe early next week, and it's right on the heels of the Super Bowl. So our guest is a guy named David Muhlenfeld, who is an amazing creative director who I worked with at Martin for years, who's now running his own freelance creative operation, working with us at Brand Federation, our consultancy. And we got Dave together, had a couple of beers, and talked about the Super Bowl. Ken WhiteGreat, so anybody into marketing, into brand, any brand geeks would love this. Matt WilliamsIt's fun. We have a blast doing it. It's called Beer and Brands, and it's part of our Brand Federation content. Ken WhiteAnd just go to YouTube and hit and type in Beer and Brands. Matt WilliamsType in beer and brands. Brand Federation, and it'll take you there. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Matt Williams. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're ready to take charge of your future, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Matt Williams, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![ChatGPT & NaturalReader AI](images/chatgpt-192-thumb.jpg)
![Meet ChatGTP](images/chatgpt-192-thumb.jpg)
ChatGPT & NaturalReader AI
Episode 192: February 5, 2023
Meet ChatGPT
It seems like everyone is talking about ChatGPT. Today on the podcast, we'll learn about it by going right to the source. First, some background: People in business, education, journalism, law, and virtually all fields are asking what ChatGPT might do to change the way we work, learn, and communicate. In some sectors, there's major concern. In others, there's considerable excitement regarding the possibilities. Introduced in November, ChatGPT is an Artificial Intelligence system that can do some amazing things. like respond to customer service inquiries and write term papers. And it does so quickly, and for the most part accurately. As a result, marketers and customer service professionals are working to test and implement ChatGPT. Meanwhile, school districts from New York City to Seattle banned the chatbot last month. On today's episode, we learn the basics of ChatGPT, but rather than invite a subject matter expert to discuss it, we went right to the source. We submitted specific questions about ChatGPT to Chat GPT and it quickly delivered written answers. To show you the quality of those answers, we combined them with Text-To-Speech technology which generated a voice that will read the answers ChatGPT wrote for us.
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ChatGPT & NaturalReader AI: Meet ChatGPT TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptChatGPT & NaturalReader AIOverall ChatGPT chatbot is a powerful tool that can generate fluent and coherent responses, providing a natural and human-like conversational experience. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. What seems like everyone is talking about ChatGPT. Today on the podcast, we'll learn about it by going right to the source. First, some background. People in business, education, journalism, law, and virtually all fields are asking what ChatGPT might do to change the way we work, learn and communicate. In some sectors, there's major concern. In others, there's considerable excitement regarding the possibilities. Introduced in November, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence system that can do some amazing things, like respond to customer service inquiries and write term papers. And it does so quickly and, for the most part, accurately. As a result, marketers and customer service professionals are working to test and implement ChatGPT. Meanwhile, school districts from New York City to Seattle banned the chatbot last month. On today's episode of Leadership & Business, we learned the basics of ChatGPT. But rather than invite a subject matter expert to discuss it, we went right to the source. We submitted specific questions about ChatGPT to ChatGPT, and it quickly delivered written answers. To show you the quality of those answers, we combined them with Text-to-Speech technology, which generated a voice that will read the answers ChatGPT wrote for us. Here's our discussion on ChatGPT, what it is, and what it might mean to business and the world. Ken WhiteOur first question that we submitted to ChatGPT is this. Can you share a description of ChatGPT? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AIChatGPT is a pre-trained language model developed by OpenAI. It is based on the GPT or Generative Pre-training Transformer architecture and is fine-tuned for conversational language understanding and generation. It is trained on a massive amount of conversational data and can generate human-like responses to a wide range of topics. It can be fine-tuned for a variety of tasks, such as question answering, dialogue generation, and text summarization. It can be used to build conversational agents and chatbots with a high degree of fluency and coherence. Ken WhiteWhat are ChatGPT's limitations? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AIChatGPT, like any machine learning model, has certain limitations. Some of these include one lack of common sense. Chat GPT is trained on a large dataset of text, but it does not have a general understanding of the world like a human does. This can lead to nonsensical or irrelevant responses when the model is asked about something it has not seen before. Two bias. ChatGPT is trained on a dataset of text that is reflective of the biases that exist in the real world. These biases can be carried over into the model's responses and can perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Three lack of empathy. As a machine, ChatGPT doesn't have the ability to understand or generate emotional responses. It cannot respond or understand the nuances of emotions. Four data availability. ChatGPT, like other models, is trained on a large dataset, and its performance can be limited by the quality and quantity of data that it was trained on. Five limited context. ChatGPT is not able to retain a lot of context over a long conversation. Thus, it may not be able to understand the context of a conversation. Six safety. ChatGPT is a powerful language model and can be used to generate text that is offensive, misleading, or harmful. It's important to use the model responsibly and be aware of its limitations to prevent unintended consequences. Ken WhiteWhat is a ChatGPT chatbot? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AIA ChatGPT chatbot is a conversational agent that utilizes the pre-trained language model called ChatGPT to generate responses to user inputs. ChatGPT is fine-tuned for conversational understanding and generation, making it well-suited for building chatbots. A ChatGPT chatbot can be used for a variety of applications, such as customer service, answering frequently asked questions, and providing information on specific topics. The chatbot can be integrated into various platforms such as websites, messaging apps, and virtual assistants. The chatbot can be fine-tuned to a specific task or domain by training it on a smaller dataset of conversational data that is relevant to that task or domain. This fine-tuning step can improve the chatbot's performance and make it more specialized for a particular use case. Overall, ChatGPT chatbot is a powerful tool that can generate fluent and coherent responses, providing a natural and human-like conversational experience. Ken WhiteWho founded ChatGPT? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AIChat GPT is a pre-trained language model developed by OpenAI, a research company founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Wojciech Zaremba, and John Schulman in December 2015, with the goal of developing and promoting friendly AI in a responsible way. The model is based on the GPT or generative pre-training transformer architecture and was fine-tuned for conversational language understanding and generation. It was trained on a massive amount of conversational data and can generate human-like responses to a wide range of topics. Ken WhiteHow much does it cost to use ChatGPT? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AIThe cost of using ChatGPT can vary depending on the platform and service that you are using. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, currently offers a number of pricing options for using its models, including one OpenAI GPT-3 Playground. This is a free online tool that allows users to test out the GPT-3 model and generate text. Two OpenAI GPT-3 API. OpenAI provides an API for GPT-3 that allows developers to integrate the model into their applications. The pricing for the API is based on the number of requests made to the API, with pricing tiers starting at $0.0001 per request. Three Microsoft Azure. Microsoft has partnered with OpenAI to bring GPT-3 to its Azure Cloud platform. The cost of using GPT-3 on Azure will depend on the usage of the service and the resources you need. Four other third-party providers. There are also other third-party providers that offer pre-trained models like ChatGPT, and their pricing varies depending on the provider and the level of access you need. It's worth noting that the cost to use ChatGPT or any other pre-trained model is only one part of the overall cost of building and deploying a conversational AI application. Other costs, such as data annotation, development, and maintenance, will also be incurred. It's also important to note that the cost of using a pre-trained model like ChatGPT can change over time, so it's worth checking with the provider for the most up-to-date pricing information. Ken WhiteWhat are the ethical concerns regarding ChatGPT? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AILike any machine learning model, ChatGPT has certain ethical concerns that should be taken into consideration when using it. Some of these include one bias. ChatGPT is trained on a data set of text that is reflective of the biases that exist in the real world. These biases can be carried over into the model's responses and can perpetuate harmful stereotypes. It's important to be aware of these biases and take steps to mitigate them when using the model. Two misinformation. ChatGPT is able to generate text that is coherent and fluent, but it doesn't always generate text that is accurate or truthful. It could be used to spread false or misleading information, which can be harmful. Three safety. ChatGPT is a powerful language model and can be used to generate text that is offensive, misleading, or harmful. It's important to use the model responsibly and be aware of its limitations to prevent unintended consequences. Four privacy. When using ChatGPT, one should be cautious about the data that's being input into the model. If the data contains sensitive or personal information, it can be misused. Five fairness. As with any AI model, ChatGPT's decision-making process is based on the data it was trained on. This can lead to unfair decisions if the data used to train the model is biased or unrepresentative of the population it's intended to serve. Six transparency. As a black box model, ChatGPT's decision-making process is not easily understandable. This can make it difficult for developers and users to understand why the model is making certain decisions and to identify and correct any errors. It's important to consider these ethical concerns when using ChatGPT and to take steps to mitigate any potential negative impacts. Additionally, it's important to use the model in a responsible way and to be transparent about its limitations and capabilities. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation on ChatGPT in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before, and that means change for business and your role in it. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you can be a part of creating the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, we invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA all taught by the number one-ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation on ChatGPT. Again, we submitted questions to ChatGPT and combined the answers it produced with text-to-speech technology, which generated the voice that's reading the answers. Ken WhiteWhy are some schools and school districts banning the use of ChatGPT? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AISome schools may have chosen to ban the use of ChatGPT or similar language models because of concerns about academic integrity and cheating. These models are able to generate text that is coherent and fluent, which can make it difficult to distinguish between text that was written by a human and text that was generated by the model. This can make it easier for students to plagiarize or cheat on assignments and exams. Another concern could be related to the bias that these models might have and how it can perpetuate harmful stereotypes or even misinformation. These models are trained on large dataset, and if the dataset is not diverse and inclusive, the model will perpetuate the same bias found in the data. Additionally, since ChatGPT is not able to retain a lot of context over a long conversation, it may not be able to understand the context of a conversation, which can lead to misunderstandings and errors in learning. It's worth noting that these are just a few possible reasons why some schools may have chosen to ban the use of ChatGPT and that different schools may have different policies and concerns. It's also worth noting that ChatGPT is a powerful tool, and it can be used responsibly. It is important to use it in a way that is aligned with the school's policies and goals. Ken WhiteHow can companies and businesses use ChatGPT? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AICompanies can use ChatGPT for a variety of tasks, such as one generating automated responses to customer inquiries. ChatGPT can be trained to respond to frequently asked questions, reducing the workload for customer service teams. Two content creation. ChatGPT can generate high-quality text such as articles, blog posts, and product descriptions, saving time and resources for companies. Three language translation. ChatGPT can be used to translate text from one language to another, making it easier for companies to communicate with global customers. Four text summarization. ChatGPT can be used to summarize long documents or articles, making it easier for companies to extract key information quickly. Five sentiment analysis. ChatGPT can be used to analyze customer feedback and determine the overall sentiment towards a company or product. Six personalized communication. ChatGPT can be used to generate personalized communication, such as emails, messages, and social media posts, to improve customer engagement. Seven chatbot and virtual assistant. ChatGPT can be used to build conversational chatbot and virtual assistant to provide instant and accurate response to customer queries. Ken WhiteWhat are the implications of ChatGPT on the world? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AIThe implications of ChatGPT on the world are likely to be both positive and negative. Some potential implications include one increased efficiency and productivity. ChatGPT can automate repetitive tasks and generate high-quality content quickly, potentially increasing efficiency and productivity in various industries. Two improved customer service. ChatGPT can respond to customer inquiries in a timely and accurate manner, improving the overall customer experience. Three greater access to information. ChatGPT can assist with language translation and text summarization, making it easier for people to access and understand information in different languages. Four advancements in AI. ChatGPT represents a significant advancement in natural language processing and AI, which could lead to further developments in these fields. Five job displacement. ChatGPT could automate repetitive tasks, replacing human workers in certain jobs, which could lead to job displacement. Six ethical concerns. As the technology becomes more advanced and versatile, there are concerns about its potential misuse, such as the generation of deep fake misinformation and the spread of propaganda. Seven dependence. As ChatGPT becomes more widely used, there is a risk that people will become too dependent on the technology, potentially impacting critical thinking and decision-making skills. Ken WhiteWe'd like to give our listeners an example of the content that ChatGPT can generate, so I'll ask this question. Explain the US Stock Market in simple terms. ChatGPT & NaturalReader AIThe US stock market is a system where companies can raise money by selling shares of their business to investors. When you buy a share of a company, you become a shareholder and own a small piece of that company. The value of your shares can go up or down depending on how well the company is doing. The stock market is where shares are bought and sold. The most well-known stock market in the US is the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq or National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, but there are many other markets as well. The US stock market is also known as the stock market, equity market, or share market. It is a collection of markets where stocks are traded. The stock market is a barometer of the economy and reflects the overall health of the economy. When the economy is doing well, more people are employed, and businesses are making more money, which often leads to an increase in stock prices. When the economy is not doing well, stock prices may decrease. Overall, the stock market is a way for companies to raise money and for investors to make money by buying shares of those companies. It can be a high-risk, high-reward type of investment, and it's important to have a good understanding of the market and the companies you are investing in before putting your money into it. Ken WhiteShould people be concerned about a future with ChatGPT? ChatGPT & NaturalReader AIWhether or not people should be concerned about a future with ChatGPT depends on how the technology is used and regulated. On one hand, ChatGPT has the potential to improve efficiency and productivity in various industries, such as customer service, content creation, and language translation, which could lead to a better overall experience for users. Additionally, ChatGPT could help people to access and understand information in different languages, helping to overcome language barriers and improve global communication. On the other hand, the increasing use of ChatGPT and other AI technologies could lead to job displacement, as automated systems may be able to perform tasks that were previously done by humans. Additionally, there are ethical concerns around the potential misuse of ChatGPT, such as the generation of deep fake misinformation and the spread of propaganda. It is important for policymakers and industry leaders to address these concerns and ensure that the technology is used ethically and responsibly. It's also important for people to be aware of the implications of ChatGPT and other AI technologies and to be involved in shaping the future of the technology through their own actions and by participating in the public discourse. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation on ChatGPT. Again, at this point, ChatGPT is a text-based model it does not have voice capability yet. The answers you heard were written by ChatGPT but read by text-to-speech technology. We hope you enjoyed it. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Take charge of your future. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thank you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Anand Anandalingam](images/anand-anandalingam-191-thumb.jpg)
![Ethical Leadership for Tech Entrepreneurs](images/anand-anandalingam-191-thumb.jpg)
Anand Anandalingam
Episode 191: January 21, 2023
Ethical Leadership for Tech Entrepreneurs
Artificial Intelligence, synthetic biology, blockchain, social media, and other technologies continue to change the way we live, work, and lead. At the same time, the reach of technology is expanding daily as more people are connected today than ever before. Now decisions, thanks in part to technology, are often significant and far-reaching. And with that in mind, our guest says tech entrepreneurs must embrace ethical leadership. Anand Anandalingam is a tech scholar, teacher, and consultant. A professor of Management Science at the University of Maryland, he previously served as the Dean of the Business Schools at Maryland and Imperial College in London. He says while tech entrepreneurs have much on their plates, ethics and ethical leadership should be the priorities.
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Anand Anandalingam: Ethical Leadership for Tech Entrepreneurs TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptAnand AnandalingamIn order to raise money. Investors want to see that this company can be successful, will be successful, because they don't really want to risk their money in companies that are not going to make it. So there's a lot of pressure on the leaders of these companies to be hopeful, right? You have to be hopeful. So the thing is, you know, there is much more pressure to be hopeful than to be truthful. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, blockchain, social media, and other technology continue to change the way we live, work, and lead. At the same time, the reach of technology is expanding daily as more people are connected today than ever before. Now, decisions, thanks in part to technology, are often significant and far-reaching. And with that in mind, our guest says tech entrepreneurs must embrace ethical leadership. Anand Anandalingam is a tech scholar, teacher, and consultant, a Professor of Management Science at the University of Maryland. He previously served as the Dean of the business schools at Maryland and Imperial College in London. He says while tech entrepreneurs have much on their plates, ethics and ethical leadership should be the priorities. Here's our conversation with Anand. Anand Anandalingam. Ken WhiteWell, Anand, thanks for taking your time and sharing your time with us. It's great to see you. Thanks for being with us. Anand AnandalingamOh, it's a pleasure, Ken. I mean, I'm happy to be here. Ken WhiteYeah, and you have spent a lot of time in the tech space as a consultant, as a teacher, as a researcher. And you talk about ethical leadership in that space. What is ethical leadership? How do you define that? Anand AnandalingamWell, ethical leadership, of course, transcends tech space. It's for all industries. So just keeping it simple. Ethical leadership means doing the right thing. It's just that simple. Ken WhiteAnd what does that mean, doing the right thing? Anand AnandalingamWell, first of all, a lot of people get confused thinking that ethical leadership means legal compliance. So lots of companies have lawyers helping them, making sure that they don't make any legal mistakes or do illegal things. But that's not what it is. It's really about making sure that you do the right thing by employees, by investors, by customers, your surrounding community, maybe the country, the planet, and even, of course, the shareholders. Ken WhiteRight. But it seems complicated. What makes it so complicated? Anand AnandalingamWell, yeah, right now, things have become complicated because it take something like climate change. Okay, so at the beginning of the 20th century, you made decisions to improve your company, make money, get a market share, those kinds of things. But what we have discovered is that some of those decisions could actually lead to impacting the environment in a negative way, right? Leading to the warming of our planet, for example. So today leaders have to really make sure that while they are making their decisions, they have minimal impact on greenhouse gases, for example. Right? So that means that you really are taking care of not just the profits or profitability of your company or running your company for the shareholders but also for lots of stakeholders and especially the community near you and also for the planet. But there's another reason for kind of making sure that you do the right thing because the young people today are really motivated for doing good. And so, if you really want to hire talented, well-educated students, they will not join your company if you do not take some of these environmental issues seriously. So ethical leadership has become complicated. It's more than simply being a leader and doing a good job in terms of running a company. It's also trying to make sure you take care of lots of things that are outside your company as well. Ken WhiteI think when most of us think of the tech industry, we don't necessarily think about pollution or the planet. But your definition of ethical leadership is yet still important to the tech industry. Why is that? Anand AnandalingamYeah, absolutely. So, yeah, right. Most of the tech industry doesn't really impact the planet in a negative way. Certainly, there are no greenhouse gases coming from Facebook. But the impact of the tech industry is really quite widespread. I mean, today, more than 6.4 billion people have smartphones. That's 81% of the world's population. So if you do anything that appears in a smartphone, it goes all over the world. It goes very rapidly to every nook and cranny of this world and can have quite a lot of impact of, both positive and negative. I can give you a couple of examples. I mean one example, of course, is what we saw during the 2016 presidential election. If you remember, I think we were both living in Washington, DC. There was a young man lived in Central Virginia who found out through the internet that some fake news about Hillary Clinton and the National Democratic Committee keeping young children as hostages in a pizza parlor in Chevy Chase Circle in Washington, DC. So he was motivated to liberate these guys, and so he came with a gun to this pizza parlor to try and get rid of these hostages. All because the information in the internet, which was not correct, was widespread, went to his home in Central Virginia and motivated him to do bad things. So when we are interacting with each other right now doing this podcast, we are on the internet. That's good. So the internet is good. Right? But someone charging a pizza parlor to liberate children because of the internet that's not so good. Right? Ken WhiteRight? Anand AnandalingamSo tech companies have a widespread impact, and it may not be pollution or air pollution, but it certainly pollutes the minds of lots of people all over the world. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. You have five guidelines to help tech entrepreneurs be ethical leaders. And your first one is make ethics the core value of the company. Can you share a little bit more about that? Anand AnandalingamYeah, I think, as you well know, companies and employees and companies and even the stakeholders of a company are looking to the CEO, looking to the leader of the company to reflect their values in how they run the company. So it is very important that the leader, the CEO, needs to make ethics the core value of that company. So the way you do that is to make it clear to everyone. I mean, employees, partners, investors, the community that you're based in, that what you personally stand for, what your values are. And when you do this, you need to make sure that you also make it clear that there are some things in your values and ethics that are non-negotiable. And so I don't want to suggest that leaders come across as being sanctimonious or domineering and behaving as though they know the answers that nobody else does. In fact, they have to be humble, they have to be empathetic, they have to be compassionate, but they have to be very clear about what they stand for in terms of values and ethics. Ken WhiteThat's asking a lot from a leader, isn't it? Anand AnandalingamOf course. I mean, that's the kind of pressure that we right now have on the leaders in the 21st century. Ken WhiteYour second guideline recognize the ethical dilemmas inherent in an entrepreneurial company. Tell us about that. Anand AnandalingamYeah, so this is specific to entrepreneurial companies, but certainly, even well-established companies frequently go through these kinds of pressures. So in order to raise money, investors want to see that this company can be successful will be successful, because they don't really want to risk their money in companies that are not going to make it. So there is a lot of pressure on the leaders of these companies to be hopeful. Right? You have to be hopeful. So the thing is, there is much more pressure to be hopeful than to be truthful. Okay? So you have to really fight the temptation to go that extra step and fudge data, maybe fudge standards, cut corners, sort of build a much more flowery situation than what is reality. And so it is not only important that that becomes part of your ethical core, that you are honest in spite. You can do that while being hopeful. And in some cases, we have seen in the past that company, and especially startup entrepreneurial leaders, have kind of tried to fudge data, and that's got them into trouble, you know, sooner or later. I mean, so one example, of course, is the demise of Elizabeth Holmes, a very famous case. The CEO of Theranos who fudged data to show that her company that was testing blood to figure out what kind of diseases people had. The reason there's a lot of pressure on her to fudge the data was because the industry, the venture industry, had invested a lot of money on her and wanted her to be successful. Then she also became a celebrity. So you had to kind of keep up with your celebrity status. Ken WhiteYeah. Anand AnandalingamAnd so, eventually, she got caught, and she's now in big trouble. So it is important to come to grips with the potential ethical dilemmas and conflicts that companies face and to make sure that while you're hopeful, you're also truthful. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Anand Anandalingam in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before, and that means change for business in your career. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you can play a role in the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, we invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. All taught by the number one-ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Anand Anandalingam. Ken WhiteYour third guideline, redefine success. Anand AnandalingamThat's right. So when life was simple, you could simply say, look, my success has only to do with improving the share value of the company, making sure that we expand market share, we become profitable, and so on and so forth. But right now, you need to define success, or I should say redefine success to align with your ethical values. Right. So you really need courage to redefine what success means to you, regardless of the judgment or the pushback that might accompany your actions. So you need to really get your organization, bring everybody together to define what it means to be successful. How does your actions and the results of your decisions impact not just the company but also employees, stakeholders, shareholders, of course, but also investors, customers, and the community around you? And come up with frameworks that can help you ground these ethics and values in how you define success. Ken WhiteYour fourth guideline, engage in courageous conversations. Wow. That's not easy. How do you define that? Anand AnandalingamAbsolutely, because sometimes when a leader really talks about what it means to be successful, but they also talk about not simply helping the planet and helping people, but also being profitable, there's a lot of pressure on all the people who help run the company on trying to decide how to make it happen. So there will be lots of questions within the company about ethics and values, there will be debates, and so on. And I think it's very important for the CEO to engage the entire community, especially the employees in their company, on how to deal with some of the ethical dilemmas they're going to face. And they are going to face a significant number of ethical dilemmas. And it's important to have that conversation with courage. And the courage two ways. One is the courage to have the conversation, and the second is the courage to have this conversation without judging people who are grappling with these ethical issues. You need to make sure that the stress that they have dealing with the values and ethics that you bring to the company are dealt with sensitively and also that they have a forum in which that they can engage you and ask you perhaps sometimes very difficult questions. So you have to be courageous in allowing yourself to be challenged by people who work for you when they are dealing with some of these ethical dilemmas. Ken WhiteAnd your fifth and final guideline for tech entrepreneurs to be ethical leaders, anticipate ethical tensions and negative outcomes, and try to mitigate them. Anand AnandalingamYeah, of course, in the tech industry, the ethical tensions and negative outcomes are very specific to specific parts of the company. So, for example, if you have a company that deals with big data and AI the algorithms, you may be very proud of the algorithms you come up with, but there is a potential for those algorithms to lead to negative results. So, for example, there's a very famous example where a company, I think it's in the public domain, so I can say it's Amazon used an AI-based algorithm to decide who to hire, who to interview. And it turned out that the algorithm came up with mostly men who were called in for their interviews to join the company. So it's very difficult when you're actually trying to build these kinds of tech companies to anticipate what could actually happen. So one of the things that people have suggested is to really find a way to do what the financial industry and banks have been doing for many years, which is to stress test your technology. So, stress test not only the products of your technology company but also services that your technology company provides by running several simulations and several scenario-based analyses and those kinds of things to make sure that you can anticipate what kind of ethical and values tensions or negative outcomes could come up. Okay, I should add here that I run a podcast called The Future of Humanity, where I have experts and scholarly thinkers, and influencers talk about the challenge of ethical leadership in specific industries. And so, in the podcast, we really deal with different industries. Not just big data and AI but also synthetic biology. We talk about social media, a whole variety of things, drug development, and discuss a lot about how what you want to do, which is really good, might sometimes have negative consequences and how you deal with those kinds of consequences. Ken WhiteTell our listeners the name of the podcast again. Anand AnandalingamThe podcast is called Future of Humanity with Dean Anand. Ken WhiteGot it. And available on all podcast sites. I'm sure they can just check it out. Anand AnandalingamYeah, they can just check it out. They just keyword future of Humanity with Dean Anand. Ken WhiteTerrific. I assume you're having fun with that. Anand AnandalingamYeah, very much so. In fact, it's given me the opportunity to actually learn a lot about some of the ethical dilemmas that people face in various industries. And some of these things are hidden from the public because we are so excited about all these new developments that are happening in the tech industry. And I am excited too. I mean, I am a person with a tech background, as you already mentioned. But nevertheless, I think we have to now be more aware of the potential negative impacts, especially because we are so well connected all across the world through the internet and all these smartphones, that anything that is not so good that happens will have negative impacts very quickly in all sorts of places that you might not even think about. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Anand Anandalingam, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Take control of your future. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Anand Anandalingam and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership and Business. |
![Todd Mooradian](images/todd-mooradian-190-thumb.jpg)
![The New Dean](images/todd-mooradian-190-thumb.jpg)
Todd Mooradian
Episode 190: January 5, 2023
The New Dean
For the first time in 25 years, William & Mary's School of Business, the Raymond A. Mason School of Business, has a new leader. After long-time Dean Larry Pulley announced his retirement and the University conducted a global search, Todd Mooradian was named Dean in August. Mooradian's no stranger to William & Mary or to leadership. He spent 27 years at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business as a marketing professor, Associate Dean, and campus leader. Then, in 2017, he left to become Dean of the University of Louisville's College of Business. After five years there, he was named Dean at William & Mary. He joins us today to discuss his role, coming home, and taking the reins from a long-time and successful leader.
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TranscriptTodd MooradianBut I did commit myself coming in that everybody got a blank slate because when you bring in a new dean or a new leader in any role, that's a chance for people to get a fresh start. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. For the first time in 25 years, William & Mary's School of Business, the Raymond A. Mason School of Business, has a new leader. After long-time Dean Larry Pulley announced his retirement and the university conducted a global search, Todd Mooradian was named Dean in August. Mooradian is no stranger to William & Mary or to leadership. He spent 27 years at the Mason School of Business as a marketing professor, associate dean, and campus leader. Then, in 2017, he left to become Dean of the University of Louisville's College of Business. After five years there, he was named Dean at William & Mary. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss his role, coming home and taking the reins from a long-time and successful leader. Here's our conversation with the Dean of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business, Dr. Todd Mooradian. Ken WhiteWell, Todd, thanks very much for being with us. It's nice to have you on the podcast. Todd MooradianWell, thanks for having me here, Ken. It's so great to be back at the Mason School. Ken WhiteAnd that's what I hear from everybody. He's back. That's what I wanted to talk to you right up front is it is a bit of a homecoming. Our former Dean was here for a quarter of a century, and as you and I both know, he was effective. He was respected and well-liked. Knowing that, what role did that play in your decision to apply for the role? Todd MooradianWell, I'd been a great admirer of Larry Pulleys for more than those 25 years. I met Larry when I was here to interview, and I can remember coming down the hall. They assigned another faculty member to walk you around. And as we looked ahead on my agenda and it said, okay, at 02:00, you're meeting with this guy Pulley. And the person who was walking me down the hall said, this guy is the real deal. He just won the teaching award, he's the best researcher in the building, and he's the nicest guy you'll ever meet. And that was fall of 1989 when I interviewed to come here as an assistant professor. And I can tell you that for the next 32 years, Larry Pulley has certainly lived up to that billing. He's the real deal. We were friends, but the kind of friends where you know which one's the smarter guy in the room. So I listened to Larry Pulley all along, learned a lot from him. And in thinking about that, how that integrated into my decision to come back? I'm not sure it was the driving force. But I will tell you that in five years at Louisville, I learned what a quality organization looks like, both in the fact and in the breach. You know, what pieces were there that are great and what pieces were missing? But I knew that Larry Pulley had built an organization here of quality individuals engaged in a purposeful work for a great institution. So I knew that when I came back, I would be joining a community and an organization that cares about the right things and has obviously made great progress on all the kind of intellectual dimensions of a business school. Great building, great faculty, great students, rankings, resources. But I knew also that it was people who I would respect and trust and want to work with because Larry Pulley built that kind of place. Ken WhiteThere's been maybe a micro trend taking place of people returning to a former employer. We didn't see that years ago. We're starting to see it quite often now in the corporate world and in higher ed. What is that like, coming back home, so to speak, after you've been gone for a while? Todd MooradianWell, two things are true about that. I was here for 27 years, and I care very much about a lot of the people that define this place, and I'm humbled by the recognition that they seem to care about me. So it was coming back to friends and people that I had a natural empathy for and connection with. So it's great fun. Kind of like getting out of the car at Christmas and walking up your driveway, you know, where all the cracks are because you grew up there, and you know the faces in the door that are greeting you. It's been very gratifying. Ken WhiteFrom a leadership standpoint, though, how do you deal with people who know you and knew you in a different role? Todd MooradianI haven't faced any real challenges in that area, but I think that I did commit myself coming in that everybody got a blank slate because when you bring in a new dean or a new leader in any role, that's a chance for people to get a fresh start. It's kind of like the new semester. The old professor didn't really like your writing style, or the old professor knew that you'd gotten a 75 on the first quiz. Now you got a blank slate. And I think that everybody gets that chance with a new leader. And being a person returning to the Mason School, you could think, well, that kind of takes that away. And I committed to giving everybody a blank slate. Everybody that I had a history of who I loved and knew how great they were, I made sure that I was looking at them through fresh eyes, and people who I had to manage before and we had had to work through kind of organizational issues gave them a blank slate. Al Page, the Dean before Larry Pulley, actually called me up when Larry made me Associate Dean ten years ago, and he said congratulations. I said, what advice do you have for me, Al? And he said all I can tell you is give people a chance. They will exceed your expectations. And I'm trying to do that with some intentionality because I think everybody deserves that. Ken WhiteGreat advice, and we have a number of listeners who are aspiring leaders and new leaders. They're in that position where now they're leading their friends. Now they're leading what used to be their peers. And the blank slate is interesting process. Todd MooradianYeah. And the other part of that is it's not about you. It's not about me. Right. You and I work together, Ken, and we join in to get important things done. And you don't have to treat me any differently than you did six years ago when we worked together as associate deans. We joined again. I hope we have a few laughs, but most importantly, we focus on the work and trying to do the best job we can, and we focus on the institution. If I were walking around making sure everybody treated me like something special, I might get disappointed all the time, even at home. But that's not what it's about. It's old friends, old colleagues, and joining together in really important stuff. And I have the great honor of being the one that's the Dean that kind of has some ability to take the tone from the top and set our direction. Ken WhiteYou left here when you were associate Dean to become the Dean of the business school at the University of Louisville. What was that experience like? Todd MooradianWell, nothing was right. You go someplace, and I was calling something this. And they said, oh no, we call that this here. And they did. Even overload pay for faculty, they called it xpay. I could never figure that out in five years. Finally, I was starting to call it xpay. I came back here, and now it's overload again. So the systems were different. And you say, oh my God, no, this is the way that works. And they said, no, not here at Louisville. That's not how it works. So I got to learn a new system and learn to build relationships deliberately and, honestly, authentically. And that was good. Figured out what works, what doesn't work, who I am. And then I will say that Louisville has a very different mission than William & Mary, or at least a philosophy to the mission. Louisville is about creating access for a broad group of people in a relatively well-defined geographic space. Louisville serves Louisville in Kentucky, and it's a broad mission. It takes 22,000 students who would not have had an opportunity otherwise and gives them a great education, accelerates their lives, changes their lives. William & Mary is competing with the very best in the world and winning its share of those competitions. William & Mary serves a small population. It's a global scope. So those things were different. And I learned at William & Mary, we have a 92% graduation rate or something like that. At Louisville, we set a goal of 75% graduation rate, and we were working hard to get there. That was great fun. Those people are so deserving and so wonderful, and they're going to change the world in their own way, but it was different. At William & Mary, we just don't talk about retention rate as much. Maybe we should, but it's almost at maxed step. At William & Mary, we don't look at anyone in the world and think we can't compete with them. And if we do anything at William & Mary, we think, how can we be the very best there is at this undertaking? And at Louisville, we were much more focused on the greater good, on serving those people, on building things that changed lives in a very practical way. So I learned a lot. And I actually think as I come back to William & Mary, that broadening of my perspective to think about those things is really relevant to the whole world and to William & Mary today because we are all starting to reassess who we serve, what good we do for the greater good. What could we do for the world, and how we change the future? So that was really great. The other thing that's different about Louisville is their ACC basketball. So there were 20,000 people in the Wheeler Center every night. So it's kind of a different texture to the experience. It was a big-time athletics program where they were using that brand in the city. And, you know, you and I are both sports people, so that was kind of fun. Ken WhiteSure. Todd MooradianSo now I'm back at William & Mary and Go Tribe. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Todd MooradianTen and one, and I guess at the end, they were eleven and two in football. What a great year! So things are different in ways that don't matter. Like, I love rooting for the Tribe. I love rooting for the Cardinals. And things are different in substantive things about the mission. And then there's language, things like xpays versus overload. And you just learn that you can adapt and function in any system. I think it was good for me. Ken WhiteSo you have one semester under your belt. Kind of tough to get a whole lot accomplished in your very first semester as the Dean. But what were you trying to do in that first semester? Todd MooradianWell, I didn't see this as coming back to disrupt. If you follow Larry Pulley, you don't think you're going to come in and change everything? And I was careful to be listening to be assessing where the opportunities are to make us better, and I accomplished that. I got to hear a lot about what had happened over the last five or six years because a lot happened. It's a different organization here today than it was when I left, and there's different people here. So I listened a lot, and I tried not to come in and change everything. Who was it? Didi Gregorius replaced Derek Jeter. He wasn't trying to be Derek Jeter. Ken WhiteRight. Todd MooradianBut you know what? He signed a $28 million contract, and he hit 20 home runs in three seasons. And he's got to be very proud of who he is. Ken WhiteRight. Todd MooradianBut he wasn't trying to be Derek Jeter. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. You mentioned something that struck a chord about listening. I had a friend who was a long-time associate dean who became a dean, and I talked to him maybe a semester or two into his tenure, and I said, what's the biggest takeaway? He said I didn't realize how much listening I had to do. He goes it's so much. He said, by 01:00 in the afternoon, I can't listen anymore. So you listen a lot, don't you? That's a big part of your job. Todd MooradianI try to listen. To be candid, that's a skill that I always have to work on, listen actively and process and think about what the person is saying and what they're feeling when they say it, and trying to push for more information when we're making decisions. So I work pretty hard at listening. And I don't know if it's exhausting like your friend was kind of implying, but there are days, maybe not at 01:00, but somewhere around three, I'm ready to get back to my computer. But the other part of that is you hire a dean or an associate dean like yourself to be connected to people and to be outside connecting to people outside the school, to be connecting inside. And you shouldn't raise your hand for this job if you don't want to do that. But for me, and especially for me and my wife as a couple, this is really a job for two people. We enjoy those things. Paula worked for the alumni association. We were at a lot of events, meeting people. Now that I'm representing the institution, you have to listen. The only way to raise support for an institution is to listen to what the person with those resources, passions are and to connect what we do to those passions. And so I raised my hand, I'm enjoying it, and twist my arm give me a job where I have to go to wonderful events and listen to wonderful people talk about their relationship with William & Mary. Ken WhiteAnd much of that is working and meeting with alumni all across the country. What is that for people who don't understand the role? What's that like? How much of your time do you spend meeting with alumni? What do you do? Todd MooradianWell, there's various levels of that. There's a lot of events where you're meeting with people in relatively large groups, so you have to be practiced, and you're a great communicator, Ken, so you understand this. In an organized way, communicate what we're doing that's compelling and important. And if you're up in front of 40 people, it's not individual, and it can't be rambling. You have to be able to tell the story about the Mason School of Business pretty quickly, and 30 years here or 27 years before I left helped in a big way because I know a lot of those people. I know the underlying structures and values that drive what we do. So that's a big part of the job. And then meeting with the key donors or the key partners who are thinking about changing our world with the resources that they have. First of all, it's great privilege. Can you imagine representing the Mason School? And it's a lot about listening, as you said earlier, listen to what they want. There's a guy, Panas, Jerold Panas, that has written several books about fundraising, and he turns it around a little bit. You're not out asking for money. You're out asking to go to work for those people, to help them do for the world what they want to do with the resources that they've accumulated. And there's a story about this guy Schuller out in California who was the television minister, and he wanted to build a new church, and he went to an architect and said, I need you to design this wonderful church. And the architect said, well, what resources do you have to build the church? And he said I don't have any. We got no money. You've got to design something that's so compelling. People can't wait to give us the resources to build it. So the great fun of connecting with people who are going to contribute to William & Mary and help us be different in the future than we are today is connecting what we can be in a vision that they can't help but want to support. And that's fun. It's not asking for money. You hear people, and they say, oh, I wouldn't want to be a dean. You got to go out and ask for money. We don't ask for money. We help those people who have been fortunate in their lives to accumulate assets and resources, put those things to work in a way that they and their family want to do to change the world. It's great fun. I'm not sure I'm the best at it. I hope I'm getting better, but that's the two pieces of it. I have to be able to talk to a group, and I have to be able to listen to an individual and connect their passion to ours. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Todd Mooradian in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before, and that means change for business and your role in it. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you could be a part of creating the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, we invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA all taught by the number one ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Todd Mooradian. Ken WhiteNot to put words in your mouth, but our alumni blow me away. They are just incredible. We've had several on the podcast, but their success, what they do, what they're doing with their lives, the way they conduct business, and their personal lives, I'm assuming you're in awe half the time, and some of these people are just really remarkable. Todd MooradianOh, they certainly are. And you go out, and you meet with people, and it reinforces something that I think is true when we come back in here. And you and I have been a lot of strategic planning meetings and talking about what our strategy is going to be going into the future. And one of the things that we've latched on to is that a Renaissance education or a broadening education that creates polymaths or Renaissance people is something special about William & Mary. And that's not just something we say when we're in the boardroom talking about what are we going to build things around, what strengths are we going to parlay into success. It's when you meet with an alum from William & Mary, nine out of ten times they surprise you with the breadth of their understanding of the world, the curiosity, all those qualities of a Renaissance person or a polymath or William & Mary person. There's a book out right now, Range. It's been out a couple of years, but it basically makes a 17-chapter argument for William & Mary because it's all about the virtue of being exposed to ideas broadly and being taught to think critically and to continue to learn. And that's special about our education. And it turns out every time you meet with an alum, like you asked about, sit down with an alum from William & Mary, you come away thinking, what a smart person and what a nice person. Curious, asking questions, learning. That's the special quality. And, of course, some of them have been fantastically successful, and a lot of them have just been great William & Mary alums, faithful to their school, and proud of it. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. You've mentioned a couple of times about reading. Are you a big reader? Todd MooradianI am. My mother was a librarian, also an artist, so at the University of New Hampshire, she was a librarian and she taught art in the school system. And my sisters and I always had a book in our hand, and I still read a lot. Of course, now you and I read a lot about what's going on in higher education, what's going on in business education, and with all the digital delivery of things to read, it can be a little overwhelming. But I do read a lot, and it comes honestly. My mother was a librarian. She used to look at us and say, you know what? Let's have quiet time and read. And that might not have been my favorite thing when she said it when I was six, but it became kind of ingrained in me. Ken WhiteYour parents have definitely had an effect on you. Most conversations with you, your parents come up, either your mom or your dad. You talked about your mom. Tell us about your dad. Todd MooradianMy dad was a football coach really coached football, basketball, and baseball at the University of New Hampshire at a time when coaches didn't just coach one sport in the 50s, and then he focused on football and then became the athletic director at the University of New Hampshire. And as a matter of fact, the football field is named after him. They're not the stadium, but the field is Mooradian Field. And I'm kind of waiting until everybody forgets how that happened and start to tell him it was named after me, but it was named after my dad, and he was a coach that believed in coaching by encouragement. He wasn't a Bobby Knight. He was whatever you did. It was the best you could do. What did we learn, and how do we go on to get better kind of a coach and very emotional, passionate coach? And I do think I learned from him how to get people engaged in a way that we're not going to look back and look to assign blame or what went wrong. We're going to look at what did we learn? How can we go forward and do better? And also something about athletics, I think, teaches you that you should always aim high. And my dad had an expression people would say, oh, well, UNH is playing Boston College. What are you going to do? And it's Boston College. He'd say nobody laces 'em up to come in second. We're going to go out there and give it our best shot to win. Ken WhiteYeah. Todd MooradianAnd I think that kind of what I took away from hearing him always positive and always looking to aim high was that that's the role of a leader. Give people a chance to be great, encourage it, invest in them. I'm not being critical of Bobby Knight, but that's a different leadership style. Ken WhiteSure. Yeah. What would your parents think? Would they be surprised at what you're doing now? Todd MooradianWell, after my freshman fall semester, I would say that there were conversations that this was not where they thought I was headed. But I learned I thought I was a pretty good student other than that one semester where I was pretty good at getting to know campus and where all the fun was. Ken WhiteYeah, sure. Todd MooradianI was a good student. I don't think they'd have thought I would go on to be a professor and a dean, necessarily. There was a time that my dad asked me if I wanted to be a coach, did I want him to connect me to other opportunities in coaching. And I just decided that that wasn't for me. And then, my dad offered to pay for graduate school when I finished undergraduate because we were in the early 80s recession. And he said, if you get a little money in your pocket, Todd, you'll never go back to graduate school. So I think we found our way together on that. But how did I end up being a dean? Gosh, are so fortunate in so many ways that nobody could have predicted. Ken WhiteJust like every industry, everything is sort of upended post-pandemic. What do you see ahead for the business schools and the United States in the world? What's the future hold? Todd MooradianWell, everybody bemoans that the traditional college-age demographic is shrinking. So we're going to come off a demographic cliff here. And there's not going to be enough 18-year-olds in 2025 to fill all the universities. Everybody, all of the deans that you go to these deans meetings as you and I do, and you hear people talking about the spiking competition and all the new modalities and all the new varieties of programming from certificates to degrees, but nobody ever says, and the world is just too smart. The world still needs education. The demand is there. So we're fighting with increased competition. We're using new technologies and new delivery methods. We're packaging our products in new ways like certificates and badges and stackable certificates as well as degrees. And that's all true. But driving the future has to also be a recognition that the world needs business education. So we're going to find our way. You asked earlier about coming back to William & Mary. We've got a great brand. So one of the really refreshing things was to come back and say, I'm at a place that's a top 40 university, second oldest institution in the country. We have a dominant brand in the mid-Atlantic of the United States. We need to grow that to be a global brand. But we have some strengths that we can bring to bear to help define that future that you asked about. I think we're going to define it around broadening education, the thing that William & Mary has always done. We're going to define it around excellent teaching, never compromised for research, but coupled with research. And we're going to define it around the William & Mary notion of quality and impact. And so we'll define our own future. What do I see at the macro level for the whole world of business education? It's going to stay chaotic, kind of dynamic for a while. There's so many competitors coming in, so many new ways of delivering. I wouldn't be able to see that into that looking glass. Ken WhiteYeah, fair enough. What would you say to maybe a family who comes to William & Mary and a prospective student, a high school student who's thinking about business school at William & Mary? Why should they consider the Mason School of Business? Todd MooradianWell, it is a Renaissance degree in management, so it's situated on one of the world's great liberal arts campuses. And we will make a person not only deeply skilled in business but broadly educated to think from different paradigms. That's really important. There's an expression T shaped people now. It's been out about ten years. The first time I heard it was about ten years ago. But it's about giving people the breadth and then also giving them the vertical of a tier, the depth, and we certainly are a great business school. They're going to leave here with all the deep knowledge of business to be a successful and impactful employee from day one, but also across the 30 years of their career. They're going to be able to think from different perspectives. And we have a model for delivering that at William & Mary. They have to take math. They have to take two sciences. They have to take social sciences. They have to take literature and philosophy. And each of those disciplines that they get a deep immersion in has a way of knowing the world and solving problems. So the value of the horizontal on the T, the value of being situated in one of the world's great liberal arts campuses, is that you can solve a problem like a chemist, or you can solve a problem like a philosopher. A philosopher does deep reading, steps away from it in hermeneutic circles and understands the text, and takes knowledge in that way. A chemist sets up an empirical experiment and measures things. Both of those are skills that are going to help a business person. The other thing I'll promise them is four years in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the campus of William & Mary. What a great thing. If I had an 18-year-old looking for a school. Both of mine are out of school now. But four years here with faculty that engaged with you, with wonderful student life in this beautiful place, with your classmates, if we have 6,000 students, there's 5,999 other people that are a big part of your experience. I would tell them they can't do better than send a young person to William & Mary. Ken WhiteYou have an MBA, which, oddly enough, people, I think, are surprised to find out. Many people who work in business schools don't have MBAs. They may have doctorates in business or doctorates in a specialization. But having an MBA, what do you see with our MBA students, our online, our full-timers, our part-timers, our executive MBAs? Why should they consider the Mason School of Business for their MBA? Todd MooradianWell, an MBA teaches you everything about a business in a particular way. It's not just the tools or the pieces. It's how they fit together. And if you get a good MBA, you understand the lifeblood of the organization. You understand how accounting contributes. You understand what finance does. You understand how the PNL works and where the margin comes in on a sale. You understand in a systematic and holistic way how that organization functions and survives. Nothing else gives you that. If you get an MS in data analytics or you get an MS in finance, you know a piece of that puzzle. And at William & Mary, and I say this, we developed a new curriculum. And when I say that you took the lead on that five years ago, it's a wonderful curriculum to do just what I just said. To get the students deeply involved in experiential education, that shows them how that complex system that is a business organization works. What's the lifeblood of the organization? And I would say there's no other preparation that gives a student that perspective. And we deliver that in four different ways. But we always emphasize that holistic, strategic understanding of how a business succeeds and endures. So I think that there are skill sets that have specific half-lives, like analytics, where they won't be using the same tools in 15 years in analytics, but MS in analytics gives you a great leg up to get into an industry that's going to be there in 15 years. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Todd MooradianBut an MBA isn't as skills-based as it is perspective based and a language-based paradigm, a way of thinking. And there's only one degree like that. That's the MBA. Ken WhiteIf you had a message for our alumni as a new dean, what would it be? Todd MooradianI'm really pleased to be back in a role that connects us to the alumni. I spent 27 years here, and it's so great to see you. The alumni of William & Mary are just terrific. And people that remember different things that happened in class. So thanks for having me back, would be my first message, and it's great to see you. The other thing I would say is by hook or by crook, I'm the Dean, and I can assure our alumni that we've been working hard to get better across all of this time. So since they left, we've changed, we're doing things better, we've been true to our core values, but most importantly, I'd invite them to come back and help us build better still. Our alumni are one of our great assets, and they have a perspective on the world and how a William & Mary degree can help them or help new generations change that world. And I'd love to have you come back and talk to me about how we can do better. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Todd Mooradian. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Take charge of your future. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Dean Todd Mooradian, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Students, Faculty & Staff](images/students-faculty-staff-189-thumb.jpg)
![Holiday Binge Watching](images/students-faculty-staff-189-thumb.jpg)
Students, Faculty & Staff
Episode 189: December 21, 2022
Holiday Binge Watching
It's the holiday season, and ordinarily, at this time of the year, we would suggest some good books for you to read as you hopefully get some time off to relax. Not this year. This year was different. If you're like most professionals, you worked harder than ever this year. On top of that, finding time to exercise, sleep, and interact with family and friends seemed more challenging. Many professionals are flat-out tired. They need some downtime. So, instead of recommending books to read over the holiday, we suggest you kick back and take time to binge-watch some good television. We spoke to students, faculty, and staff at the William & Mary School of Business and asked them to share some suggestions for holiday binge-watching. We have ten recommendations for you, plus a bonus recommendation.
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Students, Faculty & Staff: Holiday Binge Watching TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptCaroline EngleI recommend it because the cases are really intriguing, really detailed. It's very period specific. If you're interested in Victorian England, it's some of the best dialogue I've ever heard in a show. Really great chemistry between the two leads. It's romantic. The mysteries are really interesting. You don't really see the outcomes ahead of time. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's the holiday season, and ordinarily, at this time of the year, we would suggest some good books for you to read as you hopefully get some time off to relax. Not this year. This year was different. If you're like most professionals, you worked harder than ever this year. On top of that, finding time to exercise, sleep, interact with family and friends seemed more challenging. So many professionals are flat-out tired. They need some downtime. So instead of recommending books to read over the holiday, we suggest you kick back and take time to binge-watch some good television. We spoke to students, faculty, and staff at the William & Mary School of Business and asked them to share some suggestions for holiday binge-watching. We have ten recommendations for you, plus a bonus recommendation. We begin with MBA student Chandler Blankenship. Ken WhiteAll right, what do you recommend for somebody to binge-watch over the holidays? Chandler BlankenshipSo I just finished the Murdoch documentary on HBO Max. I think it's about eight episodes, and if you have any interest in the business world or News specifically, it kind of pulls the curtain back. It's a deep dive into the family as a whole. The different eras at which News Corp. has kind of gone through. The family turmoil that kind of shaped the show Secession, which is also a really good show. But I'd say if you kind of want to have an understanding of what that whole family did and kind of where News is now, they've had a crazy footprint, so it's really, really good. Ken WhiteDid it surprise you? Is it what you expected? Chandler BlankenshipIt's a lot more than I expected. I was familiar with the family solely through some of the low-hanging fruit with Fox News and things along those lines, but it goes through the expansion throughout Australia, into London, and then into America, and then the different aspects of culture they've touched for the last 30 years. It's pretty shocking. It's pretty wild. Ken WhiteThat's MBA student Chandler Blankenship, who recommends The Murdochs: Empire of Influence on HBO Max. Stephanie Hilaire is also an MBA student at William & Mary. She recommends the popular comedy-drama Ted Lasso, available on Apple TV. Stephanie HilaireJason Sudeikis plays. I believe he's from Texas, so he's the head coach of a football an American football team, and he travels with his assistant coach, I think is what you call them. But he ends up taking a head coaching role with a British club team for soccer. So it's about his struggles moving to the UK and just really learning the game of soccer and really trying to help the soccer team fulfill its great attributes. Ken WhiteIt's extremely popular. Why do you think? Stephanie HilaireI think it's because it's so wholesome. It's the way that they've written this show. He's just such a good and wholesome character, and he really just wants the best for people. And he's so kind, especially in the face of all the adversity that he is facing in this new culture. And it's absolutely incredible just to see the differences and the challenges that he's faced with. Ken WhiteMBA student Stephanie Hilaire recommending Ted Lasso. For something completely different and darker. Cody Watson, Director of Marketing at William & Mary's School of Business, shares his suggestion. Cody WatsonI have to recommend Peaky Blinders, the entire series. And there's going to be a movie, but it's not out quite yet, so you get time to get caught up before the movie comes out. Ken WhiteTell us about Peaky Blinders. Cody WatsonPeaky Blinders, it's a little rough. It's got a little violence in it. But I have to recommend it for the holiday season because it does take place in the 19 teens in the UK. And so naturally, there's a lot of snow and cold weather, so it kind of fits the ambiance. But it's a mob show about some mobsters in Birmingham, in the UK. Ken WhiteWhy do you like it? Cody WatsonI like the story behind it. I think the story of a man's gritty resilience to succeed and to go from the bottom to the top. It's like that whole Godfather kind of mobster thing. It's cool. Ken WhiteThat's Cody Watson suggesting Peaky Blinders available on Netflix. Professor Phil Wagner says this next show is so good it's addicting. Phil WagnerOn Netflix, there's this wonderful miniseries. It's called Stutz. Ken WhiteOh, tell us about it. Phil WagnerJust came out a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago now. So I'll try to represent it well. It is a warning. The weirdest thing I've ever watched but one of the best things I've seen in recent years. It is Jonah Hill, who's in a host of comedy movies like you know him from 21 Jump Street. A lot of, like, lowbrow movies that you've seen. It is him making a documentary in conversation with his therapist, who has dementia. And it is hilarious. It is moving. It is filmed just in a really strange but wonderful way. And it's addicting. KenProfessor Phil Wagner recommending Stutz, available on Netflix. Before becoming an MBA student at William & Mary, Caroline Engle worked in network television, so she knows quality TV when she sees it. Caroline suggests this show. Caroline EngleI recommend Miss Scarlett and The Duke. Ken WhiteWhere is it available? Caroline EngleIt's available on PBS. Ken WhiteWhy do you recommend it? Well, first of all, tell us what it's about if you would. Caroline EngleYeah, so it's about the first female detective in Victoria in England. She runs her own detective agency, and she is childhood friends with a police detective who works for Scotland Yard. His character is nicknamed the Duke because his last name is Wellington, the Duke of Wellington. So not actual royalty involved, but it's very interesting. Ken WhiteWhy do you recommend it? Caroline EngleI recommend it because the cases are really intriguing, really detailed. It's very period specific. If you're interested in Victorian England, it's some of the best dialogue I've ever heard in a show. Really great chemistry between the two leads. It's romantic. The mysteries are really interesting. You don't really see the outcomes ahead of time, so it's a fun watch. Ken WhiteThat's Caroline Engle with our fifth recommendation. Miss Scarlet and The Duke on PBS. Of our ten recommendations for holiday binge-watching, only one is in the reality TV category. Elizabeth Eldredge, Associate Director, Digital Strategy and Content Creation at William & Mary's Business School, says The Amazing Race is the show to binge. Elizabeth EldredgeSo, Ken, I recommend watching The Amazing Race. Have you watched it before? Ken WhiteNo, I have to be the only person in America who hasn't. But yeah, please tell us about it. Elizabeth EldredgeSo it's an adventure series. They take contestants anywhere from ten to twelve teams each season, and they race around the world in pursuit of a million dollars. So they have to overcome all these obstacles and whatnot. But what got me into it is they started around 2001, and I had been on my study abroad program then, and so I loved traveling. I was in ten different countries over four months, and getting back, I missed that. I missed the adventure, and I'm an adventurous person by nature. So looking at this coming live then, it was really fun to watch because I could live vicariously through these people. And what's fun now that they're on their 34th season, I believe, is my partner and I. We're going back through all the seasons we missed, and we'll pick out our favorite couple or partner and see who we think has the grit to get to the end. So it's really fun. And we'll make little bets and wagers with ourselves. So one of us has to cook dinner if we get it right or not or whatnot. So it's a really fun show. And what's neat, being in the mix for over 20 years now, is that you can actually follow people and see where they are in life now. What became of them, what did they do with the money, or what couples lasted, what didn't? So it's just a really fun series. I highly recommend it. Ken WhiteSome movies you watched as a teenager stay with you for years. That's the case with this recommendation from Mike Ryan, Director of Corporate Relations and Employer Development at William & Mary. Mike Ryan100% recommend Cobra Kai. I am a child of the 80s and early 90s. If anybody remembers The Karate Kid, it was one of my favorite movies back in the day. If anybody knows Cobra Kai, it came out, and the series started in 2018. The first season and it really relives really fast forwards to when in Karate Kid, they were 16 teenager old nemesis Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso. It brings you back to real-time where they're in their fifties, and it looks at what they're doing today and how they still are competitors and still going after each other, but kind of roles have reversed. When you looked at Johnny Lawrence was the bad guy back in the day, he was the leader of Cobra Kai, and Daniel LaRusso was the good guy that got the girl. And from the movie's perspective, back in the 80s, you always sided with Daniel LaRusso because he was like the hero beating out the bad guy. Well, it shows how over time, were you really looking at the right bad guy because you see that Daniel LaRusso grows up, became the owner of this car dealer, and he's really kind of a little schister with how he does deals and wheels. And Johnny Lawrence is really becomes a handyman has a tough time finding a career path. And it takes a look at really the challenges they face with how their lives took different paths. And when you look back at the movie, they take snippets of the movie in real-time and show you how really it wasn't Daniel being the good guy. It was really Johnny that might have been not so bad a guy as you thought he was. So season there's five seasons, and season 6 may be coming out soon, but I need to catch up. I've watched season one. I can't wait to watch two, three, four, and five. So I'm going to be really binging over the holiday break. Ken WhiteMike Ryan saying Cobra Kai on Netflix is the one to watch over the holidays. MBA student Louise Song likes to binge-watch a series that originally aired when she was in middle and high school. Louise SongSo currently, I'm watching Ugly Betty on Hulu, and this show is probably, I don't know, like 15 years old, maybe 20. But it's a story about Ugly Betty, who is America Ferrera, and she breaks into the fashion industry, specifically media, and that's where she's always wanted to go. But she winds up in fashion media, and she's a complete outsider. She shows up the first day wearing a poncho, and everybody's in, you know, like skinny like dresses and heels. So it's got quite a lot of seasons now. I believe it's like ten. So you get to see the progression of Betty Suarez and how she breaks into this industry from an outsider, and she really works her way up and her own character development, her own values, what she keeps with, what, you know, she kind of sheds and transforms into, I love the fashion. Even though it's 20 years old. I also believe fashion is cyclical. So I'm seeing what trends come back through, but I just love the storyline, and I think even watching something that's so old, the values still resonate. And every time that I rewatch it, I identify with a different character throughout. So before, I really identified with Betty, who's trying to break in, but now I kind of identify with the antagonist, which is Wilhelmina Slater, and she's seen as this big, scary person, but you're also seeing her storyline of her breaking through with her own values and what she wants to achieve in her career and her life. So albeit sometimes it's not the best way to go, but it's new tactics that I'm like, oh, I haven't tried that before. Ken WhiteLouise Song recommending Ugly Betty, originally an ABC series now available on Hulu. Star wars fans will like what MBA student Ben Carson has to say. Ben CarsonSo I would hop on Disney Plus and check out kind of the three main Star Wars series that have come out. The Mandalorian, Boba Fett, and Andor they all kind of lead into each other. And even if you've never seen Star Wars, they're really good watches because it gives you a different side of it, even if you have seen Star Wars. So that would be the three that I would recommend. Ken WhiteCan you describe it to us? Is it sci-fi? What's it like? Ben CarsonYeah, so it's more Sci-Fi, and it kind of follows along the different main characters within their own series. And there's action. There's some intensity. I wouldn't say there's a lot of romance in it, but there's a little bit here and there. But it's definitely intriguing because it leads them around on their stories, and you see a lot of character development throughout each series. Ken WhiteHow much time do you need to invest to watch this? How long is it? Ben CarsonEach episode is about 35 to 40 minutes, and I would say all in total. There's four seasons right now throughout the three series, and so I would say probably a good 20 hours, 25 hours worth of watching, but it's definitely worth it. Ken WhiteThat's MBA student Ben Carson recommending the Mandalorian, Andor, and Boba Fett on Disney Plus. For our 10th suggestion, I'll join in, if you don't mind. If you like the Jason Bourne movies or shows with spies, fights, and chase scenes, I highly recommend The Old Man, an FX series available on Hulu. Season one had eight episodes, and it aired last summer, and most published reports are saying season two will be released this summer. The Old Man is a fantastic series with Jeff Bridges and a terrific cast. He plays a former CIA operative who's been living under the radar for decades, and then suddenly, he's pulled back in, and man, is he a force to be reckoned with. It's smart. It's exciting and perfect for binge-watching The Old Man on Hulu. And for our bonus recommendation, we suggest the dark comedy Barry on HBO Max, created by Bill Hader, formerly of Saturday Night Live. Who plays in the starring role? It's a funny story about a professional hitman who moves from the Midwest to Los Angeles to conduct his business. And while there, he gets hit with the acting bug. It's Bill Hader. It's dark. It's funny. That's Barry on HBO. Max. Ken WhiteSo there you have it. Eleven suggestions for binge-watching over the holidays. We hope you'll take some time over the next few weeks to relax, recharge your batteries, and watch some good TV. You deserve it. That's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Thanks to our students and colleagues at the William & Mary School of Business for sharing their recommendations, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. For all of us at William & Mary, happy holidays and best wishes for an outstanding 2023. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership and Business. |
![Mano Watsa](images/mano-watsa-188-thumb.jpg)
![The Commitment-Based Organization](images/mano-watsa-188-thumb.jpg)
Mano Watsa
Episode 188: December 5, 2022
The Commitment-Based Organization
There are countless parallels between business and sports; teamwork, sacrifice, expertise, winning and losing, innovation, leadership, and commitment. Our guest today is the President and Owner of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world. PGC has camps across the United States and Canada dedicated to teaching young people how to succeed on and off the court. While the PGC camps are spread out geographically, so is its staff. It's fully remote, and has been for years. Yet, the organization's president, Mano Watsa, has built a highly successful team by creating a commitment-based organization. He joins us today to talk about the commitment-based organization, the people it attracts and retains, and why it leads to success.
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TranscriptMano WatsaEvery new staff member in our company creates their commitment statement. It's not what they're going to do. It's not their goals. It's who they are committed to being. What we've discovered is that results come from behaviors, but behaviors come from who you are. Who you are drives what you do, what you do drives the results that you get. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. There are countless parallels between business and sports. Teamwork, sacrifice, expertise, winning and losing, innovation, leadership, and commitment. Our guest today is the President and Owner of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world. PGC has camps across the United States, and Canada dedicated to teaching young people how to succeed on and off the court. While the PGC camps are spread out geographically, so is its staff. It's fully remote and has been for years. Yet the organization's president, Mano Watsa, has built a highly successful team by creating a commitment-based organization. He joins us today to talk about the commitment-based organization, the people it attracts and retains, and why it leads to success. Here's our conversation with Mano Watsa. Ken WhiteMano, great to see you. Thanks for being with us and sharing your time today. Mano WatsaPleasure being on the podcast, Ken. Ken WhiteYeah, well, tell us about, first of all, your organization, PGC Basketball. It doesn't sound like a basketball camp that I went to when I was growing up. Very different. Mano WatsaIt is very different, and PGC stands for Point Guard College and our founder, Dick DeVenzio, who passed away now, many years ago. We just completed our 30th year of running our camps, or we like to think of them more as courses, as players hear it in the classroom, they see it on film, and then they go on court and do it at our five-day, four-night overnight camps that we put on over the course of the summer. And we put on over 150 camps through the year across the US and Canada. But Point Guard College was really founded on the premise of teaching players, not just point guards, but any player who wanted to learn how to think the game, to teach them what it actually takes to run the show for a team and to be the coach on the court. So really, we're training players how to be leaders for their teams. Ken WhiteYeah. And, you know, you hear that about point guards, right, and quarterbacks all the time, how they're leaders. Well, you grew up playing ball and playing other sports. How did that affect you and your leadership development? Were you putting the pieces together as you were a young athlete growing up? Mano WatsaI think I was putting some of the pieces together, playing a variety of sports, and really competing. I lived for sports growing up, but it wasn't until I actually attended Point Guard College as a high school athlete that then the light bulbs turned on for me in terms of the impact that I could have on our team through my leadership. It really revolutionized for me how I thought about playing sports and the impact that I could have. Ken WhiteAnd then transitioning that from leading on the court or on the field, or on the ice to leading in a business environment. Mano WatsaAbsolutely. Because one of the things I learned at Point Guard College is to lead. It wasn't just a basketball concept. It was a way of life. If you're a point guard and you're running the show for your team, figuring out how to make your teammates better, how to create a winning championship culture, how to be a great communicator and facilitator, and how to make your teammates stand out, well, that's not just something a point guard in basketball has to be able to do. A quarterback on a football team is the point guard. A CEO of a company is the point guard. And so, really, what I had to figure out as we began growing PGC when I came in and helped to take over for our founder, what I had to figure out was what does it mean to be the point guard of our company? Ken WhiteIt's interesting over the many podcasts that we've done, how many leaders and CEOs grew up playing sports, of course, and how the vast majority of them are so committed to their workouts as well. So those connections are pretty obvious between the two. Mano WatsaDefinitely. Ken WhiteSo you and I were talking right before we started to record about your organization being a commitment-based organization. Can you tell us about that? Mano WatsaSure. So we've attempted over the past 15 years to build a commitment-based culture. And I'll contrast that against a behavior-based culture. In a behavior-based culture, employees and business owners relate to each other based on their behaviors, whereas in a commitment-based culture, we relate to our staff and to each other based on our commitments. And so the way this plays out is this every new staff member in our company creates their commitment statement. It's not what they're going to do. It's not their goals. It's who they're committed to being. What we've discovered is that results come from behaviors, but behaviors come from who you are. Who you are drives what you do. What you do drives the results that you get. And so we pull all the way back to who are you committed to being? And with most sports teams, even with most companies, it's typically the leader setting the expectations for everyone else and everyone else trying to live up to their bosses' or their coaches' expectations. And what we've discovered through creating a commitment-based culture is that when we empower our staff, our employees, to create their own commitment statements, they actually create commitments that far surpass even anything I would attempt to create for them. And so they create these two or three-paragraph commitment statements of how they're committed to showing up, who they're committed to being. And then what we do is we coach them into it. When we see them living out their commitments, we celebrate them and encourage them. When we see them falling short of their commitments, we remind them, and we come alongside them and say, how can we help you to live out everything you're committed to being? And it's created this culture of camaraderie, connectedness, a sense of we're all in this together. Whereas in a behavior-based organization, Ken, what typically happens is we see somebody falling short of our commitment that we had for them, or I should say, our expectations that we have of them, and then we get frustrated with them, and then we're calling them into our office, and we're having a conversation about the standard that we have. We're trying to pull them up to our standard. And what we found is it tends to lead to writing off an employee tends to lead to employees getting discouraged or frustrated. And we found that a commitment-based culture has just given us a significant edge from a business standpoint in terms of how we do business day to day and how we relate to each other day to day. Ken WhiteAre there goals in the statement or metrics in there? Mano WatsaNo. So all goals and metrics would be separate from that. And it's within their onboarding process. Every employee, they'll see a few examples of commitment statements, but they will create their own commitment statement. And then, in our week-to-week meetings every week, employees have the opportunity to share their commitment statement. So it's not just something that's one and done. They share their commitment statement. And then, whether it's within their department or a larger staff-wide call with our 40 or 50 full-time staff, we'll have two or three staff members every month share their commitment statement in front of the whole company with all the staff. And then, we take time to acknowledge how we've seen them live out their commitment statement. We call them celebrations. So part of our culture of commitments is a culture of celebrations because most employees are not encouraged enough, are not recognized enough for their good efforts. And as much as we can try and do it as a business owner, it's like a head coach of a basketball team. They can't provide all the encouragement that their teammates need, and they don't even see all the good efforts of their team. And so, as we help coaches in basketball to create a culture of celebrations, they're actually training their players to see the best in each other. And so at PGC, we're actually training our employees to look for and see the best in each other and to highlight it, acknowledge it, celebrate it. And so it really creates a special culture where everyone seeing the best in each other. And when somebody does fall short, everyone's coming alongside them, saying, how can I help you win? How can I know this is who you're committed to being? I'm not seeing you live it out in this way, so how can I support you? And it's really created a supportive environment. Ken WhiteYeah, one of my questions when you started talking about it, was, they don't share them, do they? But that's part of the backbone of the whole thing is I share my statement with you. Mano Watsa100%, 100%, and then we know what we're all committed to. Ken WhiteYeah. Mano WatsaAnd when we see others living out their commitments, we celebrate the heck out of them. It's not only affirming, but for everyone else, it's aspirational as well. When we see somebody else and hear about someone, how somebody else is showing up, I think it inspires us to raise our game and raise our standards as well. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Mano Watsa in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before, and that means change for business and your career. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you can play a role in the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA all taught by the number one ranked faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Mano Watsa. Ken WhiteNow, you mentioned a couple of people will share at the meetings. Is everybody's statement available to everyone else? Mano WatsaYes, at any time and within departments, commitment statements get shared. And then within the larger company, as I mentioned, on our monthly staff-wide calls, because we all work remotely. And Ken, one of the things we had to figure out, the pandemic has caused many companies to shift over to working remotely. We've been working remotely for 15 years, and so we had to figure out how do we build a world-class culture remotely. And it took us many years and me working with a top organizational culture coach to figure out how do you create a culture that everyone feels a sense of belonging that no one wants to step away from. That's not easy to do. And so we've had to work really hard to create a world-class culture even though we're not together in one place. Ken WhiteSomething that companies and organizations all over the world are struggling with right now. The fact that how can I lead the way I've always led when people aren't coming in and meeting on a regular basis? Interesting time for leaders right now. You seem to be ahead of the game. Mano WatsaWell, we've had 15 years of trial and error and figuring out what doesn't work and what does work. And you have to communicate much more effectively when you're working online. It requires more touchpoints. We have everyone in our company has a weekly coaching conversation with whoever they report to. Every week there's a department call, and then every month, there's our staff-wide calls, which are celebratory to appreciate everyone and connect with everyone, to keep everyone together. And then, we have in-person department meetings and an in-person yearly celebration as well because those are critical to helping to ensure you're creating a strong sense of camaraderie and community. Ken WhiteDo the celebrations are they on a smaller level as well or are they mostly on the organizational? Mano WatsaActually, every call that anyone steps into or any meeting in person, we begin every one with 90 seconds to two minutes of celebrations. It could be something as simple as what are you grateful for today? Or how did you see someone else show up this past week? Or what's an accomplishment you're feeling really pleased with and proud of right now? Or how have you lived out some portion of your commitment statement? We have lots of different ways we do celebrations. We try not to just focus on what everyone is doing and accomplishing because we're not human doers. We're human beings. And so we try and focus on who is everyone being. And it really creates a culture of gratitude and a culture of positivity. Ken WhiteHave you seen any differences between genders or generations in terms of the culture? Mano WatsaNo differences. The only difference is when somebody comes in who hasn't been immersed in it. It's a culture shock. Ken WhiteI'm sure. Mano WatsaBecause most aren't used to celebrating others, encouraging others, most people aren't used to finding each day. What am I grateful for? And so there's usually an acclimatization. And our culture is definitely polarizing. There have been occasions where somebody has come in and said, I think that's not for me. And that's a good thing. When you have a culture that polarizes, you're probably on the right track. And for those who step in and say, I love this environment. I want to be at a place where I'm recognized, appreciated, and valued. And when those people come into our company, they feel right at home, and they say, this is a place that I want to be and that I want to stay and work for forever and for the rest of my career. And as a business owner, you love to hear that. Ken WhiteWe've seen survey after survey over the last ten years where the inputs are changing. It used to be money was the key driver that just keeps going down the ladder. And what keeps moving up is I want someone to say thanks. I want someone to appreciate my effort. And so you're seeing that first hand, which is fantastic. How do you apply that to the young athletes who you work with? Mano WatsaYes. So we train coaches. We train thousands of coaches each year through our coaching clinics. And actually, over 1500 coaches attend our camps as well to see how we build culture and train leaders. So we teach it to coaches, and then with the players, we actually do it. When we're at our camps, we give them the opportunity to partner up and give each other feedback. What are they doing well? What can they improve upon? So we've created an environment at our camps where there's a high culture of feedback. And if you're running a company and you haven't created a culture of feedback, then employees are going to be hesitant to give meaningful feedback. Not just the encouragement but gaps that need to be closed and areas that need to be improved upon. They won't give that feedback unless you've created a culture of feedback. And you have to create a culture of feedback by creating a culture of vulnerability where everyone is willing to stretch themselves and be vulnerable and to be vulnerable. That all begins with humility and understanding that we're all, I like to call it, a joyful work in progress. We're all a work in progress. We are as business owners. Our companies are, our employees are. And if you can approach things that way and, as a business owner yourself, be receptive to feedback, and then your employees will as well. So within our camps, we create a culture of feedback with the players, and then we train coaches on how to, within a team environment, begin practice and end practice with 60 to 90 seconds of celebrations. And one of the things that celebrations often does is it actually reinforces your culture and standards because what tends to get celebrated are the things that you're actually emphasizing. And so, for teams, it's a really potent and powerful way to actually aid coaches in keeping their standards top of mind. Ken WhiteYou're working with young people, obviously, all the time, as I am. I feel great about this young generation who's going to be the leaders of the future. What are some of the things you see, and how do you feel about the next generation moving in as leaders? Mano WatsaFirst of all, I often hear adults talk about their concerns with the next generation. But I think every generation has this in common. They all want to make a difference, and they all want to be valued and pursue something meaningful with their lives. I know my three teenage kids are the same way. So what I see from young people, especially the young leaders we work with, just amazing, outstanding young leaders. I see them full of passion and full of a sense of purpose, of wanting to contribute. They want to, I think, even societally, they want to fix things that they see are wrong, and they want to be difference-makers in the world. And we do our best to equip them, to give them tools and inspiration to do that within their own team setting. If they can do that within their team setting, they're going to be really well prepared to go do that in a larger world when the ball stops bouncing. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mano Watsa. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. The new year is right around the corner. Take control of 2023 and your future. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Mano Watsa and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Mano WatsaWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership and Business. |
![Joe Jordan](images/joe-jordan-187-thumb.jpg)
![The Domino's Pizza Story](images/joe-jordan-187-thumb.jpg)
Joe Jordan
Episode 187: November 21, 2022
The Domino's Pizza Story
It's hard to imagine life without pizza, and difficult to imagine pizza and pizza delivery without Domino's. It all began in 1960 with one store in Michigan. Now, Domino's is the number one pizza restaurant in the world, operating in 95 countries. By the end of the decade, Domino's expects to have 30,000 stores. Ninety-eight percent of the stores are owned by franchisees. And 95% of store owners worked at a Domino's before becoming owners. It's a success story fueled by a love of pizza, opportunity, and innovation. Joe Jordan is President of US Business and Global Functions at Domino's. He's been with the organization for 11 years. He joins us to talk about the pizza business, Domino's guiding principles, and what it takes to stay on top.
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TranscriptJoe JordanIt really is because it can be a sea of sameness. And we like to think that customers think about our brands a lot more than they do. We're thinking about it all the time. But no, there's particular moments and occasions that they're going to be thinking about us. And how do you make sure that one, you're going to be top of mind, and then two, you're going to be top of mind with a relevant brand difference for them? Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's hard to imagine life without pizza and difficult to imagine pizza and pizza delivery without Domino's. It all began in 1960 with one store in Michigan. Now, Domino's is the number one pizza restaurant in the world, operating in 95 countries. By the end of the decade, Domino's expects to have 30,000 stores. 98% of the stores are owned by franchisees, and 95% of store owners worked at a Domino's before becoming owners. It's a success story fueled by a love of pizza, opportunity, and innovation. Joe Jordan is President of U. S. Business and Global Functions at Domino's. He's been with the organization for eleven years. He joins us to talk about the pizza business, Domino's guiding principles, and what it takes to stay on top. Here's our conversation with the President of Domino's, Joe Jordan. Ken WhiteWell, Joe, you just finished speaking with the first-year students in our full-time MBA program, and several of them afterward came up to me and told me how much they enjoyed your talk. But a number of them caught your passion. They said, wow, he's so passionate about what he does. What drives you? Joe JordanI love the business, and I've always loved food as a business because it's so tangible, and you can get into the stores, you can get into the restaurants and see it. But the thing that makes me, and I believe pretty much everyone that works at Domino's, really passionate about the business is our franchisees. I mentioned in the presentation 95% of our franchisees started as drivers or pizza makers in our stores. And these are people who pizza is their life. It's not a job. We say that they have pizza sauce running in their veins, and they do. And they're in their stores 364 days a year. They're working when I'm home with my family when I'm on vacation. Their stores are open. So I feel an obligation to them, and it's a responsibility that I don't take lightly and that I take a lot of pride in. In helping make their lives better, and they help make their communities better. And so we're not just selling pizza. We say the power possible is what we talk about, one pizza at a time. And that's what our franchisees do, and I try to help them do it, and I love it. Ken WhiteOver 90% of the franchisees come from within. That seems like a real differentiator. Joe JordanIt is a special sauce for us. Certainly, because it is a hard business, it's not an overly complicated business, but it's a hard business to run well. As I mentioned, you're open seven days a week. You're open late. Your busiest nights are Friday and Saturday when everyone else is at home. Having someone who knows what they're getting into, who isn't just investing in a business or buying themselves a job, as some franchise organizations are that way. This is someone who cares about pizza. They love pizza. They come up. We have a franchise management school that you need to have worked in the store before you can become a franchisee. You can't just write a check and buy a store. You have to know what it's about. If you know what it is about. We've seen that result in better stores, better operations, happier customers. Ken WhiteYou discussed the principles that lead Domino's and the organization. How are they created? Joe JordanYes, some of it is explicit. Some of it, I'll be honest, is a little rearview mirror strategy. It's, hey, we were really successful here. What did we do? Let's go back and look at that and try to codify that so we can replicate it. And so things like embracing revolution around new and inspired. When we relaunched our pizza, we didn't say in 2009 2010, let's embrace revolution. We said we have to do something, that this company is in a very tough position. Our franchisees are in a tough position. Then as we worked through that, and it was so successful, we said, all right, what made that successful? It's because we weren't incremental. It's because we were big. We were bold. I've never seen an idea get bigger as it works its way through a company. They typically get smaller as they work through the operational complexities, the legal complexities. So let's start as big as we can, embrace that revolution, have big ideas, and have them be as big and as impactful when they finally hit the market as well. Ken WhiteWhen you think of those big ideas, does one, in particular, come to mind, or are there many? Joe JordanYeah, there are a lot of them, but it's new and inspired, obviously, and coming out in the first place. And that's the grandfather of them. Instead of just saying, new and improved, we said, hey, our pizza was not good. That was the beginning of the modern era for Domino's Pizza. But since then, we created a pizza delivery car. We worked with Chevy. We worked with Roush and Aftermarket. We crash-tested these things. I mean, we're a pizza company. What are we doing? We're showing our passion to give customers a great pizza experience. And whether it's that, whether it's paving potholes, so our customers don't end up tipping their pizza off their front seat as they're driving home, we want customers to say. I can't believe a pizza company just did that. And that that's our action standard. Ken WhiteI can't believe any company would publicly say, we don't like our product. We are starting over. That's bold. Joe JordanIt's Cortez burning the ships a little bit. Right. There was no going back from that. And there were a couple of nervous nights. And huge credit to Russell, who is our current CEO. Patrick, who was our CEO at the time, for being willing to take that chance. And it was a chance because I don't think anyone had done something quite like that before. Others have replicated since, but it ended up working. But it was a risk. Ken WhiteOne of your principles is uncommon honesty. And that ties into many of your campaigns. Joe JordanYeah, we talk a lot about tensions, and the tensions are these coiled-up discomforts. That's how we talk about them. And one of them in our brand was we were a pizza place without good pizza. That's a real tension. Another tension at the time, particularly around 2009, 2010, a lot of protesting, a lot of people feeling that the government wasn't being honest large organizations weren't being honest. So we could have just said new and improved and been out there and not taking a risk and not had the same reaction. But our values are internally uncommon honesty with each other. Shouldn't we treat our customers the same way? And shouldn't we go out there? And it has the dual benefit of being who we are genuinely. But then breaking through in all the media noise that's out there as we're trying to get our customers attention. Ken WhiteMan, isn't breaking through tough? Joe JordanIt really is because it can be a sea of sameness. And we like to think that customers think about our brands a lot more than they do. We're thinking about it all the time. But no, there's particular moments and occasions that they're going to be thinking about us. And how do you make sure that one, you're going to be top of mind, and then two, you're going to be top of mind with a relevant brand difference for them? Ken WhiteAnd so many channels requires great creativity. How does Domino's approach that? Joe JordanYeah, we're fortunate in that we have a fantastic team. Our marketing team in the building are some of the most creative marketers who are as passionate as I am about the business and using that, oh, yes, we did standard. We're also very fortunate. We work with an advertising agency out of Colorado called Work in Progress, and they've been fantastic brand partners for years who understand the brand and what we're doing. They're not coming up with ideas to win awards, which many agencies do. They're coming up ideas that will drive our business then, that happened to win awards as well. Ken WhiteThe tagline oh, yes, we did. Seems to be a big piece of what Domino's stands for. Joe JordanIt really is. And again, from a tagline perspective, I think it's okay. Some customers will play it back. What I want customers to playback is the underlying sentiment underneath it of this is a company that I'm occasionally taken aback by what they're doing. And they care so much, they think so much about this, whether it's changing the ordering process or helping drive recycling on pizza boxes, which a lot of people are very confused about. They're thinking about this whole thing and trying to make this better for me. And I can't believe someone would be that maniacal about pizza. Ken WhiteIt's fun, and it's a differentiator. Joe JordanIt is, and it helps make our business run better, and it helps make our brand stronger for our customers. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Joe Jordan in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before, and that means change for business and your role in it. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you can be a part of creating the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, we invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA all taught by the number one-ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Joe Jordan. Ken WhiteWhen you talked with our students earlier today, you discussed defining why. That's a Domino's principle. Can you tell us about defining why? Joe JordanYeah, I think otherwise. It's really easy to be in an ideation or to see these ideas from your agencies and for things to feel scattershot, to not feel like they're all coming from the same brand. And we talk about the magic of pizza, and the magic is creating magical pizza experiences. And again, you combine that with the, oh, yes, we did action standard. And is this something that's going to really create a magical pizza experience? How is it going to change our consumers again, ordering process, the value that they're getting from 20 minutes delivery, the guidance around recycling? Just how do we continue to make that better for them? Ken WhiteYou mentioned the ordering process. How do people order today? Joe JordanYeah, we say there's over 34 million ways to order Domino's Pizza, so there's a lot of different ways to come at it. But it's digital. There are still double digits of customers who are calling our stores, but the large majority are our business, 80% plus, significantly higher in some markets around the world, approaching 98%, 99% digital. And it's more app and mobile-based than desktop. As we continue to as every one of us is carrying an ordering kiosk in our pockets these days. And that's great because what it helps us do, in addition to giving a great experience for them in that one occasion, is that's our data, that's our information. We know when you ordered. We know what you ordered. We know that you ordered a lava cake last time. You didn't order it this time. On Tuesdays, you tend to order this. But if you're ordering on Sundays when football's on, you order something differently. How can we suggest different things to you? How can we reach out to you with a text or an email at the right time to drive that purchase consideration? So digital has been a huge boon for us. It's something we were ahead of before the Pandemic, certainly. A lot of money and a lot of time has been spent by our competitors since the Pandemic, as we've seen the adoption for more traditional QSRs, whether it's legacy like McDonald's or newer competitors like Chipotle. Ken Whiteand QSR stands for? Joe JordanQuick Serve Restaurants, so sorry. Ken WhiteWhen it comes to how people get their pizza, you have two basic types of customers. Joe JordanThat's right. Yeah. So carry out and delivery. So delivery is our legacy. It's who we were. It's what we started. We were the first ones to go there. That's a huge part of our business, and it will always be a huge part of our business. There's customers who love that convenience, just being able to stay at home, know that they're going to get a fresh, hot pizza within the promised delivery times. But then there's another group of customers who are a little more price sensitive. Maybe they don't want to pay a delivery fee. Maybe they don't want to tip a delivery driver. And they also like the control of being able to go into the store, grab the pizza, make sure the pizza is right, and then a little bit also be the hero when you come home. We hear that as well. Certainly, from parents walking in the door with pizza, you're greeted by your kids as a hero. So carry out and delivery really two different, certainly in many cases, customers, absolutely two different occasions that we're trying to understand the needs for and fulfill against. Ken WhiteThose two customer types. Is that just in the U.S.? Joe JordanThat is globally. That is absolutely globally, yeah. And we're traditionally delivery first around the world, but we do have markets that are significantly bigger in carry out around the world. So the great thing about it is it's two different businesses. But the box, the store, we can leverage that store, that restaurant for both businesses. So having more carry-out locations, customers won't drive too far for carry-out. They're not going to drive past a couple other restaurants to get to yours. So the more restaurants we have, and we've seen this as we build more restaurants, we drive our carry-out business, the more restaurants we have on the delivery side, we have a shorter drive to your house. So you get a fresher, hotter pizza, you're more likely to come back. And it costs us less to drive because we're not driving as far. So the two businesses really can be synergistic from a real estate and restaurant development standpoint. Ken WhiteGrowth at Domino's has been consistent over the years. It's really pretty incredible. Joe JordanYeah, we've been very fortunate. We've grown the volumes in particular as we think about the orders that we put through the stores. More recently, with inflation, I think we're all seeing prices go up, and so we're seeing growth on that part as well. But when we look back to pre-pandemic and post-pandemic, we've grown both our delivery and carry-out businesses pretty significantly. The great news is we're still in the 20s in our share of pizza. When you look at overall QSR, overall restaurants, we're in the low single digits. So we're just getting started. Ken WhiteGetting back to the Domino's principles. One is get innovation ready. Can you tell us about that? Joe JordanYeah. And that's about aligning your internal teams and making sure that as you think about defining your why does everybody understand that? Not just the marketing team. Your technology team needs to understand that. Your supply chain team needs to understand that so that you can all be rolling in the same direction. Otherwise, maybe they're thinking about some new infrastructure project in supply chain and SAP, and we're trying to launch this new ordering platform. And what's more important, and how do we prioritize, and what are we really going after? Ken WhiteIn your talk this morning with our MBA students, you showed a number of television commercials that Domino's has aired over the years. And while I was watching, it occurred to me, yes, Domino's is, of course, in the business of pizza, but it's also a storytelling organization. Is storytelling important to Domino's? Joe JordanIt is, and we want an emotional connection to the brand, not just a functional connection. Yes, we're going to give you hot pizza at a great value, and we're going to get it to you quickly, but we want consumers to understand the why behind it because that's going to get them to think about us as a brand differently. And the only way you can do that is to first understand that why, but then make sure when you're telling those stories, what's really Domino's about them and is it not just plug X brand in here as a lot of advertising, unfortunately, is what's uniquely Domino's about it. Ken WhiteThat's hard. Joe JordanIt's very hard, but it's fun. It's also a lot of fun. And when you get it right, when you see that ad out there, and you're wearing the logo in an airport, and we were running an Inflation Buster special recently, so it seems like everything is 20% more expensive. We're going to give you 20% off, and you're getting stopped as you're going through. You guys thank you so much for doing that. And whether it's the potholes or whatever it may be, customers continually stopping you and saying, that's fantastic. That's great. Hey, I didn't know all your stores were owned by local franchisees. And when they play that back, it's a different connection with the brand. It's not just functional. Ken WhiteWhat's ahead for Domino's? Joe JordanOh, it's different flavors, but more of the same. So we need to continue to dominate in delivery and get our service right. And as we're in an inflationary and labor-crunched place, we need to make sure we're staffing our stores appropriately and giving the service that's expected. I continue to believe that, particularly within the carry-out space, we have so much growth opportunity in the U.S. to still grow there. On the international side, missed it by one. We opened 999 stores last year. I would have been swinging a hammer myself if I knew we could have gotten to the 1,000. But there's still so much opportunity for us to grow in markets around the world. Markets opening triple-digit stores per year. Markets like India and China, where, again, we're just scratching the surface. Ken WhitePeople like their pizza, don't they? Joe JordanPeople like pizza. Dough, sauce, and cheese works pretty well universally. We might see different topics around the world, but yeah. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Joe Jordan. That's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. The new year is right around the corner. Take control of it and your future. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Joe Jordan, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership and Business. |
![Chris Caracci](images/chris-caracci-186-thumb.jpg)
![Building Customer Loyalty](images/chris-caracci-186-thumb.jpg)
Chris Caracci
Episode 186: November 5, 2022
Building Customer Loyalty
Think of your favorite brand—maybe it's Apple, Bose, Dominoes, Netflix, Jeep—whatever your favorite, most likely the quality of the product is excellent. But that's not enough to make you loyal to the brand. According to our guest today, there are two other important elements that lead to brand loyalty: The environment where the product is delivered, and the quality of the customer service. Chris Caracci helps organizations build customer loyalty. He spent years at the Disney Institute working with clients across the world. Today, he teaches at the William & Mary School of Business and continues to help businesses and organizations with their loyalty creation initiatives. He joins us to talk about building customer loyalty.
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TranscriptChris CaracciWho are you hiring? If they don't already have a propensity for delivering a great experience, and they do that through their attitude and their behavior. If they already don't have a propensity for that in their own personality, it's very difficult to train. Female SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Think of your favorite brand. Maybe it's Apple, Bose, Domino's, Netflix, Jeep, whatever your favorite. Most likely, the quality of the product is excellent, but that's not enough to make you loyal to the brand. According to our guest today, there are two other important elements that lead to brand loyalty. The environment where the product is delivered and the quality of the customer service. Chris Caracci helps organizations build customer loyalty. He spent years at the Disney Institute, working with clients across the world. Today, he teaches at the William & Mary School of Business and continues to help businesses and organizations with their loyalty creation initiatives. He joins us to talk about building customer loyalty. Here's our conversation with Chris Caracci. Ken WhiteWell, Chris, nice to see you. Welcome back. Chris CaracciThank you. Ken WhiteIt's nice to have you on the podcast again. Chris CaracciIt's great to be back. I'm happy that I could do another podcast with you and talk about another great topic in service and loyalty. Ken WhiteYeah, and this is certainly what you do. This is certainly your wheelhouse, so to speak. How important is service and good service to consumers in America today? Chris CaracciFor the American consumer, it's very important. You don't find that everywhere in the world. But for Americans, they rank service up there with product quality. So even if they're buying a product of the highest quality, they still want an experience, a service experience around that product that matches the quality of the product. So I always tell my students, when I'm teaching them about experiences and product quality, that those are the two things that every industry experiences. You have a product that you're selling, and then you have the experience surrounding that product's sales, surrounding that product's delivery, surrounding that product's servicing as it goes through the product life. And those two things accompany every single transaction that we have as consumers. Whatever it is we're buying, it doesn't make any difference. And what I have found in my 30 years with Disney is that people really crave a quality service experience. Your product can be one that they can buy somewhere else. Somebody's copied it. If you're like any organization, somebody, if you have a great product, somebody's trying to duplicate it somewhere. They want the quality of the experience because they can feel that. They often will assume this is always the case with Disney because of the brand of Disney. The brand already speaks to a high-quality product. So consumers and customers will come if they come to one of our parks or if they purchase one of our products, or see one of our films. The assumption is it's already going to be good or great because it's Disney, and they have high-quality standards around their products. What they crave, though, is the experience around the delivery because that's not so much something that they can assume is going to be good. And they compare that with everything else in their lives. When they can go out, whether they're buying dry cleaning or they're buying a meal at a restaurant, or they're going to a film, they can look at the quality of those products, but they also want to experience how that's going to be delivered to them and sold to them. And that often is the deal breaker when it comes to a person going back and purchasing that product again or purchasing from that same organization again. They will often, as we have discussed many times, Ken, they will often settle for a less-than-quality product to get a higher level of experience. And that at least is the case with American consumers. Ken WhiteBut it's nice for a place like Disney to have A+ on both sides of the fence, right? The product and the experience? Chris CaracciWell, it's the secret sauce. Ken WhiteYeah. Chris CaracciIt is that thing that, while Disney left us, always pay attention to your experience because your experience matters. And he had such intentionality around paying attention to detail, the smallest of detail, both around product quality, obviously, but also around experience quality, which means that as a business, you have to invest in the experience as much as you invest in the product. And if you don't, then they become imbalanced. And consumers feel that right away. You go in, and you are expecting a high-quality product, which you can get. You see in front of you that the experience is less than stellar, and they walk away going, hmm, I don't know if we'll do that again. I don't know if we'll buy that again. I don't know if we'll buy that from the same vendor again. They're making decisions because of the impact that the experience has on us. Ken WhiteSo, where do you start with your organization? You want to embed this service ethos in the culture. Where is step one? Chris CaracciStep one is it's in your people primarily. Service is delivered through your product, through your setting or your environment, and through your people. But the vast majority of the delivery is through your people, whether that is face-to-face delivery or voice-to-voice delivery, or keypad-to-keypad delivery. We spend a lot of time there because we know that's at the beginning of the great service experience. And the great service experience is what fuels the loyalty. Loyalty is not generated from average experiences. Ken WhiteRight. Chris CaracciIt's from great experiences. So knowing that, and we've known that for a very long time at Disney, especially from Walt Disney, is we have to invest in our people. And that's going all the way back into that process to who are we attracting to work for us in any capacity? How are we attracting them? How are we recruiting them? And then all the steps following that. How do we interview for attitudinal fit? How do we interview for service fit? How do we place you in roles where we get the highest and best use of your people skills? And I say that, and sometimes it sounds like, well, you know, we can hire anybody. We're desperate for labor. Let's just hire somebody, and then we'll train them to deliver great service. And I would say, well, yes and no. Right. Who are you hiring? If they don't already have a propensity for delivering a great experience? And they do that through their attitude and their behavior. If they already don't have a propensity for that in their own personality, it's very difficult to train. Ken WhiteYeah. Chris CaracciSo Disney and we've talked about this before, Ken. Disney tries to make sure that it filters out that portion of the population, which we know is about 15% to 20%, at least of the American population, that doesn't have that propensity. They see things negatively. They don't have good outlooks on most things. They kind of live in this gray world that doesn't make for much happiness. And we try to, Disney tries to, at the very front end, filter out that individual because otherwise, if it lets them through, even though they may have the skill sets we're looking for from technical skill sets, we're letting in our door something that we're going to be dealing with their entire career because they'll never have that propensity to the level we want them to. So they'll be, I don't want to say untrainable, but there'll be a difficult training target for us. And we'll spend vast amount of resources trying to change them to the place we want them to be. Ken WhiteAnd we all know them, we know who they are, whether we work with them or they're a part of the organization with which we're doing business, right? Chris CaracciExactly. I joked that we're a part of our family, that 20% exists as part of our families, and we know who they are. Ken WhiteHas that 20% changed over generations, over time? Chris CaracciNo, I haven't seen that. We haven't seen that it roughly fluctuates between 15 and 20. And that's enough for us to know that in the hiring process, we have to have that radar on to be able to detect that kind of personality. A lot of people try to talk their way through that. If they're part of that 20%, they try to talk their way through that. But we've got very keen people who are doing our training, or not our training, but our hiring and recruiting. And they are looking specifically for that because they know it's an uphill battle if we hire those people. Ken WhiteBut that's a great amount of work and effort. That hiring and investment, basically. Chris CaracciA lot of investment. So there are layers of vetting that we put all of our potential employees through, candidates for employment through because we're looking for that fit. It's a behavioral fit. It's an attitudinal fit. If we hire that individual, and most of our 99% of our hires are that individual or that kind of, if you will resume that we're looking for, that will help us, then when we come to the onboarding process, and we start onboarding them to what does great customer service look like? What does your attitude need to be when you're speaking to people face-to-face or voice-to-voice? What are the things that you need to be doing to engage them and send them messages that are friendly messages accommodating messages? We can train the people who have a propensity already for that kind of personality that we can train them much more easily, and they're much more adaptable to than the structures that Disney has around service. So that is our goal. So to have a classroom full of those people is a joy because you're not fighting a few individuals in the room who just don't want to go along on the journey or who just are. They don't believe what you're saying, and we don't have time for that. We want to have a classroom full of people who are. And it's interesting when we talk about that personality type. You find that propensity for service in certain professions more than you do others. You find it in teachers, you find it in people who go into education, you find it in clinicians like nurses and therapists and physicians to a certain degree. It's an attitude of, well, I want to help people. I want to help them do better. I want to give them a good experience. And those are the same kinds of people we're trying to hire. Ken WhiteAgain, a major investment, but for Disney, it shows that it pays off. Chris CaracciIt pays off. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Chris Caracci in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before, and that means change for business and your role in it. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you can be a part of creating the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, we invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA all taught by the number one-ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Chris Caracci. Ken WhiteSo how does that get to what you call loyalty creation? Where's that bridge? Chris CaracciAs we just spoke about, the product quality, the three things that impact service the most are the product quality, the environment where it's delivered, and the level of service. So if I take one of our parks in Florida as an example, at Walt Disney World, the Magic Kingdom Park, there is a setting there, obviously, that people are entering into as consumers. There are lots of people, thousands of people working in that environment. And then there are processes that are behind the scenes that are driving every single interaction. So in a very real sense, what that might look like is I have an employee who works in the custodial department at the Magic Kingdom. Their primary functions, their tasks, are to keep the place clean, so they keep the ground clean, they empty the garbage bins. That's their primary function from a job perspective, but from a purpose perspective, which is all around the experience perspective. They're taught these are the top ten interactions that, in your role, you're going to have with our guests today. And they're going to very specifically say when somebody comes up to you, and you're going to get this because you're very visible with people in the street doing your work, the top ten questions are somebody comes to you, and they need directions, how do you react? Somebody comes to you, and they need to find the restroom facilities. How do you react? Somebody comes to you, and they have an emergency, a medical emergency, or something. How do you react? So what we do, and our guests never see this, but we are actually not scripting, but we're creating scenarios for every one of those questions. And we're intentionally teaching those to our employees, our cast members because the right answer is when somebody needs directions, I don't know, that's the wrong answer because that's not what they want from you. And that's part of the experience. If you don't give them directions because you're not informed and prepared, and you're not willing attitudinally to take a moment from your work to stop and help them, then they stand there with their map, they still don't have an answer to their question, and they have to find somebody else to ask. Immediately that is a ding on the experience. Right? And they haven't paid a premium amount of money to come into the park that day to get an average experience like that or a no-answer experience. I'm sorry, I don't know. That's not valid. If you take your entire experience environment around anything it is you're selling, Disney or anything, and you dissect it down to, this is what we need to know, this is what our people need to know. Attitudinally this is how they need to approach it when they're talking to somebody on the phone, or they're talking to somebody face to face, or they're problem-solving with a customer, whatever that is, the more information that they have coupled with their propensity for delivering service anyway because that's their personality type. You couple those two things together, and you have a winning service experience. And that has nothing to do with any individual product. That example of somebody who's in the park that day and they're just trying to get from point A to point B, right? Maybe to experience a different product, but point A to point B, now they just need some direction. So it's almost at the periphery of the individual experience. It's a large circle that goes around everything. And for Disney, and this drives completely into creating loyalty. That experience begins with the first contact that that customer has with the organization. So it may be a phone call to make a reservation to stay at one of Disney's hotels. And then it goes all the way through to those repeat visits that the guests may have at the other end to a lifetime, really is what we're trying to do because Disney's business is a generational business. We not only want to win you over as an advocate. As a promoter. As promoter scores would call it. A promoter for our business. But we then want you to pass that on to your children and to your grandchildren and to your family members. Whatever that family is of yours. However, you define that. Because then it keeps moving generation to generation. And we have another opportunity to turn those people into advocates for the business. And that advocacy is really what drives the loyalty. Loyalty is two things. Always two things. It's the customer's willingness to come back and repurchase whatever that is or reexperience. And the second part of loyalty is the intent of that person to recommend. And often what happens with Disney, because it is a premium priced product, is that a family or an individual might be able to come and experience like our park products in Florida maybe one time, two times in their life because it takes a lot. Ken WhiteSure. Chris CaracciIt takes a lot of resource to be able to do that. We want to make sure that that's a stupendous time for that particular guest and their family or whatever that looks like. But even more so, we want to make sure that they walk away and they talk well about their experiences. And that is the intent to recommend. The intent to recommend is the thing that I think that a lot of people who sell product and service, they don't think enough about. When this person walks away, how many other people are they going to talk to about their experience? And now, they can get on social media, and they can tell thousands of people with a click of a button. I had a great time. The experience was fantastic, or the experience was okay, the employees weren't very knowledgeable, or even worse, this happened, which was disaster, and then this happened, which was disaster, and nobody fixed that disaster. And then there was another disaster. They can talk about that in a click of a button. And that's driving that loyalty factor because if somebody listening to that is hearing a less than stellar story, then they're thinking about whether or not they even want to come experience for the first time. So that loyalty generation is critical for us and creating those advocates in our customers who, even though they may not come back or don't come back that often, they talk about us continually because they're Disney advocates, right? They love the brand. They love the stories. They love the products. And that's what we try to turn every customer into. Now, things happen. We're not a perfect organization. Things happen. But we have found in our own metrics at Disney that when we can recover successfully when there is a breakdown in the service experience, often if we recover, that person will rate their experience higher than if they never had a problem to begin with, which is a very interesting statistic, right? If we recover well because often in that recovery, the recovery is so well designed and so intentionally cared for that the person comes away and goes, wow, I wasn't even asking for that, but Disney did that, and I wasn't expecting that. It's an all very unexpected experience, which is part of the experience, and the recovery happens, and the person walks away, and they're more of an advocate now than they were before. It's a strange thing, but it happens. Yeah. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Chris Caracci, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Take control of your future. Check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Chris Caracci, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership and Business. |
![Dan Webber](images/dan-webber-185-thumb.jpg)
![How Are You Innovating?](images/dan-webber-185-thumb.jpg)
Dan Webber
Episode 185: October 21, 2022
How Are You Innovating?
Whatever business or field you're in, standing still is not an option. That's why so many are placing an emphasis on innovation. With that in mind, Tribe Innovation at the William & Mary School of Business recently hosted Innovation At Work, a panel featuring professionals who spoke about innovation and the role it plays in their respective organizations and sectors. One of the panelists joined us afterward: Dan Webber is with Edelman, the global communication firm that works with businesses and organizations to promote and protect their brands and reputations. Webber is the President of Edelman's Washington, DC, office. He says in his work innovation is about a long-term trajectory for success. He joins us to share how he and the Edelman organization view and implement innovation.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Whatever business or field you're in, standing still is not an option. That's why so many are placing an emphasis on innovation. With that in mind, Tribe Innovation at the William & Mary School of Business recently hosted Innovation at Work, a panel featuring professionals who spoke about innovation and the role it plays in their respective organizations and sectors. One of the panelists joined us afterwards. Dan Webber is with Edelman, the global communications firm that works with businesses and organizations to promote and protect their brands and reputations. Weber is President of Edelman's Washington, DC office. He says in his work innovation is about a long-term trajectory for success. He joins us to share how he and the Edelman organization view and implement innovation. Here's our conversation with Dan Webber. Ken WhiteWell, Dan, thanks for joining us. It's nice to see you. Dan WebberIt's good to see you. Thank you so much for having me here. Ken WhiteAnd I'm glad you made it. It's one of the rainiest days of the year in Williamsburg, Virginia. Dan WebberI wouldn't miss it. I wouldn't miss it come hell or high water, as they say. Ken WhiteYeah, thanks. Well, it was so interesting. This panel you just served on, a number of industries represented talking about innovation and how the role it plays in various industries. But to start off, for those who don't know Edelman, and I know many people do, I think that maybe a lot of people think, oh, that's the group that is all about building trust and often meeting with clients when that's in jeopardy. Is that fairly correct? Dan WebberTo some, yeah. There's a lot of reputation protect, reputation repair. But we started as a consumer marketing, consumer PR shop 70 years ago, and that's still a big chunk of what we do of helping our clients understand who their audiences are, particularly in that case, customers, and making sure that we're building trust around their products and services. And that's a fun world to be in because we have creatives, we have digital experts, we have strategists who are helping our clients think differently amongst the noise that's out there of cutting through that noise to reach customers in a new way. And a lot of it is driven by purpose and their values. And that's what we see a lot in our trust data, is that people want to purchase products from those companies and organizations that they believe in, that their values align with mine. So that's a big chunk of what we do. But yeah, I spend a lot of my time on the corporate reputation piece. And that's a place that is super interesting because it also ties directly into the values and the purpose of the organization. And so we're seeing a lot of that in our trust data. Ken WhiteSo in the panel, the topic was innovation. When you hear that word, do you think how we think about it at Edelman? Do you think how we think about it with the clients? Where does that land? Dan WebberYes, it's a great question, and particularly in my role at Edelman, where I have the privilege and honor of helping run a team, a pretty large team. There's a big part of innovating in how we show up and what we offer our clients. And it is a constant pursuit because if we're not relevant and we're not bringing something new or interesting or challenging to our client, then they might find that from somebody else. So that is an everyday sprint. And we have to keep our eye focused on what's down the line in a few weeks, months, or even years so that we can be relevant for our clients. But at the end of the day, we have to be super focused on our clients missions. And so when we're working with a client, we're really thinking critically about what's making them tick all the way from their customers and then within their organization, our clients, what are their needs so that we can be helping them address their challenges. So it's kind of a split. And sometimes, particularly for anyone new into an agency world, it can be challenging because your mission is twofold. It's growing our work, but you can't grow our work without our clients. Ken WhiteI think it was you that mentioned on the panel big problems require big solutions, right? And are clients ready for that when you come in? Dan WebberSometimes they are because they're forced to. And I think in the crisis work that I do, a lot of times when I interact with a client in a rapid response environment, they're being forced to look at it differently. Sometimes they are because the environment around them has changed so much. I think we talked on the panel about COVID and everything that happened in those two years, forcing organizations to think differently about how their values need to then come through their employee groups with their clients and customers with their shareholders. And so that can also be a forcing mechanism. But the other side of that, of a long-term innovation that occurs within organizations with their products, that's another place we play. And I think that's something where you need catalysts. You need something to push the envelope. And competitors are a great place to do that, your peers. But it's really fun to be helping write the brief with our clients rather than receiving the brief. And what I mean by that is, hey, here's some things that are changing with your stakeholders. And we think it would be really great if you did X, Y, and Z to partner with them, or there may be strange bedfellows out there that you've never partnered with that you need to partner with. The only time I ever got to meet Dan Edelman, the founder of Edelman, he talked a lot about not just connecting dots but looking for new dots that you don't even know exist. And I thought, man, I was an intern at the time. Ken WhiteYeah, that's cool. Dan WebberThis is something I want to be part of because it just changes the way you think. And we have a spirit within our organization that is very entrepreneurial, and I've always enjoyed that piece of that. Ken WhiteYou talked a little bit on the panel about your internship and the way that sort of the mindset you adopted. Can you share that with us? Dan WebberYeah. It was an interesting question about how you learned innovation or how to be innovative. And it's a pretty tricky industry to get into PR and Agency World, Consultancy World. But I learned very quickly early on that one thing that I had to offer at that time was my time. And that's our commodity within consultancy world is time. We based everything off of time. And as a young person in the industry, I did my best to use the time I could because I had a lot more of it than perhaps the senior most managers. And what I learned very quickly early on was if I did the job and I nailed it, that was one thing. But if I learned how to apply it differently for someone who didn't have as much time available to them, that it made me more valuable to them. And I also have seen this in client service left and right. I can deliver something for a client. That's one thing. But if I deliver it and I started to see even if it's a little bit like 5% more, that was a really cool learning for me. And I've used it across my entire career to add 5% more if I can. I've used it with my kids and trying to share a lesson. It was funny. My son Jack and I were we were talking about this. My daughter had a bad grade, and we were talking about trying a little bit more, 5% more. And I didn't think it was one of those dad-daughter, dad-son talks. I didn't think it clicked until we were out driving around, and my son Jack saw something. He looked at me and goes, hey, dad, 5%. And it stuck out to me. And I think that really is something that I learned as an intern of really what motivates people. What are they trying to achieve with their agenda? What's their mission? I need to deliver on that, but can I do a little bit more? And I always went tying back to innovation. A lot of innovation is just iterating and building on top and looking around the corner, looking left and right to see where those dots are that may not have existed before. So yeah, we have a 5% rule, and that was something I learned early on as an intern. Ken WhiteAs leading a team, and you mentioned you have a fairly sizable team. Where does innovation come into play in terms of your leadership with the team? Dan WebberInnovation within the team should play out every day, in my opinion. But it doesn't necessarily always play out in a carefully crafted meeting or here's our innovation session. And what I mean by this is if we are doing what we should be doing, looking around the corners, connecting dots, then we're going to probably fail a lot or have the wrong answer, as one of our panelists says. And we need to be comfortable with that. We need to be able to give each other feedback. We need to be able to bring ourselves, our full selves, into a team environment as a team get the best out of each other. And when we don't actually hit where we wanted to hit, we need to learn from that. And that's where I see most of our innovation is looking at where did we not show up well. How do we build on that when we get questions from clients 2, 3, 4, 5 clients. That now needs to be something that we tuck away, and we start in our notebook that we carry around everywhere with us. We need to go back to that and start building on that. And so I think that that's a piece where we spend a lot of time. Now we have a value at we have a number of values, but one of our core values is about being constantly curious. And so we have time to dedicate to passion projects outside of the office, whether it be pro bono work and being connected to our communities and the list goes on. And I really like that value because I think innovation starts with curiosity, and it's stuff that you may not even know are lying around where you can just start looking at it and build on it. And that's really what I think we encourage a lot of our team to do. We have 2 hours every day that are dedicated to noninternal admin meetings. It's protected. You can have client meetings during that time. It's called our blue zone. And we started using this during the pandemic to give ourselves a little bit of a break. We have no internal meeting Fridays to focus on client work and other big things that we're trying to tackle. And I think you have to carve out that sort of time, but then you have to look at your normal activities every day and say am I learning from it? Am I building on it? And if you're not, it's where we need to calibrate again and take a look at how can we switch things around. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Dan Webber in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The world is changing like we've never seen before. That means change for business and your role in it. You can sit on the sidelines and watch things evolve, or you can be a part of creating the future. If you want the tools and education needed to succeed in the years ahead, we invite you to consider the MBA program at William & Mary. Wherever you happen to be in your career, William & Mary has an MBA program for you. The full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA all taught by the number one ranked MBA faculty in America. Take charge of your future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Dan Webber. Ken WhiteHow are you hiring for that individual who does think innovatively is very client-centric? Dan WebberThat's a tough question because I think a number of years ago, we wanted other agency people. We wanted people who had that, whether it be a PR agency, ad agency, consultancy experience, but we still want that. But we also want to surround ourselves with scientists, with journalists, with pick an expert, a data scientist. We want them as much as we want those with the agency experience. Now, that creates a little bit of a transitional issue because they come in, and they may not understand client service environment, they may not understand how to move in the ways that agencies typically work. So a lot of this is trying to the orientation is particularly important. When we're doing the interviews, we try and dig into some of their experiences to understand when you had that really big idea, how did you sell it to your bosses, how did you sell it to whatever organization? And then, more importantly, how did you activate it? Because it's one thing to just have big, great ideas and sit around thinking of ideas, but we're in client service, so we always have to convert those ideas into actions. And if it is truly just a consultancy, our clients want to know not just what your advice is but what are the next three steps that you would take. So that's been a challenge for us, but it's been an exciting one because I think as we grow, we're going to have more of those nontraditional quote-unquote, anyone, listening to this with my fingers doing quotes, the nontraditional people into our agency experience. Ken WhiteIt's diverse, right? Dan WebberYes. Ken WhiteGreat. Dan WebberYes. Ken WhiteMore thought, richer experience. One of the panelists talked about how companies have chief innovation officers. Would you prefer the chief innovation officer or a team of a number of people who think like a chief innovation officer? Dan WebberI liked that comment because I think the spirit of that question was, who owns innovation? I think. Ken WhiteI do too. Dan WebberAnd I think you need to have someone who does own it in the sense of a very deliberate strategy and can have the room of thought and focus to be able to build a scaffolding and a process that allows an organization to innovate. But I think innovation comes with the team. And that's one of my biggest honors and privilege in my position is I get to be part of a team, but part of my job is to find the best in our team members. And that's where the juiciest, the most beautiful ideas and concepts come from the team. And it can still be pretty, I think, a very straight line kind of thing where I do it on my own, and then I hand it to somebody else. Kind of a thing that still happens, right? And I see a lot of that. This is as far as I've been able to take it, but that still requires a team sort of environment where you are vulnerable enough and connected enough and trust your team members around you to take it to the next step without discounting anything that you did. That's a great part of being in an agency. We are a matrix organization. We have people all around the world. The most powerful thing we have at our fingertips is each other and the tools in our toolbox at that. And I think that's where you see great innovation is when you can get the best out of each of those team members, building on their strengths, compensating for areas where they're not as strong. And it's great to see that. And it can blow you away because that could come from an intern, which I was, or that can come from the person who has trained their entire career to be able, for that moment, to be the person who can bring the idea to concept, to application, to something that's award-winning or maybe even changing a full industry. Ken WhiteWell, we talk a lot about the role of failure and innovation, but the stakes are high for you and your clients. So I mean, failure, it sounds great, right? But it's pretty tough. How do you approach failure? Dan WebberYeah, I've heard a lot of people say fail fast. Ken WhiteRight. Dan WebberA lot of that comes to just resilience and confidence. Confidence in yourself that that failure is not going to define you as a person. And if you can get over that, and it's like what I do in the crisis world, a lot of what clients and human beings, they get stuck with, even accepting that there is a problem or accepting that you may have screwed up, it's your fault. You got to get to acceptance as fast as you can and then be able to, in a constructive way, look at the issues and break it down into something that you can learn from. Yes, we charge by the hour. And so, yeah, if we spend too much time dwelling on it. It's going to cost us that time that is so precious. Look at it, understand it, memorialize it, and then calibrate again so that you can move to the next thing fast. Fail fast, I think, is an important concept. But one of the panelists talked about there's no wrong answers. Or I think he talked about there are wrong answers. It's not about failing. There are wrong answers. And that you just need to build and learn how you got to that wrong answer so that you can get to the right answer going forward. And I loved that. I think that's a lot of what we need to do and what we try to do within Edelman. Ken WhiteOne of the questions was, from a student perspective, how can a student become a good innovator? And you had some advice of things to do. Dan WebberYeah, I was trying to break it down into those traits or whatever. When I think of innovation, and I think of resilience and confidence. So confidence you can't be resilient unless you have some confidence. So or a couple of things that came to mind for me on this was the importance of doing something that makes you feel uncomfortable. And in an academic world, yeah, maybe classes, but I would say stretch as far as you can take an improv class. Ken WhiteYeah. Dan WebberAnd we've had improv theater groups come to our office a number of times, and it's fantastic because it just forces you to do something different and to look at things there. And the beauty of it on top of it is that you have to build off of somebody else. It's not you alone. You could be doing stand-up comedy by yourself, and that would make you uncomfortable. But improv requires you to be watching somebody else, not just thinking on your own, and then to react. And through that process of building with your team members, you build confidence, and you're also resilient. But there's structure in there too. And so there's an incredible learning moment. I hate improv. It freaks me out. But I think I would say to students, do that. I also said to students I think they need to do things that help them understand people, sociology, psychology, whatever. Because so much of what we're trying to do in innovation is about helping people and helping trigger the motivations that people have, and that's a lot of what we do in client service, of course, is trying to understand audiences and what they need, what they want, what they desire, and then helping our clients deliver on that from obviously a product or service and how they deliver that. Ken WhiteWe want so much out of our employees today. Right. They have to be able to communicate. They have to be able to write. They have to be able to build good relationships. Where does innovation fall on that in terms of how good does a person have to be in order to be successful in your field? Dan WebberOne of our fastest growing groups is our Employee Experience Team, helping provide counsel to clients to understand how one of their most important stakeholder groups, their employees or associates, can connect to the mission the values of the organization. And that is so paramount. And I think in the last two or three years, we've learned a really important lesson around how employees need to evolve. And they also are one of your most important stakeholder groups. And that's exciting because your employees are the ones who want to be with you. They want to grow with you. They're the heartbeat of your organization. And so, if you ignore them in your innovation process, you're ignoring an incredible group who has an amazing amount of investment in you. So it could be your employee resource groups that you have that you're creating. Communities that have certain passion areas or certain experiences. They need to be included in this. Are you asking questions from your frontline employees about how they're interacting with customers or their clients? If you're not using that feedback as precious. Data, inputs, whatever, it's very difficult to just have a room where you can quote-unquote innovate. So I think it has to be an integral part. And so our Employee Experience Group does a lot of pulse surveys to understand what our employees thinking. How do you use that information to inform your strategy? How do you use that information to evolve and, hopefully, to innovate so that you are on a long-term trajectory for success? Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dan Webber. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you are ready to take charge of your future, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Dan Webber of Edelman, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Jeanne Wilson](images/jeanne-wilson-184-thumb.jpg)
![Leading Remote Teams](images/jeanne-wilson-184-thumb.jpg)
Jeanne Wilson
Episode 184: October 5, 2022
Leading Remote Teams
Whether your organization has embraced remote work or a hybrid model, managing and leading a remote team can be challenging. For many managers, it’s a real source of frustration. If it’s causing you headaches, perhaps you’re leading the way you did when everyone was in the office. If that’s the case, our guest says your leadership style needs updating in order to succeed in our new environment. Dr. Jeanne Wilson is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the William & Mary School of Business. She’s an expert in teams; she researches and teaches co-located and distributed teams, and teams across organizational boundaries. She says to be an effective leader in a remote setting, managers and leaders have to let go of their old way of leading.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Whether your organization has embraced remote work or a hybrid model, managing and leading a remote team can be challenging. For many managers, it's a real source of frustration. If it's causing you headaches, perhaps you're leading the way you did when everyone was in the office. If that's the case, our guest says your leadership style needs update in order to succeed in our new environment. Dr. Jeanne Wilson is a professor of organizational behavior at the William & Mary School of Business. She's an expert in teams. She researches and teaches co-located and distributed teams and teams that cross organizational boundaries. She says to be an effective leader in a remote setting, managers, and leaders have to let go of their old way of leading. Here's our conversation with Professor Jeanne Wilson. Ken WhiteWell, Jeanne, thanks for being with us. I appreciate it. Welcome to the podcast. Jeanne WilsonSure. Thank you. Ken WhiteSo this is something almost every manager I run into is talking about how do I lead my remote team? When you're working/talking with working professionals, what kind of things are you hearing about them leading remote teams today? Jeanne WilsonIt is a big source of frustration and, I think, confusion. So as everybody's read about, companies have tried to pull employees back in. There's been a lot of resistance to it. And I think one of the primary problems is that organizations and managers, of course, are having a hard time articulating why they need people in the office. When they do attempt to send that message, they sort of wave the we need to build our culture or maintain our culture flag. And that doesn't make sense to employees. They don't understand that it's too amorphous. And so they're just not providing a coherent message about why people need to be in the office, and people are resisting. Ken WhiteAnd can we build a culture with remote employees? Jeanne WilsonAbsolutely. Of course. A culture is just accepted way of doing things, and it's just that managers aren't familiar with building a culture remotely or at a distance, so they're resisting it. Ken WhiteI think what I hear mostly from managers and leaders is they're kind of confusing. Is someone busy at home, or are they productive? And when they're not busy, they get a little irritated. What are you hearing from that standpoint? Jeanne WilsonThat's certainly the employee's perspective. So I think, unfortunately, over the years, managers have gotten in the habit of using proxies for performance. I see your butt in the seat. Therefore you must be productive. And they're familiar with that way of judging people, and they're having a hard time converting to managing strictly by results. Ken WhiteSo what can the manager do to make sure that they do, in fact, look at results as opposed to activity? Jeanne WilsonSo obviously, the manager and the employee have to agree on what constitutes. How am I going to evaluate your performance? What constitutes results? The employees will have some perspective on that, but once there's clear agreement on how performance will be evaluated, then a lot of objections fall by the wayside. Ken WhiteIt doesn't seem like many people are having those conversations, though. Jeanne WilsonSadly, they're not. Ken WhiteThat's sort of the problem here, right? Jeanne WilsonExactly. Ken WhiteYeah. So what advice do you have for someone who's leading a remote team to make sure things are going the right way? Jeanne WilsonWell, there's a lot they can do and a lot of things they need to be on the lookout for things to avoid. So one of the concerns in managing a remote team, particularly if some of the team is remote and some of the team is not remote, one of the risks is that managers can inadvertently create a proximal in group and treat people who are in the office differently than they treat people who are not in the office. So I think if managers are self-aware about that, they can counteract that. But if they're not thinking about it, I think those dynamics can crop up. So that's one thing to be on the lookout for. Ken WhiteAnd that could easily cause a divide in the team. Jeanne WilsonAbsolutely. Completely. Ken WhiteAnd then cause people to either be irritated or just flat out leave. Jeanne WilsonThat's right. Ken WhiteYeah. Jeanne WilsonSo one of the things from the employees perspective about this transition is equity and fairness. So we talked earlier about employees don't understand why decisions are being made the way that they are. So they may infer that things are unfair because they don't understand why some managers have to be clear about who gets to work remotely and why what are the boundaries. And just like with managing employees who are co-located, we like to encourage managers to set just a few limits and then give employees as much choice or voice as they possibly can, particularly in this climate where employees have more options than they ever have before. Obviously, managers want to keep employees satisfied. They want to avoid the phenomenon that everybody's talking about with quiet quitting. And one way to do that is to give employees as much choice in how they work as you possibly can to set as few rational limits and let employees make decisions beyond that. Ken WhiteIt seems mostly like a communication issue. Jeanne WilsonDoesn't everything boil down to that? Ken WhiteI guess it does, yeah. But almost everything you're saying is we just need to talk. We need to talk. Jeanne WilsonRight. We need to come to agreement. Ken WhiteWhat's the difference? What are some of the hurdles that you think people are running into today with hybrid teams or remote teams versus the old way of managing? What are some of the differences? Jeanne WilsonSo one issue that managers need to be on the lookout for is something called fault lines. So fault lines occur when multiple demographic or work characteristics align to create subgroups. So if, for instance, all the accountants are in Atlanta and all the finance people are in New York, that has the potential to create a fault line. So, where accountants and finance people might have a level five conflict, ordinarily, if now they're separated by geography in addition to function, that creates a fault line, and the conflict gets boosted up to a ten. So one of the things managers should be on the lookout for are those kinds of overlapping characteristics that create subgroups because that will just exacerbate conflict in their groups. And if you have a situation that's unavoidable where, for instance, because of historical factors, all the accountants are in Atlanta, and all the finance people are in New York, what you need to do is organize across the fault line. So if you're going to have people working on stuff, don't give the accountants part A and the finance people part B. Have an accountant work with a finance person on part A and organize across that fault line to keep lines of communication open. Ken WhiteSo that's great advice for the manager. What about the employee? What's some advice you have for the employee to make sure they're being recognized, they're getting work done, they feel good about all of this? Jeanne WilsonActually, a lot of the burden for being successful on this system does fall on the employee, particularly now, because managers haven't quite figured it out yet. So if you're going to advocate for working remotely, you have to kind of work overtime to keep yourself salient in the eyes of the boss. So one thing that happens, psychological process that happens at a distance, is that it changes people, what's called their construal levels. So they think about distant people differently than they think about co-located people, and they think about their distant employees at a more abstract level of construal. So rather than thinking Ken is really good at communicating in front of executive audiences, but he needs to work on whatever, I'm just making stuff up is what communication skills. That's kind of a concrete level of construal about your skills. At a distance, managers are more likely to think Ken good or Ken bad. Ken WhiteWoah. Jeanne WilsonThey have kind of a global construal about you. And so, as an employee, what you need to do is counteract that by making your work more concrete. So rather than saying, oh, I had a really productive day today, you have to make your accomplishments concrete so you can help the manager and develop a more specific view about you to say whatever, I had a great meeting with one of our key clients, and they agreed to X, so the manager thinks more specifically about you. So that's one thing. Ken WhiteSo it sounds like communicating up is more important today. Jeanne WilsonAnd in a very specific way. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Jeanne Wilson in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your business or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Professor Jeanne Wilson. Ken WhiteSo should employees reach out? Should they take the responsibility to find that way to reach out to the boss? Jeanne WilsonIf the boss doesn't do it? Absolutely. So one of the things, of course, that's a problem managing at a distance is you don't have all the usual queues that you would ordinarily when employees are in the office. So I see Ken has a stack of stuff that's 2ft deep on his desk. He must be very busy. All of those queues are missing. So you have to make those queues explicit in regular meetings with your boss. So again, this comes back to a psychological process about how people attribute problem. So most people probably know the fundamental attribution error, which is if you see a problem employee, we are more likely to attribute that problem to the person rather than the situation. So we say Joe is lazy as opposed to Joe is swamped with work, which is a situational explanation. So when employees are working at a distance, it further obscures all those situational explanations for why they might be having problems at work. They are overloaded, or something else is going on. All of that is going to be invisible to their remote boss. So they have to learn to make that explicit with their boss. Ken WhiteThat's hard for some people to do. I was talking to one of our MBAs who interned this summer, fully remote. I said, how did it go? And he said, It ended up being wonderful. But at the beginning, it was so difficult. Nobody was reaching out to him. He sort of felt he was on that island and, especially as a younger professional new to the organization, wasn't sure how to communicate. Fortunately for him, the manager did eventually reach out, and then they got the relationship. But if that manager doesn't reach out, the employees got to figure out how to communicate. Jeanne WilsonA hundred percent, and that's a unique and particular problem for new employees. So if you're accustomed to working for Frank, and you've worked for him for three years, going remote is not going to be such a big issue because Frank already either trusts you or doesn't trust you. But if you're a new employee, then you have to work even harder to establish that relationship. And there are two communication skills in particular that are extra important in remote work for employees. One, you might not anticipate, and that's to disclose. So some people are you probably may have noticed that some people are natural disclosures. You talk to them for five minutes, and you know all about what's going on in their lives. Those are like velcro. Those are like hooks that you can attach to and form a relationship. Other people are not accustomed or not inclined to disclose. So there aren't those velcro hooks that other people can attach to. So they need to learn how to disclose things about themselves, so other people can build a relationship with them at a distance. And, of course, that's kind of a curve linear relationship. You can disclose too much, but you probably have to disclose more working remotely than you do when you're co-located because some things about you are just going to be obvious from observation when you're co-located. Now you're going to have to make some of those things explicit. Ken WhiteI can just hear the introverts saying, oh no, you got to be. Jeanne WilsonOkay, here's the funny thing. It turns out that introverts, especially when they're working in groups, are actually more effective remotely than they are when they're co-located. Anyway, that's a fun fact. Ken WhiteThat's very interesting. Yes. Well, there seems to be a lot written about introverts, the power of introverts, and it's okay to be an introvert, and you can add a great deal to a team if you're that way. Jeanne WilsonIn a remote team without a designated leader, introverts are more likely to become a leader in a remote team than they are to become a leader in a co-located team. For reasons that are kind of technical, we don't need to go into them. Ken WhiteYeah, interesting. Right before we started to record, I said it seems like a lot of managers and leaders who are struggling with the hybrid environment or the remote environment are a little reluctant. And you shared sort of an analogy about an airplane. Can you share that? Because I think that just nails it. Jeanne WilsonYeah, the way I envision it is sort of like those show by planes where you've got a wing walker out on the plane, and he's got a grasp of one span of the wing, and he is not going to let go of that until he has kind of a firm grasp on another span. And I think what's happening is managers are unwilling to give up this old way of working or evaluating people until they feel comfortable with this new way. So we've got to get them feeling comfortable with this new way of working. Otherwise, they're going to keep managing people by how often they see them working, which is kind of an unfortunate proxy for performance. Ken WhiteThey've got to let go of the one handle and grab the other one. Jeanne WilsonYeah, they've got to get a handle on the new one, and then they'll let go of the old one. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jeanne Wilson. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Professor Jeanne Wilson. And thanks to you for listening. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Lucy Vozza](images/lucy-vozza-183-thumb.jpg)
![The Changing Business Dress Code](images/lucy-vozza-183-thumb.jpg)
Lucy Vozza
Episode 183: September 21, 2022
The Changing Business Dress Code
In 1975, John T. Molloy wrote "Dress for Success." A couple of years later, he followed it with "Dress for Success for Women." As a result, a generation of professionals had guidelines and rules to follow when it came to the business dress code. In 2022 that code is changing like never before. In fact, there is no dress code today. Professionals have the opportunity to define new ways to dress comfortably while projecting an image of professionalism. Lucy Vozza believes clothing and the vibe you send to others are linked. After spending 17 years in sales with biotech companies such as Baxter, Regeneron and Genentech, she recently transitioned to a leadership role at BeiGene. She joins us to discuss today's evolving dress code and what you should consider when getting dressed for work.
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Lucy Vozza: The Changing Business Dress Code TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. In 1975, John T. Malloy wrote Dress for Success. A couple of years later, he followed it with Dress for Success for Women. As a result, a generation of professionals had guidelines and rules to follow when it came to the business dress code. In 2022, that code is changing like never before. In fact, there is no dress code today. Professionals have the opportunity to define new ways to dress comfortably while projecting an image of professionalism. Lucy Vozza believes clothing and the vibe you send to others are linked. After spending 17 years in sales with biotech companies such as Baxter, Regeneron, and Genentech, she recently transitioned to a leadership role at BeiGene. She joins us to discuss today's evolving dress code and what you should consider when getting dressed for work. Here's our conversation with Lucy Vozza. Ken WhiteLucy, thanks for being here. I appreciate your time. This is a big weekend for you as we're recording because tomorrow you'll be receiving your diploma, your executive MBA diploma. So, big weekend. Congratulations. Lucy VozzaThank you. It's very exciting. I can't believe the day has finally arrived. Ken WhiteIt was a breeze, right? Lucy VozzaSure, no problem. Eighteen months of low stress. Ken WhiteIt sure was. Yeah. Well, before joining the executive MBA program, you've had a fantastic career in pharmaceutical biotech area. And one of the things right before we were recording you and I were talking about is when I first met you, I thought of an old phrase my mother used to say, and that is she is put together. Right. And so I knew immediately that your appearance for you is important in that personal brand. That's one of the reasons we wanted to have you on the podcast today. When you first started in your profession, what was it? Was there a uniform? Was there a code? How did people dress then? Lucy VozzaYeah, so around 17 years ago, when I started in pharmaceutical sales, you could spot a drug rep a mile away. Everybody had their black suit on, blue shirt, skirt or pants. And it was a requirement that you dressed like that from the very beginning. You're calling on healthcare professionals who have very little time, and in sales, you're bidding for people's time. So if you need to take some time in the way you present yourself so that somebody will give you a little bit of their time, it's very important. Ken WhiteAnd, of course, that has changed dramatically now. So what are you seeing now when you see the reps in terms of what they're wearing? Lucy VozzaRight. Also, it's geographically dependent as well. I think people have learned to sort of meet your audience where you are. So, for example, if I was calling on a rural area in Southwest Virginia, I wasn't going to wear a three-piece suit and a luxury handbag. It did not come off as well and didn't show a lot of empathy. Right. Now, if I was in Washington DC, and I knew that there was a doctor who was impressed by fancy restaurants, then, yeah, 100%, I would carry in a Louis Vuitton bag, and he was impressed by that. So it's a lot of knowing your audience that makes a big difference. Ken WhiteWhy is that important? Lucy VozzaBecause they know that you understand where they're coming from. Right. Like, people have different situations, and they have different problems. If I go into a rural hospital clicking in and some Christian Dior heels, they're going to say, this woman has no idea what our issues are. How could she possibly understand us or even help us? I just don't have time to talk to her. Right, so it matters. Ken WhiteWhen you think of wardrobe, is it personal brand? Is it professionalism? What is it? What category does that fall under? Lucy VozzaWell, it's a little bit of everything. So, for example, I think a lot of the way that the wardrobe has changed, when we want to talk about it, you can inject a little bit of your personality into it but still remain professional. For example, when I would come to class, I always wanted to look put together, as you say, thank you. But it would be a Saturday, so I would wear like a really cool Rock band T-shirt, like a Kiss T-shirt with a nice blazer over it and nice jeans. No holes, please, and some heels. Right. So you can inject a little bit of personality for my own brand, but I still considered it professional. Ken WhiteRight. Lucy VozzaSo it's both. Ken WhiteWhich means people have choice today. Lucy VozzaYes. Ken WhiteAre you seeing people do a pretty good job with that choice? Lucy VozzaMaking the wrong choices? Ken WhiteYeah. Lucy VozzaYes. Ken WhiteYeah. Lucy VozzaYes, there are choices. It doesn't mean that I agree with them, especially people in senior leadership. They have an image to uphold and, with that image, defines their responsibilities. And if you're going to roll out of bed or wear the T-shirt that you just worked out in, it does not impress me the least bit. I think that you need to take some effort and time if you're going to be speaking from the stage, the Zoom stage, whatever it might be, so people take you seriously. Ken WhiteSo you mentioned Zoom. We're all spending so much time on there or in some sort of video platform post-pandemic. What advice do you have to that professional who's not quite sure what to wear when they have a Zoom meeting that particular day? Lucy VozzaYou know, whatever pants you want or sweat pants or yoga pants, whatever floats your boat. But the top half of you is in an office, right? So pretend you're at an office. So put your hair together, put your makeup on, put on some earrings, and be your best self. That is the way that I tell people you need to show up, like, you are going to an office that is your office. Ken WhiteYeah. A lot of our younger students ask about what to wear. What advice would you have for young women entering may be their first job as a profession? Lucy VozzaOkay, well, you don't have to spend a million dollars to look good. Ken WhiteGreat. Lucy VozzaSo there are various companies that have different price points. So invest in a couple of staple pieces like a nice black blazer, a nice handbag. Again, it doesn't have to be like a $3,000 handbag. Anything that you can mix and match and put together and walk out the door because we're busy. Especially as you get older, as you transition into motherhood and working full time, you just want to get out as seamless as possible. So just have those couple of staple items, and you're good to go. Ken WhiteHow about men? What have you seen? Because and the reason I ask, I'm hearing from some people that women seem to be paying a little more attention to their wardrobe versus some men today. Lucy VozzaYeah. I don't know why men think it's okay to go to work like they're at the gym. I really don't understand it. I would just say it doesn't take too much effort to throw on a button-up shirt and maybe some chinos. And, you know, right now, fashion sneakers are a big deal. Ken WhiteYeah. Lucy VozzaRight. Luxury brand fashion sneakers, like eight nine hundred dollar sneakers. Do I think that's okay? It depends on the situation. Again, I'm not going to wear those in rural West Virginia, but if I'm going to an office meeting, which is very West Coast, that's okay. Throw on a blazer. You're good to go. Ken WhiteThe sneakers is very interesting because I just had a conversation with some younger students earlier about that, asking, may I wear a suit with the sneakers? That seems to be gaining a lot of traction. Lucy VozzaYeah. And the other thing that's changing, too, is the watch, right? Like, you have your Rolex and as status symbol. And now, with the millennials and the other generation that I don't even know, we're moving more towards smartwatches. Ken WhiteYes. Lucy VozzaRight. Especially when you're in biotech, and you're asking for money for startups, like, you're not going to walk in with a Rolex. Again, know your audience. Ken WhiteYeah. Lucy VozzaRight. Ken WhiteVery interesting. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Lucy Vozza in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your business or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full time, so both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Lucy Vozza. Ken WhiteThere's been some recent pieces written Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review about this is an interesting time because there are no rules now. We get to kind of recreate business attire. With that said, what are your reactions to that? Lucy VozzaI'm not a fan. I will say we had an off-site meeting. And you know what's tricky is business casual. Nobody really knows what that means. Everybody interprets everything different. And to some women, business casual was wearing your yoga pants and sandals into a meeting. That's not okay. I don't feel like that is an appropriate look for a business meeting. You've got to look back at the classics and stick to them a little bit. Do you know what I mean? Like, certain things that are not okay are bare shoulders with spaghetti straps for women. It's a distraction, really. And not to sound sexist, but as a female, we have more opportunity to wear distracting clothes or hair different ways, and makeup and accessories. And to be taken seriously, you need to be dressed seriously. It doesn't mean that your personality can't shine through, but just be very mindful that people might interpret things very differently. Ken WhiteWhat's the role of the leader in terms of setting a dress code, giving people some guidelines? Lucy VozzaWell, that's an excellent question because the question really should be, should they have a role? Because it seems like they really don't is what I'm seeing, especially through the pandemic and through Zoom. And when we go to meetings in person, everybody is still just very relaxed. But I will say it's a very interesting time. We did a lot of D&I work here, and it does seem that women and people of color will put in a little more effort into the way they dress so that they are taken more seriously or maybe on the other side. It's not really that important. It's been really interesting to see that. Ken WhiteI think you definitely see in here, especially with our younger students. Some of them grew up in a household where clothing was important. It was talked about, and others didn't. And if you grew up in one that didn't. Boy, it's a tough time. Lucy VozzaIt's a very tough time. Ken WhiteYeah. Lucy VozzaIt is. Ken WhiteWhat about cost? We're hearing from that. I'll talk to some younger professionals. Wow, it's dry cleaning. It's a lot of money. I can't do this. I'd rather keep it low-key. Lucy VozzaWell, there's just so many options, really. When I first started. My go-to was Banana Republic. It's a good starting point. Those suits last a lifetime. I probably still have some pants. They last you, like, ten years. You get two of those. You only take them to the dry cleaners, like, once a month. That's okay. That's totally doable. And you can get a couple of classic shirts and then throw in some different earrings. It's okay. It's totally doable. And slowly, you build up your wardrobe to where you get to your Christian Louis Vuitton shoes and your Christian Diors if you like that sort of thing. Ken WhiteWhere does psychology come into play? Lucy VozzaIt's a big part of it, honestly. I think, especially in sales, a lot of it is confidence. And you walking in to talk to a C suite in a frumpy shirt is not going to give you a lot of confidence. Again, you need to meet your customer where they are. So if I'm going to talk to a CEO, I also want to look like a CEO. If I'm going to go talk to minimum wage paid medical assistant, I'm going to change my wardrobe. And all of that has to do with confidence. You have to be comfortable wearing an outfit that is going to put you at the same point as a CEO. And you also have to be comfortable in knowing, like, that is not appropriate in this situation. Ken WhiteRight. A million years ago, before I got into higher education, I worked in local television, and one night, the air conditioning in the studio died on us, and it was incredibly hot. And so one of the other anchors said, I'm going to wear shorts. I'm going to wear my jacket and tie, and so forth. And I did the same and had the worst five minutes in broadcast history. Everything went wrong, and it was that psychological piece of it. I didn't have my quote-unquote uniform on right. Even though no one knew that. Somehow I knew it. Lucy VozzaYeah. No, it's so true. I will walk into meetings, and it just sounds silly, but if I don't have, like, five-inch heels, it makes me feel taller. I'm not a very tall person. I have a loud voice, but it just makes me feel taller and I feel more confident. It's silly, but that's just how I am. Ken WhiteFor those who aren't really into clothing and don't give it a whole lot of thought but would like to. Where can they go? Lucy VozzaOh, my gosh, there's so many things right now, especially with social media, Instagram, and my little secret is I actually work with a stylist. His name is Jeff Banks. He's amazing. But anything on Instagram, first of all, that's free advice, really, and the way that you can just shop and pick from there. And some of these sites will offer you the same outfit with three different price points, so that's really easy. There's just no shortage of information on where to find that stuff. Ken WhiteFor young men will often see some fashion mistakes that they just don't know. They're getting their first suit. They're getting their first jacket. And so sometimes when you buy a sport coat, the venting is sewn shut. Sometimes they don't know that's supposed to come off, or the label is on the sleeve. They don't know that that's supposed to come off. Lucy VozzaOr they're too big. Ken WhiteThey just don't know. What are some of those common mistakes that a young professional woman might come across as she's learning how to dress? Lucy VozzaI think sometimes what I've seen is women will buy these heels that have, like, a front platform, and it just looks like it's made for another type of industry. Maybe their clothing might be a bit too tight, or it might just be too comfortable. I'm a big fan of, like, a well-tailored suit and not a sweater that you throw over. That's what you wear when you're sitting on the couch. So just try to get something that's a little tailored. One piece that's tailored is good that you can mix and match. That's what I would say. Ken WhiteWhat do you predict moving forward? Because what we're reading a great piece in Wall Street Journal, another great piece in Harvard Business Review talking about this and both saying, this is a time where there's no rules. We get to create the rules. So where are we going? What do you think we'll see in the next few years? Lucy VozzaI think it's going all over. I don't think we're going to go back to a three-piece suit for sure. I mean, you see these young millennials that are working in Silicon Valley. They're very intelligent. They know what they're doing, and they don't feel that they need to change the way they're doing things right, especially when it comes to clothing. I think their interests lie elsewhere. I think you'll see a little bit of both, though. I don't think you'll see a return of that tailored suit look that I like. I think young people these days are interested in other things like causes and getting enough work-life balance. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Lucy Vozza. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Lucy Vozza. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Ram Ganeshan](images/ram-ganeshan-182-thumb.jpg)
![Supply Chain in 2022](images/ram-ganeshan-182-thumb.jpg)
Ram Ganeshan
Episode 182: September 5, 2022
Supply Chain in 2022
Last summer, William & Mary Business Professor Ram Ganeshan joined us on the podcast to talk about where supply chains stood in 2021. A year ago we were experiencing lumber shortages, new furniture was challenging to find, and chlorine for the backyard swimming pool was in short supply. Fast-forward one year to today and we're faced with new supply chain issues. Some we could never have imagined a year ago. For example, the baby formula shortage continues, semiconductors are in short supply, and the Russian-Ukrainian war has caused a number of critical shortages affecting people all over the world. Professor Ganeshan joins us again to talk about today's supply chain issues, how they began, and what might be ahead for customers, companies, and countries across the globe.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, last summer, William & Mary business Professor Ram Ganeshan joined us on the podcast, talked about where supply chain stood in 2021. A year ago, we were experiencing lumber shortages, new furniture was challenging to find, and chlorine for the backyard swimming pool was in short supply. We'll fast forward one year to today, and we're faced with new supply chain issues, some we could never have imagined a year ago. For example, the baby formula shortage continues, semiconductors are in short supply, and the Russian-Ukrainian war has caused a number of critical shortages affecting people all over the world. Professor Ganeshan joins us again to talk about today's supply chain issues, how they began, and what might be ahead for customers, companies, and countries across the globe. Here's our conversation with William & Mary business professor Ram Ganeshan. Ken WhiteRam, thanks very much for joining us. Nice to see you. Ram GaneshanYeah, nice to see you too, Ken. Nice being here. Ken WhiteIt's been a year. Last summer, you and I sat down. We were talking about the supply chain issues and where things might go. Did you expect the state of affairs to be where they are now? A year ago, when we talked. Ram GaneshanYes and no, things are improving in certain sectors, but we've had somewhat setbacks in the past years, like the war in Ukraine, for example, and the impending recession in America. So we don't know how that's going to sort of eventually resolve itself. But yes and no is the answer. Ken WhiteThere are a number of issues in terms of supply chain that it seems like everybody talks about. People are quite aware. The first one is the baby formula shortage. How did this happen? Ram GaneshanYeah, interestingly, if you look at the baby formula, it's sort of like a microcosm of what has been happening in the pandemic. Interestingly, if you look at baby formula demand, I'm talking a little bit technical here. The demand is somewhat constant. The babies don't. It's not a seasonal thing. It's fairly constant. And it turns out that the average demand is around 60 million 8-ounce bottles, which is how they measure baby formula. And a typical baby, it's been a while, but my kids are teenagers now. But it's somewhere between seven and eight-ounce bottles a day. So that's 60 million a week of eight-ounce bottles is the demand. And that's been constant for the longest time. So as you can imagine, supply chains have sort of organized themselves to make 60 million as efficiently as they possibly can. Ken WhiteSure. Ram GaneshanAnd one of the ways that the supply chain is organized it's become highly concentrated, which means three companies, if you take Abbott and Nestle, the folks who make Gerber and a couple of others, account for pretty much all the production. And Abbot Nutrition, just in their one plant in Sturgis, Michigan, makes 20% of all baby formula that's made. Ken WhiteWow. Ram GaneshanAnd of course, baby formula being like a critical product, it's regulated by the FDA. And part of the FDA rules stop us from importing stuff from outside, even from Europe, where nutritionally they may be better. They don't use corn syrup, that sort of stuff. So we can't import there are a few people making it, and then 50% of those who buy baby formula from the shelves. The demand are through what is called the WIC program, which is the Women, Infant, and Children program, which is you get vouchers for families who can't afford it. And they would go and buy, and the vouchers would let them buy only certain types of baby formula. So if your vouchers would let you buy Similac, for example, that's what you'd buy, you can't buy another brand. So somewhat restricted in what you can buy that way too. Most of the demand now. So typically, this was last year, what they call an out-of-stock percentage. You go to the store, how often it's not there, it's about 1-2%, 3%. Right. So that's common. And then suddenly, though, in April, it started to be close to 40%. Geez, what's going on? It's got all the parents up in arms because they can't find baby formula. Turns out that one of the plants of Abbott, which is in Sturgis, which I just talked about, which makes 20% of all production, they found cronobacter bacteria there. I don't know if you know the history of Cronos, the Greek god. I mean, this is the guy who ate babies, so it's kind of named that way. So it's kind of dangerous for babies, but it's in your kitchen sink. So there was a lot of debate about, gee, our cronobacter that's causing it? Because it's such and the company insists it's not there, but I won't go there for a minute. So what essentially ended up happening is they shut the plant down because they wanted to make sure there's nothing wrong. Think about it. You just pulled 20% of the supply out of the market, right? And that's where the domino started. So you take 20% of the supply out, and they also recalled many of the products they made. So the supply started going. So 50 of the demand is taken off the market. And immediately you started seeing and interestingly, another thing that happened was the news broke in April that, oh, geez, this April, that the shortage of baby formula. And then, when I follow sales data, this company called IRI releases sales. So I talked about 60 million 8-ounce bottles being the demand. Suddenly now, it's 75 million 8-ounce bottles. Clearly, they're not more babies, right? So maybe people are holding it in their kitchen shelves. That's a possibility. So the demand bumped up by about 10% or 15%, and the supply reduced by 20%. And go figure, right? So that's what put us in this hole. Ken WhiteMakes perfect sense. Ram GaneshanYeah. Ken WhiteYeah, but now it's gone all the way to the White House to try to come up with solutions. Ram GaneshanAbsolutely. Clearly, it's a news story that you don't want to be linked to. Right. And the first thing people did is link it to the White House. So they had to do something about it, and they have. So the first thing Biden did was I talked about how the FDA rules didn't allow us to import. He relaxed some of those rules, saying, yeah, we can import. And he started this program called the Flight Freedom Program, where baby formula was being imported from other countries in Europe and Mexico and Australia, and so forth. But so far, we've only imported about a week's worth of supply. Sixty million bottles, nearly not enough. Right. But we have promises for six weeks worth of demand. So it's coming. And knowing supply chains, maybe sometime in the end of September, we're going to have way too many baby formula cans than we know what to do with. The second thing he did was invoke the Defense Production Act. So if you are baby formula manufacturers, all the things you need to make baby formula are now available to you. You're at the front of the line from these suppliers. Of course, you have our own Department of Defense planes, transport planes, moving these baby formula around, all the supply chain congestion, so trying to get it into the system quickly. Plus, he's doing all this. And all the companies involved Abbott, and Nestle, and Reckitt. They're all reconfiguring their production lines to make more. But that takes time. It's not quick. So there is still a significant supply drop. And to add to all this, the Abbot plant in Sturgis came online, and then there were floods in Michigan. So it got flooded, and they had to close it down again. So the supply hasn't caught up, and not enough has come in. So we're not able to bridge that gap. Another thing states are doing, I talked about the regulations, and the WIC program is now they're giving waivers so you can get those vouchers and buy anything on the shelf. From a state's perspective, you want contracts with some manufacturers because you can get a better deal, right, so large quantities. But now you can buy any on the shelf that are not contracted by you too. So that might give the other manufacturers a little bit more incentive to put stuff on the stuff. So it's still not caught up, the supply and demand. And retailers are now being able to ration these products too. So hopefully, I'm thinking maybe another six weeks or so. I mean, the White House is monitoring this very closely, and they're putting pressure on all these manufacturers. So hopefully, in six weeks, that's my guess. But let's keep our fingers crossed here. Ken WhiteYeah, it's amazing, and like you said, it takes time. It just takes time. Ram GaneshanYes, because of lead time, at least you're talking here a plant in Michigan, a phone call away, and you can drive there in a day, right, if you want to meet somebody. So the point really is how these supply chains are organized. They are highly concentrated and highly specialized. Few people do all things. And now you sort of expand this to the globe, right? Imagine it's not Michigan but somewhere in Taiwan. It just takes longer for everything to happen and get here. And that's what's happening. It's this crash in slow motion. Let me put it that way. And we're trying to recover from it. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Professor Ram Ganeshan in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your business or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals, William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full-time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with William & Mary business professor Ram Ganeshan. Ken WhiteThe semiconductor issue, the CHIPS Act, another area that is just people are watching it and kind of scratching their heads what's taking place there. Ram GaneshanYeah, so I think we had this conversation before. If you look at the semiconductor industry, it is very similar to baby formula in many ways because really three countries pretty much make all the semiconductors Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. Not only that, but I would say maybe five firms make most of the semiconductors. So you got Taiwan Semiconductor, Samsung, LG, and maybe perhaps SMIC, which is in China. What had happened there was the pandemic had slowed the supply of these folks, and we couldn't get anything from SMIC, which was in China, because it was blacklisted by President Trump. So there was a supply drop, and there was a demand increase on the other side. So there was the same sort of things happened. So clearly, it has been a year, and obviously, for supply chains, semiconductor supply chains, trying to increase capacity is not an easy thing because these machines literally cost several hundred million dollars. Setting up clean rooms takes several months. So you can't just snap your finger and say, I'm going to make 20% more. It's going to take you eight to ten months to even get there. And they have been working towards that. But of course, on the flip side of it is, this has also gotten into the political discourse, saying, hey, why are we dependent on Taiwan and China? Why can't we make our own chips? And that seems to resonate with a lot of folks, and that's what the CHIPS Act was about, saying we make about less than 10% of the world's semiconductors. We just design them here in the United States. So the CHIPS Act is going to give incentives to set up fabrication facilities. Intel has already said they're going to put up some facilities in Ohio. Micron has said they're going to put up a facility, but those things are going to take a few years before they even go online. So until then, we are left with what we have, which is most of the semiconductor supply base is still in East Asia, and most of the largest companies, like Apple's biggest suppliers, are in China and Taiwan. Ken WhiteAnd again, patience. Right? Wow. Yeah. I think people would love an easy answer, but I think they know there isn't one. Ram GaneshanYeah, but it's also the domino effect. If you think about semiconductors and ask people where it's used. You have to think hard to think about a product that does not use semiconductors, and it impacts everybody in cars gee, I can't go to work. Our car prices have increased, computers so on. So yeah, it's the downstream domino effect that's also quite important. Ken WhiteAnd then the war Russia and Ukraine has just disrupted like we couldn't even imagine. What are we looking at now? Ram GaneshanYeah, that was a surprise. I wouldn't say a surprise. I mean, we knew something was happening, but nobody really thought the war was going to actually happen, and it did. Keeping it semiconductors. Here's what we discovered when the war started. That Ukraine makes most of the world's ion, which is required ingredient in semiconductor manufacturing. In fact, two companies make 50% of the world's ion. One is in Mariupol. You've seen pictures on TV the city being destroyed. Ken WhiteYes. Ram GaneshanThey shuttered their operations immediately when the war started, and so did the other one, which is in the port city Odesa. So that's that. And if you think about Russia, they make 30% of the world's palladium. They are the second largest producer of nickel and the third largest producer of cobalt. And you might ask why this is important. I mean, if you think about palladium, it is one of the metals used in semiconductor manufacturing, and if you think about nickel, cadmium, and cobalt, they are all used in batteries and cars. So especially when the Biden administration is pushing electric cars and the future of energy has sort of got a setback here, and trying to mine these and get licenses is not easy. There are deposits available in Canada and Greenland, and Australia, but somebody has to prospect them, and somebody has to mine them, and it's not happening anytime soon. In the semiconductor industry, if you think about automobiles, if you look downstream in the supply chain, Ukraine also makes a lot of what they call wiring harnesses for cars. The first thing they do in a car is put the wiring harness in and hook everything up to it. And that's how it gets its power. Volkswagen and BMW, they were getting their wiring harnesses from Ukraine, and as soon as the war started, that dried up. These car companies are using what they call just in time. Right. Very efficient. So when something when their supplier stops, so they have to stop their lines, making the ID four car Volkswagen, for example, which has American market. So BMW had to stop their production and look for alternative sources in Tunisia and China. It's coming down. Ken WhiteYeah, and then the food aspect of it as well. I don't know that people realize how much food came out of those two countries. Ram GaneshanYeah, I knew Ukraine was the bread basket, but I didn't think it made so much wheat to feed so much of the world. I think the sad part of that is many countries, like Egypt and Sudan, for example, get almost 100% of their supply from Ukraine. So now they're left in the lurch. I think it's dependent on the developing countries to come and help them. I think some of that is happening, but there is a lot of fear that they might be famine in many parts of the world because of this war. Yeah, that's pretty sad. Ken WhiteDo you see things beginning to ease? Are you thinking looking towards the future overall? Ram GaneshanI hope so. I noticed two things. One is many of the supply chain constraints that were in the earlier part of the pandemic, like lumber and accompanying house prices. The usual, see if you take masks and sanitary kind of things, hand sanitizers. We don't have a shortage anymore like our toilet paper. So we found a way to solve it. Cost of lumber is going down. Inflation from everything we've seen has peaked, and hopefully, it's turned a corner. And, of course, the Fed is putting pressure on the demand side of things. So hopefully, the supply and demand will be more in line. Hopefully, we have a soft landing. We'll see about that. And things are easing. But of course, there's the storm clouds in the horizon. And when Russia attacked Ukraine, China didn't condemn Russia. Not only China but India and the Middle East. So I don't know how that bodes for us. Especially when Speaker Pelosi went to Taiwan, you saw the geopolitical risk of that. And interestingly, there was an article on the New York Times. I don't know if you saw that, but how her plane had to make a circuitous route to avoid all the streets just for political reasons. But interestingly enough, when she landed in Taiwan, not only did she meet the political leadership, but she also met the CEO of TSMC, which is a big chip manufacturer. So let's hope the geopolitical risks die down, and let's hope Ukraine and Russia can come to some sort of agreement because I think the supply chain issues, I'm beginning to see an easing in the supply-demand mismatch. So let's hope that doesn't get derailed. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Ram Ganeshan. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Professor Ram Ganeshan, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Elatia Abate](images/elatia-abate-181-thumb.jpg)
![Regenerative Resilience](images/elatia-abate-181-thumb.jpg)
Elatia Abate
Episode 181: August 5, 2022
Regenerative Resilience
There's no doubt change will play a major role in our future. We'll experience new business landscapes, new paradigms for leadership, and new approaches to work. The next 20 years of business in the world will be vastly different from the past. For many professionals, that constant change leads to uncertainty, which can increase burnout, exhaustion, and low morale. If not handled appropriately, it can adversely affect the bottom line. Our guest today says that does not have to be the case. She says we can take that disruptive uncertainty and turn it into productive possibility by embracing regenerative resilience. Elatia Abate is an entrepreneur and futurist who works around the world with top companies and organizations. She joins us today to discuss how leaders and professionals can thrive in challenging times thanks to regenerative resilience.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, there's no doubt change will play a major role in our future. We'll experience new business landscapes, new paradigms for leadership, and new approaches to work. The next 20 years in business in the world will be vastly different from the past. For many professionals, that constant change leads to uncertainty, which can increase burnout, exhaustion, and low morale. If not handled appropriately, it can adversely affect the bottom line. But our guest today says that does not have to be the case. She says we can take that disruptive uncertainty and turn it into productive possibility by embracing Regenerative Resilience. Elatia Abate is an entrepreneur and futurist who works around the world with top companies and organizations. She joins us today to discuss how leaders and professionals can thrive in challenging times thanks to Regenerative Resilience. Here's our conversation with Elatia Abate. Ken WhiteElatia, thanks so much for joining us. You and I have been waiting a long time to get together, so it's great that we're together. Thanks for sharing your time with us today. Elatia AbateOh, my goodness. Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here inside of this conversation. Ken WhiteAs we were right before we were ready to record, we were talking about this world we're living in today. And it's not just post-pandemic, right? What are some of the reasons it is so different right now than it was previously? Elatia AbateSure. Well, first and foremost, the pandemic simply accelerated a whole series of changes that were on the horizon. So you're absolutely correct in saying it wasn't just the pandemic, and the pandemic was simply a conduit for more of what was already coming and into what was already coming. We are at the precipice. We've sort of begun to walk into what the World Economic Forum calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Some might call it the first productivity revolution, like my friend Nancy Giordano in her book Leadering. I call it the Quantum Revolution or the Energetic Revolution because of our advances in quantum physics, quantum computing. So if the world is already running on these more complicated principles, like things wave-particle duality, two truths can be true simultaneously. What happens in a world that's usually data-driven? And when we are only looking for one truth, how do we begin to loosen up our thinking? And in addition to that, the technological disruption. So we are, in addition to as part of this Fourth Industrial Revolution, or first energetic revolution, we are looking at a century of change squished into the next decade. And so, if you look at the evolution of horse and buggy to self-driving electric car, roughly over 100 years, give or take, right? Ken WhiteSure. Elatia AbateThat's one product. So imagine this in healthcare, biotech, education, traditional manufacturing, literally everything that you can think of. What's the world going to look like? Ken WhiteWow. Total disruption. Elatia AbateTotal disruption. Ken WhiteSo, where did you come up with the concept of regenerative resilience, then? Elatia AbateSo regenerative resilience is an answer to a question of what does leadership look like in this age of continuing and accelerating disruption? Ken WhiteGot it. Elatia AbateSo I was observing the marketplace. I was looking, okay, first and second industrial revolutions. So much of what we understand and study as leadership was born in those places and spaces. Over the last 30 years, certainly more evolved leadership models have come into place. Agile leadership, servant leadership, these kinds of things. But what happens in a world where change is growing, it's accelerating, and there is no foreseeable end? And that was the initial question. And then, during the pandemic, I ran an experiment where I reached out to everybody with whom I was connected on LinkedIn to invite them into a 20 minutes conversation. At the time, it was like 4700ish people. I had no idea what was going to occur. But 161 conversations, over 80 hours of dialogue, people in 24 countries, academics, entrepreneurs, executives of publicly traded companies. And 85% of those conversations were about mental health and resilience. Ken WhiteWow. Elatia AbateAnd so I thought, okay, as we're looking at this unbridled change, how can we adapt our leadership to not simply survive and get through to the other side but thrive in the face of it? And that's where regenerative resilience was born. Ken WhiteFantastic. And leading people who are probably kind of tired of being tired. Elatia AbateI can't say everybody right now, absolute. But many, many people are tired of being tired. And I have been even just these last couple of weeks in conversations with hundreds of executives around the world, and sort of the behind closed doors is, I'm exhausted. What am I going to do? I don't see none of the tools that I have available to me for as much training, education, and everything else that I've had. It doesn't feel like it's working. Ken WhiteThat's so interesting. And not to go off on a tangent, but I, too, have had similar conversations with leaders who don't want to admit they're exhausted, but how do they stay up? How do they continue to motivate when they're exhausted? But I think half the battle is just realizing they're exhausted and then kind of go from there. Right? Yeah. Elatia AbateSo it's seeing it and naming it. And that's another reason why regenerative resilience comes to play in this space. Because when we talk about resilience, and this is what we see in the popular business press right now, the importance of being resilient. But when the connotation of that word, particularly in American society, is sort of, I'm going to force through and do it anyway, no matter the cost, no matter how tired I am. And that's not sustainable. So regenerative because not only does it bring us back or restore us to whatever state we were in in the first place, but gives us the tools to expand beyond that from survival to thriving. Ken WhiteExcellent. So you have three core principles under the umbrella. First one is clarity. Can you tell us about that? Elatia AbateAbsolutely. So like any good model that comes out of a structure strategy framework, right, three pillars. The first one is clarity, and clarity is subdivided also in the three buckets. But when we look at clarity, it's from a personal leadership perspective. What do I want to create? What kind of impacts do I want to have? How do I want to use my life and career? And from the answers to those questions, how do I define clearly the things that I value? How am I exercising those values in my day-to-day? And then finally, how am I protecting the space where I am allowed to live into those values, whatever they might be? So that's the purpose of clarity because most of us are bumbling along. We don't know what I mean. We think we do, but when we sit down and ask, what are the three things that you find most important right now? Most people take a little while to get there. So if you have clarity of purpose, why you're here, what you're up to, the things that you value the most, and then you can protect that space and even evaluate, am I in a role right now that's allowing me to exercise those? Can I find that in the organization where I am, or should I be looking somewhere else? Ken WhiteSo it's personal and organizational? Elatia AbateYes. So Regenerative Resilience, as a side note, exists as an individual leadership model. How do I develop my own leadership and then also as an organizational strategic model? How does my organization become regeneratively resilient? So it exists on those two planes. Ken WhiteInteresting. But start with the leader, which makes sense. Yeah. Fearlessness is the second. Elatia AbateYes, fearlessness and not courage. Right. So the third pillar also starts with the C, and the alliteration would have been beautiful. And though courage is a fundamentally extractive action, I'm going to feel the fear and do it anyway. I'm going to jump off of, dive off an airplane, or whatever, and that's fine in the moment. Courage has its place. But again, sustainable leadership, when change is going to continue, and the disruption is going to grow, that's not going to work. And so fearlessness is how we first and foremost identify, control, manage the chemicals and what feel like automatic processes that are running around in our body that creates stress and these kinds of things. There's actually plenty of techniques that we can utilize to manage that. But then, secondly, intellectually, how do we build the resources around ourselves and the projects that we're running so that we don't run into burnout? And how do we name, define and challenge the assumptions that we have about what is or isn't true about our world? Because oftentimes, fear comes, or this anxiety comes because we don't think we have options. And we don't think we have options because of the assumptions that we're making about how we're operating in the world. So if we can challenge the assumptions, and I call it a kaleidoscope of questions, right? If we can sort of turn the kaleidoscope around and begin to look and examine and explore it, what might we be thinking is true that may or may not be? We begin to find more options, the fear reduces, and we can empower ourselves and our teams. Ken WhiteI think I saw you had written something that said it's a way to discover an alternative to exhaustive strategies. Elatia AbateYes. Ken WhiteSo it's opening up, in other words. Elatia AbateYes, exactly. Because in my former life as a corporate executive, I was on 100 hours a week burnout train. And so many of us were taught to that that is the prized way of going forward, and it's simply not sustainable. So we move from that exhaustive again over into regenerative. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Elatia Abate in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your business or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full-time, so both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with futurist Elatia Abate. Ken WhiteAnd then the third pillar connection. Elatia AbateConnection. Yes. Hello, fellow human beings. How are we going to connect with each other? And particularly in this world that's increasingly hybrid? Minimally. But I think we'll go to asynchronous sooner rather than later or as we evolve over time. And the connection also includes how we communicate about who we are and what we're up to. So, language, I can't stress enough the importance of language because language creates our reality. There's a distinction in there between problem-solving and solution-seeking. If I come to you with a problem that I have to solve, it's usually complaining. It's usually asking some form of the question, why is this happening to me, to us, in the market? It pushes the lens to externalities that we can't control. However, if we go to solution seeking, okay, fine, it's not Pollyanna. We don't ignore the fact that there's a challenge here. We say, okay, given that this is a challenge we're facing, what is it that we want to create? The language that I utilize in connecting with you about something that I'm solving. A solution that I'm creating is different from a problem that I'm solving. Ken WhiteWhich then changes your mindset. Elatia AbateWhich then changes your mindset. And it enrolls to the point of connection. It enrolls others in supporting you in ways that are much more productive, as opposed to sitting around the proverbial water cooler and complaining about what isn't working. Ken WhiteSo in your workshop, you work with six weeks in teams. Generally, how big? Is there a nice number you like to work with? Elatia AbateSure. So that's one of those things where it just depends. Right. I've done from groups of ten, strictly the C-suite or a couple of members of the board. To workshopish of several hundred or a few thousand. For me, I love the individual interaction that comes with smaller groups. So up to 40 inside of a classroom is a really great way to get into a little bit more personal interaction as opposed to solely lecturing. Ken WhiteAnd as you're doing that, what kind of reactions are you getting? Because this is new. This is a new mindset. Elatia AbateThis is new. Sure. The first thing that happens when I walk into a room, usually because I talk about disruption and change and all the things that are happening, is that there is a moment where we need to recognize that that can feel scary, and that's okay. It's normal to feel scared in the face of uncertainty. The game then becomes, how can we learn to shift this into seeing that there's way more opportunity inside of this change? Once we shift over to that, the receptivity tends to be pretty great, especially because there's data behind all of it, on some level. Yes, I created and though when we're looking at the importance of having clarity, purpose, and direction, the academic research will support that yes, that is a good thing. Psychology research will tell us that. Yes. Learning how to create and construct firm boundaries around your time, your talents, and this sort of thing is a healthy thing for us to do as human beings. Right. So the data is there, and my job is to combine sort of this out at the edge disruption with the data that people already have access to and are familiar to and create a bridge to the future. Ken WhiteHow do you see the new leader in comparison to one maybe 20 years ago? What's that new leader? What are they like? What are they thinking about? Elatia AbateSure. So I think one distinction that could be useful for folks to understand is there's a big shift from subject matter expertise to becoming a subject matter student and subject matter experts was in the old model, right? The unquestionable authority about the economy, about finance, about fill-in-the-blank, whatever it is. And we kowtowed to that knowledge without questioning it. Today, no matter how much we know about any given thing, you may be the world's most knowledgeable person in a given thing. So we're not saying it's not important to learn, but even if you know all the things, there's going to be something else because of the rate of change. So what else haven't you thought about? What else haven't you seen? And so a willingness to learn, unlearn, do redo and become and continuously and constantly evolve. Ken WhiteWhich I guess is the same as your advice to those who want to lead. Those are the things to embrace then. How will it be different as we hire leaders? Because there was a pretty set way, a CEO was hired. If things are evolving, and they are, then I think the hiring process could be different. Elatia AbateYes, and so well. First and foremost, the hiring process for most organizations needs to change across the organization, from the C-suite down to the interns, if for no other reason than for diversity, period, point blank. This is a nonnegotiable as we're moving forward in the world. And so, our hiring processes and promotion processes need to change in order to reflect that. So there's that. And then secondly, in the search for right, people aren't going to fit into one neat box. Nontraditional thinkers or nontraditional MBA folks or business folks are likely the ones that you're going to want to put into leadership positions because of the ability to navigate and to be okay with I might not know the answer, and it's okay if we're still in search of the answer, but then what are the criteria for searching for leaders like this? Are they curious? Are they willing and able to say that they are wrong and that they screwed something up and help their team and support their team in doing the same thing? Ken WhiteWhen you look at the next ten years, 20 years, optimistic, pessimistic, excited, where are you? Elatia AbateIf you couldn't tell from my tone up until now, right? I am incredibly optimistic because inside of this disruption, there is more opportunity than we've ever seen. The very technologies that are creating this disruption are technologies that can help solve all of the big challenges that we're facing. And I mentioned that conversation experiment when I reached out to all these folks, the variety of answers that I received. Some people were having the best years of their lives. Many people were having the worst years ever, meltdowns and family and everything else. But no matter how good or bad the situation was, every single one of the people with whom I spoke was using their life, their time, their intellect, their talent to help somebody else. Being in the listening of that much power in a beautiful way, we're going to be fine. We're going to be great. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Elatia Abate. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home to the MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Elatia Abate. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![David Long](images/david-long-180-thumb.jpg)
![Retaining Your Employees](images/david-long-180-thumb.jpg)
David Long
Episode 180: July 21, 2022
Retaining Your Employees
Retaining high quality employees. A priority today. As professionals change jobs faster than ever, businesses and organizations need to hang on to their best performers. While many employers increase salaries to retain people, our guest today says they're often overlooking something more important and more effective. Something that will keep top employees engaged and happy at work. David Long is a professor of organizational behavior at William & Mary's School of Business. In addition to teaching undergraduate and MBA students, he works closely with businesses and leadership teams. He says employers can focus on five elements that lead to happy and fulfilled employees. The kind who stay on the team and contribute.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Retaining high-quality employees a priority today as professionals change jobs faster than ever, businesses and organizations need to hang on to their best performers. Well, while many employers increase salaries to retain people, our guest today says they're often overlooking something more important and more effective. Something that will keep top employees engaged and happy at work. David Long is a professor of organizational behavior at William & Mary's School of Business. In addition to teaching undergraduate and MBA students, he works closely with businesses and leadership teams. He says employers can focus on five elements that lead to happy and fulfilled employees. The kind who stay on the team and contribute. Here's our conversation with William & Mary business Professor David Long. Ken WhiteDavid, thanks for joining us. A pleasure to have you today. David LongThanks, Ken. Nice to see you. Ken WhiteYou had talked to a group of corporate leaders just a few weeks ago about what we're going to talk about. And everybody in the room, you could just see the lights going on. People were really excited, saying, I really didn't think about it this way. And what we learned is that so many people are focused on hiring and retention, but they might not be thinking about the right thing. And you talked a little bit about extrinsic and intrinsic. Can you tell us about that? David LongSure, absolutely. If you think about the way that you view your work and your job, there's really two categories that you can view your job on. The first one is on what we call extrinsic rewards. Those are things, specific aspects about the job that are outside of you. So things like pay, promotions, benefits, perks, vacation time, how big of an office I have, those are things that certainly impact whether you're going to be happy in a job or not. But again, they are external to you. They're nothing about you as a person. The other are intrinsic rewards. Those are things that are more internal to you. And there are specific aspects of the job that kind of map to who you are as a person or what you want to get out of a job. So extrinsic rewards, you think about pay, promotion, intrinsic rewards, you think about things about the job that I enjoy. What are the specific things about the job that I do everyday day in and day out that I derive satisfaction from? That's the intrinsic side, and that's kind of where a lot of leaders miss focus when they're thinking about how can I keep my employees around. It's not just about pay. It's not just about promotions and who you work with. It's about the job. Ken WhiteAnd you talked about five specific elements in terms of that one of them. And as we're talking about this, you're saying this is what you need to think about when thinking about your employees. Right. Or your team. David LongAbsolutely. Ken WhiteAnd so, the first element is variety. David LongYeah. And these five elements that I think we're going to cover here, they come from a model called Job Characteristics Theory. It's a model that's been around for a long time, but it's based more on that intrinsic side of work, kind of the missed opportunity that a lot of leaders overlook. The first one is variety. So in order to derive more intrinsic satisfaction from your work, one aspect of your job that would be beneficial for you to get that intrinsic satisfaction is to have variety. Getting to do different things. The old assembly line worker just doing the same routine over and over again. Not a lot of variety. But if you get to do different things, maybe you get to work with different clients, maybe you get to focus on different tasks. You get to hone new skills that you never honed before. That's all different aspects of variety that can drive higher levels of job satisfaction. Ken WhiteCross training, for example, right? David LongAbsolutely. Cross training. When I was leading Home Depot, we had department supervisors. I had a hardware department supervisor. I had an electrical department super. I had a paint department supervisor. And one day, I said, let's learn each other's jobs. The hardware supervisor, do you know how to mix paint. Let's learn that job. That way, if a customer is ever waiting in paint and somebody's helping, they need help in paint, the hardware person can go over there and mix paint for them. It's just learning a different skill set, adding variety. Ken WhiteAnd we know that most people, most employees, do, in fact, enjoy that. David LongAbsolutely. Ken WhiteCross training. The ability to learn more. David LongRight. It's a little bit of a slippery slope because employees do want to be good at what they do. So they do want to be somewhat of an expert in their primary role. But beyond that, do they get to do different things at different times as well? Ken WhiteRight. David LongYou want to be an expert on what you do, but you also want to enhance new avenues for yourself. Ken WhiteSo we know that doing that under the variety element improves satisfaction. David LongAbsolutely. And if an employee is more satisfied in their work, they're more likely to stay. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. David LongIt's about retention. Ken WhiteNumber two. The second element is identity. David LongYeah. Identity is a fun one. It has to do with employees being able to see an identifiable piece of completed work that they contributed to that they did. So do you have your own identity in a finished piece of work? I tell my students all the time, look, you guys are going to go off and do great things. You're going to become leaders of industry. You're going to run companies. It would be great if I could look one day and say, here's how I contributed to that. And so if you ever feel like, hey, Professor Long, your class, I learned something about it, and I do it every day, let me know about that. I would love to be able to see myself in an identifiable piece of finished work. People who bake cakes and paint paintings and build things, they have this in spades. They get to see the fruits of their labor. But a lot of jobs, especially in service industries, we just don't get to see the fruits of our labor. So it's important for leaders to be able to connect that back to their employees, show them what their work is doing as a finished product so that they can see it and they can point to it and go, hey, I did that. Ken WhiteSo it has a visible outcome. David LongHas a visible outcome. That's right. If you build homes, you get to drive around town and point to houses. I built that one. I built that one. I built that one. A lot of us don't have that luxury. Ken WhiteYeah, I did that, matters, doesn't it? David LongI did it. Yeah, I did it, matters. That's right. Ken WhiteYeah. David LongExactly. Ken WhiteThe third element is significance. What do you mean by that? David LongYeah, so this is a big one. Does your job offer significance to other people? Is it meaningful to others? If you're a lifeguard, you got this, right? You're saving lives. You're out there. But if you're working in a job where you feel like, I just don't see how what I'm doing contributes to society or the greater good. Back to Home Depot, I had a cashier one time who said, I'm just a cashier here, so what does it matter? And I thought for a second, oh, man, I got to figure out a way to let her know that what she does is significant. And so the Home Depot I worked at, we get about 12,000 customers a week. Only about 500 to 700 of those customers actually need associates in paint or hardware to help them. The rest of them get what they want, and they go check out. So over 90% of our customers only interact with that cashier. And so I went and told her, I said, look what you do, how you engage with the customers ultimately going to determine how successful we are as a store because that's going to drive customer satisfaction. You smiling at them, asking them if they found everything they need, and telling them to have a nice day, and getting them out in a timely manner is really what's going to determine our success. Ken WhiteYeah, it matters greatly. And it's interesting how some people don't see how much their work matters to the organization and to the customer, right? David LongAnd so one of the great studies that did this is there was a call center on a college campus where volunteers were calling and soliciting donations, and they were doing fine. But the leader of the call center said, what if I brought in the benefactors, the people who are benefiting from the donations? I.e., receiving the scholarships from the money that was being solicited? Let me bring those folks in and let them tell the volunteers, thank you, and without your effort, I couldn't be here. I mean, it drove not only how hard they were working but the amount of donations they received through the roof just by seeing the people that they were impacting. The significance that their work had on someone else. Ken WhiteSo it's important for the manager, for the leader, to find that significance if the employee can't find it. David LongRight. And we can't all be lifeguards. We can't all be surgeons. Ken WhiteYeah. David LongSo you need to find a way to connect. What is it that this employee is doing, and how does it impact something that's more significant than themselves? How does it help the vision of the company? How does it drive our mission? How does it make a customer more satisfied? Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Professor David Long in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. We're discussing employee retention on the podcast today. If that's a priority for your organization, we invite you to think about William & Mary as a way to retain your best people. Consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full time, so both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Professor David Long. Ken WhiteThe fourth pillar autonomy. What do you mean by that? David LongYeah. Do you get to decide how, when you do your job right? It's like the opposite of micromanaging. Leaders need to tell their employees, here's the expectation, here's the outcome I want, and then get out of their way. Let them determine an autonomy can be as big as, hey, I have the flexibility to work when I want and where I want, or it can be something as small as, what tasks am I going to do this day and in what order am I going to do them right? So the less micro-managing that employees have, the happier they are. They want autonomy. They want discretion. And the reason is because if people have autonomy, then whatever the outcome is, the responsibility goes back to them because I got to decide how I teach this course. I got to decide who I work with. I always tell my students. I say I'm teaching this class. Do you know who made the decision about what was in the curriculum, what's on the syllabus? And they pause for a minute, and then somebody always says, you did. And I go, that's right. I did. No, dean told me, no department chair told me, no president. I got to determine what is in the syllabus and what content I'm teaching you. The good thing about that is I got to decide. The other side of that is, if you guys aren't happy with this course, that comes back to me. Ken WhiteRight. David LongSo it's an extra edge for the employees to also, hey, look, I want to give you autonomy. You need to make sure you're putting in the effort to get the outcome that we want. Ken WhiteYeah. Autonomy and responsibility go hand in hand. David LongHand in hand. Ken WhiteIn that instance. David LongYou're right, Ken. Ken WhiteDo most people in your experience want autonomy? David LongYes. Again, they want to become subject matter experts. And so there's an onboarding, there's a ramp-up process for autonomy. Autonomy from day one. Hey, you're hired. Now here's what we need you to do now. You go figure it out can be dangerous. So employees want to learn the steps, but then after a while, back off and let them get their own nuanced way to do something. Ken WhiteThis is an interesting pillar because when you and I talked to managers and leaders, a lot of what we're hearing now is, this is exhausting. I mean, these people, my team, they're driving me crazy. A lot of that would go away if you allow them to have some autonomy. David LongAbsolutely. Right. So focus on the outcomes. Hold people accountable for the deliverables, but then let them have a say. And hey, every third Friday, I'm going to do a remote. Okay, fine, if that's what works for you. But just know the expectation is that we get the deliverables that we agreed on. Ken WhiteSure. The final number five is feedback. David LongThis one's an interesting one because most people, when they think about feedback, they think about a boss or a customer saying, hey, you did a good job, or you did a bad job. This element of feedback actually comes from the work itself. You look at something and say, I either did a good job or I did a bad job. So if I'm an artist painting a painting, I can stand back at the end and look at it and go, oh, man, I really nailed that one. Or oops. Those colors clash. They don't go well together. I'm getting feedback from the work itself. Again, it's not from a boss or a co-worker, or a customer. That's an important aspect of feedback. But the truest sense where people get intrinsic rewards is if they get it from the work itself. So you can pat yourself on the back and say, yeah, I nailed that one. Ken WhiteYeah. My work lets me know how I'm doing. David LongMy work lets me know how I'm doing. Absolutely. Ken WhiteSo as I think of this, I go right back to autonomy because they're tied together. So of the five, how do they intertwine with one another? David LongSo they're all independent, but they can amplify, they can enhance each other. So if leaders focus on a couple of them, that's better than just focusing on one of them. If they focus on all five, that can be super powerful. Ken WhiteBut you had mentioned at one time that the five lead to real meaningfulness in the work. David LongYeah, right. So these five characteristics of a job, they lead to what we call feeling states of employees where they feel that my work makes a difference, it's meaningful. They feel that they're responsible for the outcomes. They feel that the feedback they're getting allows them to know how they're doing. Those are feelings that these jobs provide. Again, these are intrinsic things. Feelings are intrinsic. And so these five quick characteristics lead to these positive effective states that employees feel, and that's what drives job satisfaction. Ken WhiteAnd how can managers and leaders ensure that they're using this? Because this is a fairly easy fix when it comes to retention. David LongIt really is. The best way to do it is there are actually two things. The first thing is leaders need to ask employees across these five dimensions rate your job. I've given you variety, identity, significance, autonomy, feedback. Ask them do you feel that your job makes a difference? And if so, how? The employee says no. Okay, great. This is an avenue that I can work and can focus on. If the employee says absolutely, I see exactly how my job connects, great. That's something that I don't have to spend time on. I can go to maybe feedback or identity. So asking employees to give some information, solicit some feedback so that, you know, the second thing is we just need to stop thinking only extrinsically. When they think about rewards, the employees are going to knock on their door and say hey, I'm not happy here. I think I need another 30% pay. Or hey, I'm not happy here. I'd like a little more vacation time. That's an important thing to listen to. Right. Because it does impact job satisfaction. But don't overlook the intrinsic side of thing. Maybe in addition to listening to the concerns of the employee on the extrinsic side, also think about adding some, say, variety to their work or connecting the dots of how their job impacts the overall mission of the organization to drive significance. Think intrinsically as well. Ken WhiteBased on what we're hearing so many managers and leaders it is about money because people are job hopping. But this can make a huge difference. David LongHuge difference. That's right. Ken WhiteYeah. David LongHuge difference. Ken WhiteAnd retention seems to be where it's at right now. David LongAbsolutely right. And these are just minor tweaks that a leader can do for their employees, and what it is that they do that can really help with retention. Ken WhiteAnd you're calling it being self-fulfilled in your work? We can get our team to that position. David LongIf I can get a cashier at Home Depot, right? Think about it. A minimum wage job somebody who truly is the lowest paid employee with the least amount of required skills. If I can get a cashier to find significant in what they do, imagine in your organization how easy that's going to be to help employees see what they do and how significant it is to someone other than themselves? Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor David Long. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA Program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Professor David Long, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Navdeep Gupta](images/navdeep-gupta-179-thumb.jpg)
![Doing Good and Well: DICK'S](images/navdeep-gupta-179-thumb.jpg)
Navdeep Gupta
Episode 179: July 5, 2022
Doing Good & Well: DICK'S
We all know that companies and employees expect businesses to do more than make money. Today, people expect organizations to contribute to society to make a difference. And we've seen how those efforts lead to a number of positive outcomes. When looking for role models in the doing good and doing well arena, one company jumps out: DICK'S Sporting Goods. America's largest sporting goods retailer goes to great lengths to support young athletes. In fact, since 2014, DICK'S and the DICK'S Foundation have committed over $150 million to youth sports. Navdeep Gupta is the CFO at DICK'S. He earned his MBA at William & Mary and was here last month for Alumni Reunion Weekend. He sat down with us to talk about DICK'S Sporting Goods, its special culture, and its commitment to today's young athletes.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. We all know that companies and employees expect businesses to do more than make money. Today, people expect organizations to contribute to society to make a difference, and we've seen how those efforts lead to a number of positive outcomes. When looking for role models in the doing good and doing well arena, one company jumps out, DICK'S Sporting Goods. America's largest sporting goods retailer goes to great lengths to support young athletes. In fact, since 2014, DICK'S and the DICK'S Foundation have committed over $150,000,000 to youth sports. Navdeep Gupta is the CFO at DICK'S. He earned his MBA at William & Mary and was here last month for Alumni Reunion Weekend. He sat down with us to talk about DICK'S Sporting Goods, its special culture, and its commitment to today's young athletes. Here's our conversation with Navdeep Gupta, CFO, DICK'S Sporting Goods. Ken WhiteNavdeep, welcome. It's so great to have you on campus. Thanks for joining us. Navdeep GuptaOh, Ken, I appreciate that. This has been a great weekend so far, and I'm looking forward to this conversation. Ken WhiteHow long has it been since you've been on campus? Has it been a while? Navdeep GuptaI would say it's been 20 years since I graduated. Ken WhiteRight. Navdeep GuptaGot a chance to make a brief visit in 2009, actually. Luckily, my mom was visiting from India, and we wanted to bring her down and show her the school. And at that time, the MBA program had just moved into this new facility. So I did take her to the old one, just the Blow Hall, and just to be able to show the small rooms and the few meeting rooms that we had. And she got a chance to actually see my class. And when I told her that I was coming down to the college and she remembered all of that. And it's fun to be able to connect that way with your parents and to be able to talk about the things that you have been through. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. And then this weekend, getting to see some of your classmates. Navdeep GuptaOh, it's been great. I haven't seen most of the folks that, so we keep in touch, but it's been more through text or phone conversation. And I'm really looking forward to the happy hour now. Ken WhiteYeah, we stand between you and your class reunion happy hour. Yeah. But your job at DICK'S. CFO, that's pretty self-explanatory. But how do you describe your job to others? Navdeep GuptaI think so the biggest part of my job is balancing the financial expectation of the company with the strategic intention that we have. When you think about it, right? No company is able to do what it does without having a clear idea of what differentiates them. And to me, the focus that I drive within the finance team is our role is to be the fiduciary champions, which as a finance person, you have to be the fiduciary champions. So the three big things that I talk to my team about is one being the fiduciary champion. Two, taking care of your teammates. They come to the company every day with a dream that they want to accomplish. And so we call ourselves that we are in the dreams business, making our athletes dreams come alive. When that high school athlete walks on the field with a baseball bat, they have a dream that they want to be able to hit that last winning home run. Our team members walk into our offices with a dream of their own, and our goal is to be able to help achieve their dreams. And then, the third thing we talk about is how do you facilitate and enable the long-term growth aspirations of the company and do them through financial analysis, providing insights, and being proactive decision support makers. Ken WhiteDICK'S is known for having a pretty cool culture and a place where people enjoy working. How did it get there? Navdeep GuptaI think we call ourselves the fortunate ones, right? You love the product. As soon as you walk into the store, we say sometimes, I've heard the phrase that you walk into a Disneyland. It's like that. You can touch and feel every product, you can reminisce, and you can actually think what could you be doing on the field with those equipment? And to me, that's what I enjoy the most. So in terms of the big focus for us always has been that how do we create a company where the culture is about sports, it's about having fun, but it's also doing the right things by the community, doing the right things for the long-term growth aspirations of the company. So we call ourselves the growth company that is always looking to continue to differentiate ourselves and continue to grow, and the culture emanates from that. And the other thing that I just talked about is the fact that at the leadership level, there is a clear focus on being a humble leader. We have this award called as Left Tackle award. It's given not to the leader who accomplished the best in terms of their own department or their own personal effort. It is rewarded to an individual who did the best thing in enabling the company achieve its goal. It's a very unique award, and to me, that speaks a lot about the type of culture that we have both at the leadership level and within the company overall. Ken WhiteAnd you talk about doing the right thing, working hard, and having fun. That is sports. That's what every coach has been teaching players and kids from the get-go. So it makes sense. Navdeep GuptaOh absolutely. I feel like sports at the young age matters so much right now in this community I feel. Whether it is learning how to win, learning how to cope with the loss, learning how to interact with the team, playing on being a part of a team, sometimes you are the leader of that team, and sometimes you have to listen to others, listening to coach at the same time deciding at the right game time on what you are going to do because everything is not known. And those are such core fundamental aspects that a kid is learning. Whatever sports that they are pursuing. I feel those are the things that continue to define them into their adulthood and beyond. All of us can remember that moment when we were young. We were part of the team. You struggled, and somehow one fine day that, you suddenly got good, and you still to this day talk about that day. And to me, those are very unique things that you're able to bring it to life for some of our athletes. That's great. Ken WhiteIt's interesting on our podcast series, many CEOs and leaders like yourselves so many of them played sports, and they talk about those lessons. It's the same lesson. It's the same goals. It's all teamwork and how it translates beautifully into business and into leadership. It seems like you're right smack dab in the middle of it at DICK'S. Navdeep GuptaThat's what we love about what we do. Ken WhiteYeah. So what amazes me, and I know a lot of others about DICK'S sporting goods, is what you do for others. You have your purpose playbook. Can you tell us about that? Navdeep GuptaYeah, no. So purpose playbook deals with the big topics like everybody talks about the ESG topics, right? The environmental, the social, and the governance aspect and we have been doing a really clear focus job at this topics for a very long period of time. And I'll talk a little bit more about some of the other topics besides ESG that we are passionate about. But if you think just core on the remaining on the ESG piece itself, there is a clear goal in terms of the pay parity. We employ over 40,000 individuals, and we look at the parity at the right level as well as at the right experience level. We look at the male versus female pay parity ratio, and these are all disclosed in our ESG playbook. We have given out a goal in terms of the greenhouse gas emission reduction that we have for 2030 and how are we making continuing progress about it. This year we are launching another goal where we have committed that we'll be buying $300 million of product from diversified suppliers. Where you can go to DICK'S Sporting Goods and find Nike. You can go to DICK'S Sporting Goods, find all of the large brands. But then what we want to be also to be able to do is to provide avenues for the diversified suppliers that are out there, the small businesses, giving them an opportunity to be able to showcase their product that they are passionate about in our stores. So we have committed that in next few years, we'll be buying almost $300 million of product from these suppliers to be able to provide them an opportunity within our stores. The area that the company is also very passionate about is our youth. As our chairman says, youth are the most precious resource that we have in this country and in this world. And the more you can enable them to be successful, the more successful our company and our community is going to be. Those are the three big areas that I would say we spend a lot of time talking about. Ken WhiteAnd how are those areas targeted? How was the selection made? Mostly internal with some external input. How did you come to that? Navdeep GuptaIt was a combination of both internal and external. We have a very involved board as well, so board has a very strong say into what we are doing, how we are thinking about it. We have a very diverse board as well, so we have Larry Fitzgerald, the famous NFL player, who brings a very diverse, different perspective to the board. And then you have a very diverse board. So that has been a big focus. That making sure that the board represents the community that we are part of, from the sporting goods industry to technology, to retail, to female leaders that are all part of the composition of the board. And then it translates within the company itself. We are a controlled company, and so our focus is much more on what is the right thing to do for the business, for the community that we are partnering with. And those are the big areas through which we came up with what has gone into our purpose playbook. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Navdeep Gupta in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full time, so both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with the CFO of DICK'S Sporting Goods, Navdeep Gupta. Navdeep GuptaYeah. So the foundation is called DICK'S Sporting Goods Foundation. It's been in place for about over ten years there, and we have given over $80 million of funds to the communities that we are partnering with. And there are three big areas. So one, the company itself funds this Sports Matter Foundation. The other is through the products that we sell within our stores. We contribute a portion of that proceeds from received directly from the athletes to this foundation which the company matches. So this is kind of the funding mechanism, and there are three big areas where we look to provide the funding through the funds that have been raised. First and foremost is access to sport. Today is getting impacted more and more. More and more states are cutting the budgets that are available for these type of activities, especially the sports activity. And so, our hope is to be able to bridge some of that gap. Kids today don't have access to sporting goods equipment. They don't have access to funds to be able to pay the registration fees to be able to participate in these activities. So that's one area that the foundation works very closely with the communities to be able to provide funding. The other is there are not many facilities that are available to be able to go and play safely. And so, we partner with communities to be able to enable that. And then the last is just being able to create our own unique experiences for some of these athletes that we are able to provide. The example is the school that we are partnering in the McKeesport area, and fund that type of activity as well. Ken WhiteYeah, tell us more about that. McKeesport is an area in Pittsburgh, not far from downtown Pittsburgh and corporate headquarters. But you're partnering with the school there. Tell us what you're doing. Navdeep GuptaYeah, so the genesis of that came about like sports really important for youth. The other thing that is really important for youth is also the education. And we know that there are inequities in the educational opportunities that we have today in our society. And we said we can't change everything, but there are small steps that we can take or we can where we can make a difference. And so, this was our pilot project two years ago. The company made a large donation of $30 million to be able to do the Sports Matter Foundation, to be able to start to go on this journey. And then, we did a lot of research to see which community could we partner, and luckily we found in the McKeesport area an opportunity where we could partner with the city to be able to create what we are calling as the Twin River School. So this will be a school where we will be partnering with the city as well as the education institution that already existed there and see what we can create. And the whole vision there is to be able to provide not just the education but much more holistic education part of the community. So like, if the parents need a place to a laundry facility so that will be on the school. If you need opportunities to be able to find meals, also there'll be available at the school. So this is still evolving. It's very early, it's about call it a year old where we are working very closely with the community, and we're excited about what we'll be able to do there. Ken WhiteI'm sure people are listening and saying wow, that's so much. Is it worth it? Why does DICK'S do all of this? Navdeep GuptaWell, I think so. The question is, if not us, then who? We cannot continue to look to others to lead in this space. We feel we have a legitimate right to make a difference in this world, and we feel like even if few kids or even if one kid is positively impacted by this type of an effort, we believe it will be worth it. To me personally, it's very enriching as I think about my own self because there was somebody that took a little bit of effort on their part to be able to provide these type of opportunities that I've been fortunate to. That's exactly the way we look at it that we need to give back to the communities that we are part of, and these are just testament to some of the things that, as a company, we feel really passionate about. Ken WhiteI'm guessing it positively affects hiring and retention. Navdeep GuptaOh, it absolutely affects positively those aspects as well as and it affects both of the CSE, even the corporate center that we have in Pittsburgh office, but it actually affects even our stores. So we have 800 stores that are in different communities and where we are able to provide grants to local communities, local teams to be able to fund them. It actually allows the store team members to become more relevant to the communities that they are part of as well. So it's a win-win all across. Ken WhiteDo you see this becoming, I don't want to say important, but required for companies to do this sort of work? Navdeep GuptaI would say anything that becomes required becomes a check-the-box type of an activity. So I prefer that this should come what is natural to the company they should. And to me, the way I look at it is every leader should be requiring of themselves to be a meaningful member of the society and the community that they are part of, and to me, it's a calling versus somebody else should be pushing you to do these types of activities. Ken WhiteRight. And it can affect the bottom line? Navdeep GuptaOh absolutely. I think there are people sometimes refer to bottom line very narrowly as to say this is the earnings. This is the EPS. But I think so if you look back and say, is my business more profitable? Does it have the longevity that I desire out of it through these activities? Your what I call as the overall lifetime value of that type of an investment is much bigger than what you actually see directly on the piano. Ken WhiteWill we see more organizations play a bigger role? It's not just about profit, it's not just about employees, but we need to make a difference in the world. Are you seeing that? Navdeep GuptaAbsolutely. I feel like to me, sometimes you sit back and reflect on it and say, who do you look to within this community or in the society today as the leaders of the world, and you are left wanting. To me, that's been one of the gaping holes right now in the society. Is you don't have leaders that you can look up and say that these are the true leaders that are going to make a difference. And in that type of a situation, to me, it is requiring upon the leaders of today and tomorrow to be able to say, can I be that role model? Even in a small way? Not in a huge way, you're not the world leader, but in your small way, in the small community that I'm in, can I make a little bit of a difference? And to me, that's kind of a calling for all of us. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Navdeep Gupta. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Navdeep Gupta. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Stephanie Linnartz](images/stephanie-linnartz-178-thumb.jpg)
![Leadership & the Marriott Recovery](images/stephanie-linnartz-178-thumb.jpg)
Stephanie Linnartz
Episode 178: June 21, 2022
Leadership & the Marriott Recovery
Few sectors were hit harder by the pandemic than the hospitality sector. Hotels in particular faced devastating losses as travel came to a halt. For Marriott International, the world's largest hotel company, that meant closing some hotels and laying off or furloughing many employees. Two years later, Marriott is experiencing a remarkable recovery; employees are back to work, hotels are open, and in many cases they're full, almost back to record levels. Stephanie Linnartz is President of Marriott International. She earned her MBA at William & Mary and was recently here for Alumni Reunion Weekend. She sat down with us to talk about Marriott, leading through the pandemic, and her people-first approach.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Few sectors were hit harder by the pandemic than the hospitality sector. Hotels, in particular, faced devastating losses as travel came to a halt. For Marriott International, the world's largest hotel company, that meant closing some hotels and laying off or furloughing many employees. Two years later, Marriott is experiencing a remarkable recovery. Employees are back to work, hotels are open, and in many cases, they're full, almost back to record levels. Stephanie Linnartz is President of Marriott International. She earned her MBA at William & Mary and was recently here for Alumni Reunion Weekend. She sat down with us to talk about Marriott, leading through the pandemic, and her people first approach. Here's our conversation with Stephanie Linnartz, President, Marriott International. Ken WhiteStephanie, thanks very much for joining us. Welcome back to William & Mary. Stephanie LinnartzGreat to be here. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteIt's been a while. Have things changed? Stephanie LinnartzA few things have changed. This gorgeous new building where the business school is now housed it's spectacular. But what hasn't changed is how beautiful Williamsburg is. I went on a long run this morning, and it's a beautiful day here, but this William & Mary has to be one of the most beautiful colleges and universities in the world. Ken WhiteNo doubt. What a great place to work and come every day. No questions. Stephanie LinnartzYou're lucky. Ken WhiteVery, very and I think we all know it, too. Yeah, we're all grateful. Thinking back to your MBA days when you were here, and you got your degree, what was the plan? Did you have one? Stephanie LinnartzYou know, I did. I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, and my family owns and runs a small boutique hotel and a number of restaurants in the D.C. area. So I grew up in the hotel business and in the restaurant business, and the service business, and I really did want to go back into that field. So I thought getting in. I worked out of undergrad for Hilton for a few years, then wanted to get my MBA so that I could expand my skill set and get some more things under my belt in terms of, again, knowledge, skills, capabilities. But I did want to go back into the hotel business. And Marriott International started in Washington, D.C., as a nine-stool root-beer stand. And it's a homegrown. It's so global now but started as a local company in D.C., so I knew about Marriott growing up, and I really did want to work for Marriott coming out of William & Mary. Ken WhiteGreat. Stephanie LinnartzThat's what happened. Ken WhiteIt's interesting. On the podcast, we've talked to many leaders and CEOs who grew up in a family business. Stephanie LinnartzYeah. Ken WhiteSome great lessons there, right? What did you learn at the dinner table about business and customer service in the industry? Stephanie LinnartzWell, I learned a lot from my mom and my dad, and all of my younger siblings. I'm the oldest of a large family, and we all grew up working in the business. And what I learned about the hotel and restaurant business and the service business is, first of all, how great it is and dynamic and interesting and fun. Again, my family's business was on Capitol Hill in D.C., so there's all sorts of interesting people that came into the business. And so I learned about how interesting and fun it was. And also, it's a lot of hard work. The hotel business is twenty-four seven. I learned, most importantly, from my parents. I learned that the people that worked in our family business, they were part of our family, too. And it was an extension. I mean, if someone didn't have a place to go for the holidays in my parents business, we'd invite them over to our house. And so I grew up in knowing that's a really important part of the hospitality and service business is it's really all about the people that work in the business. At the end of the day, that's how you get to your customers is through the employees. We call them associates at Marriott, and that's how you do your work. And so, I grew up at a young age, realizing the importance of putting people first in the hospitality business. Ken WhiteTo succeed in the business, how much does someone have to love that business? Stephanie LinnartzI think you have to love it to really excel in the hospitality business. I think any business, I think, as a general rule, people tend to do well in businesses that they have a passion for and that they enjoy. You know, no job and no businesses is without hard days and hard times. But I think, at least in my own personal experience, and those who I've worked with over the years in other industries, too, and friends and family, if you really love the business you're in, you're going to have a better chance of excelling. Ken WhiteWhen people ask you what you do, how do you summarize it? What do you tell them? Stephanie LinnartzWell, right now, my current role is President of Marriott International, which is the largest hotel company in the world. We have 30 brands Ritz Carlton, St. Regis, Marriott, of course, Sheraton, Courtyard, Moxy, Four Points. I won't go on and on with all 30 brands, but ranging from very high-end brands to more affordable brands at the lower end of the spectrum. We have over 8,000 hotels across those 30 brands. We're in 140 different countries and growing, and I'm responsible for leading all the consumer side of the business. So sales, marketing, brand, revenue management, data analytics. I'm in charge of global technology. I'm in charge of global real estate development, which is building new hotels around the world. Global design, which is interior design of our properties. And last but not least, I lead all of our new businesses. So we started a home rental business a few years ago called Homes & Villas by Marriott International. We launched Ritz Carlton Yachts, or we will this year, a new cruise business, which is spectacular. We have a very large retail business called Marriott Bonvoy Boutiques, where we sell Ritz Carlton Bedding and Westin Heavenly Beds furniture, etc. We've just launched a new media business a couple weeks ago. So we are constantly thinking about how to evolve our company, all related to travel. And so I lead that area as well. Ken WhiteThat's clearly leading on a large scale. How do you get to the point where you're comfortable knowing what you need to know? Stephanie LinnartzTo me, the most important thing is building, attracting, building, retaining great talent. I am very blessed to have an amazing leadership team, a very diverse leadership team. Diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, different countries, different sexual orientation, different thought. I mean, extremely diverse leadership team. And that is the key to how I do my job every day. I'm extremely blessed to have people and people that candidly, in many cases, very different skills than I have. I think as a leader. You need to complement yourself with people that think differently than you, have different experiences, and then trust them to do their jobs. And so I've been extremely blessed at Marriott to work with, I think, some of the best people in not only the hotel business but any business. Ken WhiteWhat are you working on now that really excites you, really gets you going? Stephanie LinnartzWell, right now, our focus is very much coming out of the pandemic and rebuilding trust with our associates. The pandemic was absolutely devastating to the travel and tourism sector, was devastating to Marriott International. Just to give you a little context of how bad it was, even after 911 2001 and the 2008 2009 financial crisis, our worst quarters then were negative 15% in terms of a metric we call red par revenue per available room. Think of it as same-store sales. Our worst quarter after 911 2001 was negative 15%. Our worst quarter during the financial crisis was negative 25. In the spring of 2020, our business overnight was down 90%, overnight. 25% of our hotels were completely shuttered. 80 plus percent of the 750,000 associates we have around the world were laid off or furloughed. It was devastating. And our industry, particularly in the United States and Europe, and in many places, tends to skew very female, very minority, and very youth. And so, these were the people that were just most hurt by the pandemic. And so we are coming out of two very tough years. And so we're rebuilding, rehiring, again getting the trust back with our associates as we bring people back to work. I'm happy to say things are much, much better. It's remarkable how quickly they've recovered, but the focus right now is on our people. It really is. We've got lots of other things going on, as you can imagine, but it's on our people. Ken WhiteHow do you build that trust? How do you communicate? How do you interact to do that? Stephanie LinnartzWell, with a lot of transparency and honesty about kind of what we went through and how things are looking. During the worst of the pandemic, our former CEO, Arne Sorenson, who passed away in 2021 after a very long battle with pancreatic cancer. I look to him a lot as my guidepost about how to lead through something like this. He did it with incredible transparency and honesty, told everybody how bad things were, was really transparent. Incredible empathy about like, this is so horrible. And it was heartbreaking for him and for the entire leadership team and then hope too. Even in the depths of the Pandemic, Arne and the rest of the leadership team, myself included, saying, but we're going to get through this. Travel is part of the human condition. It makes life better. It makes the world better. Travel will come back. Our company will survive. We're going to get through this. So transparency, empathy, and hope were the main things I think we all tried to focus on as we led through a very challenging time. And sure enough, the hope part turned out to be true because this year, our business in 2022, so just really roughly, a little over two years later, is almost back to 2019 levels, which was a record year for the industry and the company and for any of your listeners who have been in an airport lately or tried to book a hotel, you know that travel has come back. And not just leisure travel, but business travel, too. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Stephanie Linnartz in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full-time, so both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with the President of Marriott International, Stephanie Linnartz. Ken WhiteThe pandemic has been so long, it's really worn people down. How did you stay up and focused? Stephanie LinnartzWell, I kind of went to my go-to tools for living through tough times. My dad has a funny expression that I like. By the way, it's tough times don't last, but tough people do. But how did I navigate through those times? First of all, a lot of I like to exercise, so to me, it's a big stress release. I like to run. I love my Peloton. So I tried to make sure that even in the depths of these very difficult times, I was focusing on taking care of myself, eating well, exercising most importantly, I should say, with my family. It was always my rock, my husband, my children, my faith. I like to meditate. I find that prayer, meditation, exercise, top of the list family. And these are tools I've always used throughout my career all the time, but particularly when times are tough. Ken WhiteI think a lot of incredibly successful people we've had on the podcast, that's self-care, that workout, boy, that's number one. Stephanie LinnartzYeah, cause you can't take care of other people if you don't take care of yourself. You can't take care of your family. You can't be there for your colleagues and your teammates at work, your friends. If you're not healthy and happy yourself, you can't be there for other people. So I do think this idea of self-care and making that a priority, yes, it's important for you, but it's important for the people that you love, too. Ken WhiteYeah. Are you a morning workout person? Stephanie LinnartzMorning. Ken WhiteMorning. Stephanie Linnartz100% morning, yeah. If it doesn't happen in the morning, I have to admit, Ken, I might skip it for the day. Ken WhiteIt's pretty hard, right, once the day begins. Stephanie LinnartzYeah, yeah. Ken WhiteI think most of the people we've had on the podcast are morning workouts, and we've had a lot of runners. Stephanie LinnartzYeah. Ken WhiteYeah, no question. Stephanie LinnartzLove to run. Ken WhiteAs you're moving through Marriott, I mean, obviously, leadership positions. Who have you learned most from in terms of leadership? You mentioned the former CEO, others who have had a real impact on you, and the way you approach leadership. Stephanie LinnartzYeah, I mean, I've had some great bosses over the years, one of whom, Amy McPherson, is also a fellow William & Mary business school grad. And she was a number of years ahead of me at William & Mary and then went to Marriott, too. She was a boss and a mentor to me. I've had some other great bosses, but what I've found over my career is sometimes I learn more, and I'm mentored by people that are younger than me, people on my team. This idea of reverse mentorship, I often say if I want to learn more about data or analytics or cyber security, or some of the newer, relatively speaking, newer fields that are emerging, I will go to a young person on my team. Can you mentor me? I may be your boss. Right. But you know more than me. So how can I learn from, again, more junior people on my team? Because they know more. So I've been blessed to learn from both people that are more senior than me and bosses, peers, of course, and then people on my team. Ken WhiteYou mentioned earlier about bringing people back. Hiring and retention, I'm assuming, a pretty big priority for you. Stephanie LinnartzAbsolutely. And the thing about Marriott International that's so terrific is that we are a place to come for a career, not just a job. And 50% of our general managers at our hotels, which is a very good job, started out as hourly workers. So we are it's really. Ken WhiteWow, that's a number. Stephanie LinnartzYeah, it's really an amazing statistic that holds true today. And our turnover is actually relatively low as a result of the career progression. So we say, come to Marriott International. You can start as an hourly worker and work your way up. You don't even need to be a general manager, part of the executive team at a hotel or a regional office, or at corporate headquarters. So many of us at Marriott International started. I started working in my family business, waiting tables, cleaning rooms, checking people in. So many of us started as hourly, myself included. And you learned the importance of at the end of the day, what's really important in our business is the people who are taking care of the guests in our hotels and our other businesses. Ken WhiteYou were at the World Economic Forum this year. You're a regular there? Stephanie LinnartzI am. This is my 8th year. I was there in Davos, Switzerland. It was postponed from January to the spring, which is unusual to be in Davos in warm weather, but it was amazing to be there. While I'm very bullish about the world and the future of travel, in particular, there's a lot of stuff going on. Right. The war in Ukraine, which is heartbreaking. Geopolitical tensions, inflation, food shortages, supply chain issues. There's a lot going on in the world right now. And that event is a good way to bring business people, government officials, academics, altogether to kind of try to figure out how to solve the world's problems. So it's a blessing to go to that event every year. Ken WhiteAnd then you walk away from it this year. Any feelings? Any thoughts moving for the future? What were your takeaways? Stephanie LinnartzI left hopeful. Despite all the challenges that are there, I feel like people are really focused on the right things. There's a ton of focuses there should be on the environment. Right. That was a big area of focus again. And the world's problems are not going to be solved just by business or just by governments, or just by academics. We need to come together and not by just one country. Right. That's what's so great about that forum. It's complicated. Right. So we need to work together as a global community and across various sectors. And so I left with a lot of hope that people understand the seriousness of the problems facing the world and they want to find a way to work together to solve them. So I left quite hopeful despite some of the tough things going on in the world. Ken WhiteSome of our listeners are students and younger professionals, and if they're listening, saying, I'd love to do what she's doing. What kind of advice do you have for a young professional today? Stephanie LinnartzWell, I think it's first of all, decide something that you love and you're passionate about. Again, I think people do well when they love their field, their career. And then this may sound very, very simple, but I think the key is to work really, really hard. Always be a learner. Be willing to take risk. I say this to young people all the time. Take on the thorniest, most difficult project that no one in your company or, depending on what you do, wants to do. And first of all, if you nail it, you're going to get recognized. Even if you don't, you're going to be recognized for trying. So take risk. Once you get into your field or company that you want to work for, and again, work really hard. Be a good person. Surround as you move up the ladder, surround yourself with good people that you trust, and you advocate for. And those have been some of the things that have served me well in my career. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Stephanie Linnartz, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home to the MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Stephanie Linnartz, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Andrew White](images/andrew-white-177-thumb.jpg)
![Leading in a Modern Age](images/andrew-white-177-thumb.jpg)
Andrew White
Episode 177: June 5, 2022
Leading in a Modern Age
The role of today's leader is quite different from the role leaders played in the past. Today's senior leaders are navigating several challenges simultaneously: Inflation, fast-moving technology, work from home - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Andrew White is a Senior Fellow in Management Practice at the University of Oxford's SaÏd School of Business in England. A leadership coach to top CEOs, he leads the Advanced Management and Leadership Program at Oxford. He says leading in the modern age provides CEOs with unprecedented challenges and opportunities, such as meeting sustainability goals, insuring diversity, retaining top talent, and navigating the fast-changing geopolitical landscape.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, the role of today's leader is quite different from the role leaders played in the past. Today's senior leaders are navigating several challenges simultaneously. Inflation, fast-moving technology, work from home, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Andrew White is a senior fellow in management practice at the University of Oxford Saïd School of Business in England. A leadership coach to top CEOs, he leads the Advanced Management and Leadership program at Oxford. He says leading in the modern age provides CEOs with unprecedented challenges and opportunities, such as meeting sustainability goals, ensuring diversity, retaining top talent, and navigating the fast-changing geopolitical landscape. Here's our conversation with Andrew White. Ken WhiteWell, Andrew, it's great to see you. Thanks very much for joining us on the podcast. Andrew WhiteKen, it's wonderful to be here, and thank you so much for inviting me to be part of your work. Ken WhiteSo we see a lot of leaders and CEOs in the United States and deal with them. You're obviously seeing sort of different groups of CEOs and senior leaders. When you interact with them, what's on their minds? What keeps them up at night? Andrew WhiteI think there's one headline I want to talk about, and I've been doing research with businesses for 20 years. When I started, if you got hit by a disruption, you were unlucky. You were a Polaroid. If I fast forward to where we are today, I don't think there's a business; there's an industry that is not either in disruption, having gone through one wave of disruption and facing another, or has got disruption, not on the near term horizon. So that sense that everything's being disturbed, the status quo can't be relied upon, and that for good leaders forces a conversation about transformation. And transformation, I think, is the positive reaction to that. I think that's the headline, Ken. That's what I think a lot of people are feeling. It disrupts them as individuals. It disrupts the way their company functions. It disrupts their markets. It disrupts who their competitors are. And they're having to rethink a lot of things. And I think that's what they come to Oxford for. That's what they come to the leadership program that I run for is to have the space to think through that stuff and to really get on the front foot and see the opportunity as well as address the risks. Ken WhiteSo a few years ago, not even a generation ago, but a few years ago, as you said, disruption was so uncommon. Does that mean now leaders are different today than they maybe were a few years ago? Andrew WhiteI think that's, let's call it, the big transition. If you look at particularly towards the top of the mature organizations, the larger organizations, whether that's in the US, in Europe, or in other parts of the world, a lot of those leaders have got to the top because they've been very good at executing the status quo. And what's being asked of them is a different muscle, so to speak. And many of them haven't been trained for that. They've not been developed for that. That's not what they've experienced. So they're being pushed into it. I think there's a younger group who are coming through, who are more open to seeing the world in all its diversity, all its change, and where I've seen really, I suppose what I would say brilliant older leaders, they've had the humility to be mentored by younger leaders in the organization, often multiple levels lower with humility to recognize that, particularly around things like tech. A 28-year-old can teach a 58-year-old an awful lot, which reverses the hierarchy of power, so to speak. But you need humility to do that. And I think that's what great leaders are recognizing, that they need to lean into these things and have that open mind and that humility to learn. Ken WhiteYeah, and humility would have been a weakness, possibly 20 years for a leader, right. Andrew WhiteExactly. Now I think it's a critical strength. Ken WhiteWow. So one of the pieces you wrote, you said leaders can no longer operate under 20th-century values and models. And that's exactly what you mean then, right? We just can't do what we used to do. Andrew WhiteNo. And I think one of the other things that disruption forces you to do is to think about the whole question of why you exist. I think purpose has been a bit overused in recent years, but I don't think the notion has disappeared that when you go through disruption, it forces you to reevaluate who you are and why do you exist, and for who? Because your ways of working start to become challenged, and in a sense, you become a bit semi-detached from that. And so, it forces you to think about those bigger questions. I think what workers are looking for is authenticity around that conversation. And authenticity comes in two ways. It comes through an honest conversation about why we exist and for who, but it also comes through concrete actions. And this is where I think leaders perhaps have been a bit slow off the mark. They've been very good at working with marketing and PR agencies around the messaging, but then the lack of authentic implementation of that gets them in trouble, not just from an employee point of view, but from competition overtaking them and then being caught out by people coming in from outside the industry who have got better solutions for their customers. Ken WhiteYou said through disruption. You've got to stop and think. Are leaders doing that? Andrew WhiteYeah, I think this is I've just completed a big bit of research on transformation. And I think this is the bit that I noticed was very different. Historically, I think leaders were almost dragged kicking and screaming into disruption. You heard phrases like it was like a burning platform underneath them. I think there's a group of leaders who are recognizing the world's changing, who are driving into that, who are embracing some of the difficult emotions, like fear, like anxiety, like stress, but also, let's call it the excitement of seeing what's new. It's not all negative emotions, but they're embracing it, that they're bringing disruptive voices into their executive committees because they recognize that what might have been a voice that you could ignore historically, you can't. And the classic one at the moment is the energy industry. And if you just look at what's happened over the last year with the big oil and gas companies, they're having to pivot huge resources. I really wouldn't want to be leading one of those businesses. I think they've got huge challenges on their hands. They've got shareholders that expect dividends. So they're seen as a dividend stock. But really, I would argue they should be seen as a growth stock for the next ten years as they go through that transition. And they need to embrace the climate scientists. They need to embrace the climate activists. These people could actually be agents of change. And some of them are starting to do this if they really realize that there's a different industry that will exist in the next ten or 20 years, and the ones that can move quickest to it are going to grab that industry land and over and above their existing competitors, and the new competitors that are piling into the space, as well as capital, starts to mobilize into that. Ken WhiteAnd at the same time, those we know household names, great companies of today, may not be around in ten years. Andrew WhiteYeah. And when we look back over history in periods that were less disruptive, we've seen that. And so, I think we're going to see that even more so that they're just not going to have the ability to transform themselves in the way that they need to. Ken WhiteYou've written some about what you call the modern challenges facing today's CEO, and four, in particular, I'd love to briefly talk about all four. One of them is meeting sustainability goals. How critical is this now for today's leaders and CEOs? Andrew WhiteYeah. So I think sustainability has gone from being something which you could do through your corporate CSR activity. It's now core of the business. And if you're not doing it, regulators will force it on you. Customers will start to demand it coming through social media, and competitors will come and produce products that are better and more aligned with regulatory structures, are more aligned with what customers want, and you're increasingly being measured on it. So you're having to disclose your carbon footprint. I don't think it will be long before that becomes even more of a formal way of accounting for resources. You know, I'm hearing about companies putting carbon budgets into their senior leaders KPI structures. So they'll have a certain amount of carbon that they can spend, typically on travel. How do they choose to allocate that? In the same way, they have an expense account that they have to be accountable for. So these things are no longer separate from the business. They're no longer adjacent. I think sustainability and profitable growth are two sides of the same coin in many cases. Ken WhiteIt's interesting dealing with young people about to get their Bachelor's or their MBAs. It's important to them, too. They want to work for a company that's got some real sustainability goals. Andrew WhiteYeah. And I think that it's not just you're absolutely right, but it's also I wouldn't want my pension invested in an oil and gas company with 100% in there of my capital in there at the moment. I'm not sure I'd want that much exposed to it for the reasons we've spoken about. So is this business going to be around in ten years, in 20 years, or is it going to be a shadow of its former self like Kodak is, I think, today compared to where it was? And we have to take these things into account as investors, as customers, as employees as well. And I think with a younger generation, for them, it's not just about salary. It's also about questions of values. Does this company have enough of do I see enough of my values represented in this company? Being a leader today, I think a much more complicated job. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Andrew White in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William &Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with leadership coach Andrew White. Ken WhiteAnother modern challenge that you've written about facing CEOs diversity. Andrew WhiteYeah. And I think this has several layers to it. Let's call it a societal level. How do we create a fair and equal society, and how do we address some of the historic problems that we've seen in certain countries, the US and the UK being big examples of those. But also, how do we bring diversity of thought? Companies can be quite homogenous and closed-minded. And in a time of change and disruption, you need people who think differently. You need to bring in people from different communities with different backgrounds who see the world differently and leaders who can see that as an asset and can create that space and that psychological safety that people feel comfortable speaking up. So I think on those two levels, it's becoming increasingly important. I mean, I reflect on myself in terms of the benefit I've gained from the employers I've had. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today without the brand of Oxford behind me. And I think historically, too much of that, let's be honest, has been captured by people that look like us white men. And that resource that good organizations have, I think for a creative, fairer society, has got to be distributed equally. But also those organizations need that diversity, as I say, for the thinking as well. So I think it's in all-round that the arguments just becoming stronger and stronger. Ken WhiteAnother modern challenge you talk about is retaining young employees. Boy, this is a tough one, isn't it? Andrew WhiteYeah. And I think for all the reasons we've spoken about. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew WhiteI don't know what the job market is like around where you are, but here it's hot at the moment. Ken WhiteVery. Andrew WhiteAnd so employees have a lot of choice. You've got more data available so you can see what the experience of other employees has been. You've got more opportunity. And I think if I think about my grandfather worked at the same organization from the age of 14 through to retirement, and it was a cradle to grave. It was a final salary pension, and it was extreme loyalty from the organization and extreme loyalty from him. And that world's gone. And in a sense, organizations have created that. I think because they've got rid of the pension schemes, they've got rid of the sense of a lifetime employment, they've got rid of the training schemes that created that sense of loyalty. And as a result, I think, particularly the younger employees have gone, well, okay, if that's the case, then you don't get my loyalty, you have to earn my loyalty. And so that's moved the needle of responsibility back onto senior leaders to actually ensure that they retain people. Ken WhiteSure has. And your final and fourth modern challenge is the changing geopolitical climate. Wow. We've never seen it like this, have we? Or have we? Andrew WhiteWell, I'm always nervous of statements that say never because my father reminds me that when I think interest rates might be higher in the UK, they're starting to go up. He had interest rates of 15, 20% in the 70's, so now I think what we've seen is an era of low-interest rates, an era of low inflation. So some people are old enough to remember a different world. We've had a reasonable run of peace in the world, certainly between the superpowers since the end of the Cold War, and things that we thought were well and truly in history, I think, are showing themselves not to be. And there's a sense of deglobalization. And we've seen that quite strikingly with the way in which companies have pulled out of Russia, even industries that are not regulated to do so. A lot of companies have taken that decision that they don't want to be in that country at the moment because of what's happening in Ukraine, and the relationships with China continue to be collaboration, competition. And you have to almost companies are having to walk that tightrope depending on what sector you're in. That's a greater or lesser challenge. So it's not easy. And who knows where all this will land in five years, in ten years, or even next year, to be honest. Ken WhiteBack in the day, if you wanted to be a leader or CEO, maybe you joined the sales team and knocked it out of the park, and then you went over to marketing and did a great job. What's the path now? Because this is so different. These are issues that leaders have not necessarily had to deal with in the past. What kind of advice do you share with young, high-potential professionals who think they want to lead at some point? Andrew WhiteWell, I think they have to still do those things. I think that's not become unimportant. It's still really important that you deliver the numbers, deliver at delivery and performance. But I think there's a layer on top of that, which is understanding people, developing the listening skills to really hear what people say and what they don't say. How do you build an inclusive culture around you, where people want to work with you, where they feel that their potential that it will be seen, where their endeavors will be rewarded, where you're somebody that builds and helps other people grow, and step into that? Do you create a safe psychological space around you where people feel able to speak up? Are you curious about people? Are you curious about the world? Are you curious about other industries putting it quite practically? Do you just look at the same websites, which I know we all have the tendency to do, or do you read across the spectrum? Are you curious about why people believe something different from you? I don't want to call them soft skills because soft implies that they're easy. They're not. I think they're quite hard, but I think this is where the edge is. And where do you go for reflection, for renewal? I think what we're starting to see more is a spirituality come back into work, not that's religious or can be for some people, but is questions of meaning and purpose. And how do I find stillness in the midst of quite a chaotic world, particularly for very senior people? So I think all of these things are going to become more pertinent, and we're going to see the shape and form of organizations change as a result of this. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Andrew White, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Andrew White, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Dan Akerson](images/dan-akerson-176-thumb.jpg)
![Leading on a Global Scale](images/dan-akerson-176-thumb.jpg)
Dan Akerson
Episode 176: May 21, 2022
Leading on a Global Scale
To say Dan Akerson has had an exciting career is an understatement. He's held leadership positions such as CEO, Chairman, President, and Managing Director of top organizations—including MCI, General Instrument, Nextel, The Carlisle Group, and General Motors. He's been successful at each stop. He continues to be active, serving on the boards at American Express and Lockheed Martin, but it's his four years as CEO of General Motors that people remember best. He led GM from 2010 to 2014 where he orchestrated a major turnaround. He joins us today to talk about the auto industry and its supply-chain challenges. He also shares a few stories about leadership, working with Vladimir Putin, and how to knock out a billion dollars in losses.
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Dan Akerson: Leading on a Global Scale TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. To say Dan Akerson has had an exciting career is an understatement. He's held leadership positions such as CEO, chairman, President and managing director of top organizations, including MCI, General Instrument, Nextel, the Carlisle Group and General Motors. He's been successful at each stop. He continues to be active, serving on the boards at American Express and Lockheed Martin. But it's his four years as CEO of General Motors that people remember best. He led GM from 2010 to 2014, where he orchestrated a major turnaround. He joins us today to talk about the auto industry and its supply chain challenges. He also shares a few stories about leadership, working with Vladimir Putin, and how to knock out a billion dollars in losses. Here's our conversation with Dan Akerson. Ken WhiteDan, thanks very much for spending some time with us. Welcome to William & Mary. Dan AkersonWell thank you. Ken WhiteGreat to have you here. We can't help but talk about the automotive industry, and it's been a little while since, of course, you led GM, but boy, the automotive supply chain. I mean, it's all everybody seems to be talking about. And it always had been just in time, sort of the supply chain. The pandemic has really interrupted that. What's going to happen moving forward? Dan AkersonWell, you're right. It was a just in time inventory type situation, because if you have a billion dollars tied up in inventory, that's not good. So you're going to do it, minimize as much as you can. I also serve on the board as lead director at Lockheed Martin. We see that supply chain, it's affecting every aspect of any manufacturer of any type. You just have to play it close to the vest, do the best you can. I think it's good if you delve into your supply chain and provide some assistance, both managerial and financial, to help these companies stay in business. Hold up inventory if you can. But you can't just stand at the top of the pyramid and expect everything's going to function. You have to kind of through the stone, if you will, of a pyramid, fill the crevices and get down and do what you can to help and keep your supply chain alive and vibrant. And that's going to tie up some capital, but it will be worth it when it finally comes full cycle. Ken WhiteAre organizations doing that that you're aware of? Dan AkersonYes, absolutely. I'm more current with Lockheed Martin. We're deep into the supply chain, and I speak routinely with the GM team, and I know they're doing that, but not to the level I do the board I'm on. Ken WhiteWhat do you think the most challenging issues in managing inventories, especially in the automotive industry, will be in the next year, year and a half? Dan AkersonWell, I think I would be careful to build deep inventories, whether it was available or not, because it'll come about. But I'd keep above a minimal amount and make sure that I could produce once it turns. You're not going to see a quick turn in automotive. It'll turn over, I think, a six to 18 months. So I'd keep inventory. Let's say I had 100 units prior to this. I'd probably keep 60 to 70 units or add thousands of that number. You're just going to have to eat a little bit of cost to maintain that when it turns. You're not waiting another year to catch up with your inventory and your competitions killing you. Ken WhiteYes. Samsung building a chip production plant in Texas. Does a facility such as this alleviate some problems for North American automotive manufacturers? Dan AkersonWell, I don't think it does. It's not as important to automotive as it would be to defense. You've got Taiwan Semiconductor. There's probably 100 billion dollars invested in infrastructure and buildings and technology. I think America I think the Western countries need to recognize and can learn from what's happening in Ukraine today. Who would have thought six months ago, three months ago that Russia would be so foolish as to invade an independent country? And I think it would be foolish not to assume that the Chinese are watching this very carefully. And having served in the Navy for five years, graduated from a service Academy, Naval Academy. Geographically, it's much easier to assist or confront an aggressive foreign power such as Russia in this case. In the next potential case, if they were going to Taiwan, even Taiwan Semiconductor is also building a mega plant in this country, and I think we need to turn some of that resource, that industrial base back to the United States. As we see, instead of a bipolar world, there are going to be likely a tripolar world. And can the United States confront two megapowers on the globe at the same time? And I think, quite frankly, China, which I spent my four years at GM, probably six months. We had twelve plants there building a couple more. It's a huge market. We're serving it. But they are, believe me, I've talked to some senior people in their government. Taiwan is a renegade province. It belongs to China, and that will have to be resolved at some point in time. Ken WhiteWhen you look at when you drive by car dealers, there's just not a lot on the lot right now. What are they thinking? How do they get through day to day? Dan AkersonWell, I know quite a few of them. They want to keep getting inventory, car prices, high demand, high price. That's what basics of economics. They'll take cars in before that they used cars that they would have just passed off and put on a lot somewhere to sell for, just to get their money out of it. They're now doing a little spiffing it up and selling it. So they're trying to get inventory of all sorts and it just demands there. But I don't know, it's going to be a while. I think again, I think if we're lucky, you're going to see at least another year, maybe two of this tightened availability. Ken WhiteWhat did you like best about your role at GM? What really excited you about that job? Dan AkersonWell, I had the benefit of going on the board in 09 as they came out of bankruptcy, so I knew they had serious problems. I mean, it's hard to describe a company of that stature. The presumed givens were not there. For example, there were four different ledgers, accounting ledgers within the company. So we could barely close the books in the 90 day after the fourth quarter. Get it done before the end of the first quarter. Why? Well, it wasn't that the accountants didn't talk to one another, but it was like they all spoke a romance language. One subsidiary would speak Portuguese, another Spanish, another Italian, and one would be English. And the cross communications was so poor and it took us two years and a lot of money to get everybody on the same balance sheet and the same income statement and the same asset base. It was a nightmare. The fundamentals weren't there, so they had a good view of what was going on in the business. I'm proud to say the last quarter I really was there. It was finished by mid January of the following year, and that usually took until March 31st. And sometimes there were some estimates in there that should have been firm numbers. So that just didn't know what's going on in your business. Payroll was separated in different subsidiaries. We're talking about subsidiaries. Opel was a $35 billion company and we hadn't had a profit in there in eleven years. We were losing a billion dollars a year. We thought about selling it boldly I went out and bought 15% of Puzo. We thought we could amalgamate the two companies and get some scale and it was tough. And I sold transmission plan over there. I did it at an auto show where I said, Well, gee whiz, things are good in Europe, but I won't tell you the name of the auto company, but it was a high end one. A quarter of our production of our transmission goes into their cars. I think that I got a call the next day from the CEO. I said, what are you doing? I says, well, you know, it's true. He says, yeah, but I had an agreement with your predecessor. And I said, well, I didn't see that and I didn't. But I said, I'll tell you what, we'll sell it to you. And he says, well, we got on the books for 400 million dollars. Well, I said, give me $100 million and it's yours, because I don't want all of the post retirement healthcare and retirement and everything else. It's yours. It's all yours. Just give me $100 million in cash. And that cut our losses. And he really had to think. I thought I had a clear field I could do just about anything to improve. To give you an idea, we had four plants in South Korea. Well, the two of them were running at sub performance with a volume that would not produce profit. And we had a half a billion dollars of inventory at sea every day, 365 days a year. And what did we build? We built Chevrolets that looked very comparable to the Opel equivalent. We'd ship it halfway around the world, land in Hamburg, and then we put them in the showroom against Opel, a Chevrolet built in South Korea. Bring it all the way around, having a half a billion dollars money tied up every day of the year. And so I said, we took a 700 million dollar write off to get Chevrolet out. We shut down two plants. My life was threatened by the Korean Labor Union. And so I improved in Korea and I improved in Europe, and we got it to break even. And that was a billion dollars in just losses. And we had to be creative and we had to have a new sheet of paper and come up with a new idea. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Dan Akerson in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with the former CEO of General Motors, Dan Akerson. Ken WhiteDid you have fun doing that role? Dan AkersonYeah, it was tough. I can honestly say I don't think I slept more than six, 7 hours a night ever in that four year period. Ken WhiteYou're in high gear the whole time? Dan AkersonYeah. In the middle of night, I'd wake up and write stuff down. I traveled a lot. We sold all of our airplanes. I actually met with Putin in Germany at one time. I mean, I'm sorry in Russia. And we had a plant in St. Petersburg, and I wanted to expand capacity, and they were giving us a hard time. And we were building the plant. We are building Opels, shipping them to a trade zone where they would reassemble them. So we get some break on the import tax. And I said, okay, we'll expand it, but we got to get some concessions to expand this plant. And Putin showed up. St. Petersburg has a version of Davos, only it's in the summer, and it's more attended. Davos is attended globally. This is more European. And I didn't even hear of it before, but I turned up and I thought I was going to meet with the economics Minister. He had a different title, but that's what he was. And Putin shows up, and I'd been on the American Express board for almost 19 years, and he had retired, but we're friends. I asked him if he'd go over with me because I knew if he was there, I'd get the economics Minister there. I didn't think I'd get the economics Minister and Putin. And we walked out of there and he says, Dan, he says, let me tell you, I can read this thing like fortune teller can read your palm. You don't want to meet again. It'll come out. I don't know if this is true. They want a kick back. And I said, I'm not going to jail for this stuff. But it was an interesting job with dimensions to it you can't imagine. And I got very involved in the community. And we raised not literally a five minute drive from the Renaissance Center. The neighborhood looked like something just demolished. Ken WhiteRight. Dan AkersonAnd with Habitat for Humanity, I personally put in a large donor. I said, I'd raised $25 million, basically, I called there supply chain, said I put in this much. GM matched mine. So that's about 10% of what we're looking for. And then we ended up raising close to $40 million and rebuilt a neighborhood. It's amazing. And I think back, we had a foundation, GM foundation. And if you want to look like where the money went, all you had to do is look at the executives for the last ten years. And they were spending money to the colleges their children are going to. That had to stop. And I just said, look, we'll help. We'll match whatever you put in then stop. That's one thing. They really weren't all that philanthropic in the good years or the bad years. Ken WhiteAnd that's important for you. Dan AkersonWell, I think you've got to be part of your community. I mean, you got to play on the global stage. Heads of State, President of Brazil. I've met some characters. Argentina. There are some very strange people. There are some really unbelievable foreign leaders, too. But it was to me, I always felt a little bit guilty. I went to Annapolis. I served five years. God, and good luck I've had. And here I felt I had to pay something back. So not only did our family foundation, but the GM foundation helped our community. It was funny. A lot of executives that I hired, they were flying in every Monday. I actually bought a place up there. And I pay taxes there. And I even showed up for jury duty. They said, oh, you don't have to do that. I said, I'm like everybody else. Of course I'm the only guy that was there in a suit and tie and of course I didn't get past the first I don't know what they call. Ken WhiteThey caught you. Dan AkersonWhat are you doing here? I was not representative, but it gets in the local paper. It was your civic duty. The fact that I didn't get selected for jury duty was lucky if I got on one God forbid a murder or something. It could be weeks and I couldn't afford that. But it was symbolism that I wanted to be part of the company. I wanted to be part of the community and I wanted to be a change agent. And it was a wonderful experience. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dan Akerson and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time the part-time, the online and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Dan Akerson and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Nicholas Janni](images/nicholas-janni-175-thumb.jpg)
![A New Paradigm for Leadership](images/nicholas-janni-175-thumb.jpg)
Nicholas Janni
Episode 175: May 5, 2022
A New Paradigm for Leadership
As businesses, organizations, and professionals deal with change like we've never seen before, it makes sense the way we lead will also change. Our guest today says a new leadership paradigm is urgently needed. Nicholas Janni is a sought-after coach, teacher, speaker, and author. He works with the world's top businesses and business schools transforming the way executives lead. He's written a new book "Leader as Healer: A New Paradigm for 21st Century Leadership." He joins us today to discuss his theoretical and practical path to the highest levels of presence and peak performance leadership. The leadership he says is needed moving forward.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWell, Nicholas, good afternoon. It's so great to have you with us. Welcome. Nicholas JanniThank you, Ken. Very good to be here. Ken WhiteLeader as healer so very interesting. A new paradigm for leadership. Does leadership need to be different post-pandemic and at this time in our lives? Nicholas JanniWell, Ken, I believe leadership fundamentally needs to be different for one basic reason, which in a way is the foundation of the book, because, you know, I work with senior leaders all over the world, one to one in teams, and there is one thing that I meet everywhere. And it is a simple fact that the thinking mind is far too dominant, that has become the predominant modality by which people process everything. Whereas Einstein asked one very crucial question, he said, is your mind your master or your servant? And in 99% of the leaders I meet, it's their master. And this is very problematic because the way I see it, it means we're navigating increasingly complex and challenging times with more than one hand tied behind our back because it's like we're using a limited part of the totality of who we are. And Leader as Healer means we have a very sophisticated thinking mind. We also have an emotional body. We have a physical body. We have an intuitive way of sensing. And we understand what it means to sit in a kind of deeper interior, spaciousness, or stillness through meditation and mindfulness. So Leader as Healer brings everything to the table. And I do believe that in these times, more than ever, we absolutely need that because thinking mind alone is not enough. Ken WhiteAnd you've been, as you mentioned. Working with CEOs with senior leadership teams for years on this. How did they react to it? Nicholas JanniOnce they comprehend what I just said to you, which is not very difficult to comprehend, they completely get it. They completely get it. Especially when we talk about doing and being, which I know you want to talk about, it becomes obvious to them. Absolutely obvious. And I think, to be honest, I think many leaders do know already exactly what I'm saying. But they don't know an alternative. Business schools do not teach an alternative. I believe, to be honest, that most senior leaders put in senior positions with a crazy lack of inner development. All the teaching is strategic, linear, left-brain thinking, which is very important, but it's not the whole picture by a long way. So yes, people really get it. Absolutely. Ken WhiteAs we embrace this, will we see different types of people becoming leaders? Nicholas JanniThat's an interesting question. I don't think so necessarily. I'm very interested in working with young leaders. I mean, most of my work is with very senior leaders. What someone recently called the gray hairs. You and me more than me. But I believe that there is a real need to bring this kind of work to young leaders in the political domain and the organizational domain. The world is shaking as we know Ken, and we need the inner resources to navigate. Ken WhiteIn dealing with aspiring leaders and MBA students, and undergraduate business students. I can see them embracing this quickly. They think a little differently. Nicholas JanniThat's true. I agree with you. Yes, absolutely. Ken WhiteSo in Leader as Healer in the book, you have a foundational principle and then five interdependent aspects. And I thought for our audience. They'd probably like us to walk through those. What is the foundational principle? Nicholas JanniThe foundational principle is that, as cultures for 3000 years have said, we have two fundamental paths to us or modalities. They've been called in Chinese medicine Yang and Ying. In the Greek civilization, they spoke of mythos and logos. Yung brought in the archetype of masculine, the archetype of feminine. I kind of make it more pragmatic by speaking of doing and being. So if you imagine a triangle, the two bottom corners, one is doing, one is being, doing is left brain, analytical proactive what's the next task? Being is right brain, much more receptive, much more sensing, and much more intuitive. My thesis is that high-performing leaders need to be at the top of the triangle using both and not either-or. It's more like we need to learn, and I teach a lot of practices. How do we rest in a bowl of being out of which comes all our doing? That's when we're really in high performance. It's a bit like athletes how they speak of being in the zone. An athlete will say, I receive the ball or in American football, and I feel like I have a lot of time. I know where everyone is. That's there at the top of the triangle. Ken WhiteAnd a great place to be. Athletes will tell you the ball appears ten times bigger than it really is. Nicholas JanniExactly and artists know that scientists know that you speak to. I spoke to brain surgeons who describe exactly that state. And not only do we do our best work, it feels great. It's like a win-win. That's doing and being really in harmony together. Ken WhiteInteresting. So that's the foundational principle. Then you have the five interdependent aspects. Number one embracing emotions. What do you mean? Nicholas JanniYes. Well, it's a big one, Ken, because I think we live in a culture where we've got various strange from our emotions. We've created this belief that there are positive and negative emotions, which I utterly disagree with. If we're sad, we need to feel sad. And if we don't, the real danger is we become numb. There's a lot of grief around after COVID. One of the CEOs I work with, very senior CEO, created an extraordinary little grief ritual. When people came back to the office after 18 months out, she gave everyone. It was beautiful what she did. And the thing with emotion is it doesn't need big trauma. It needs acknowledging. Imagine a CEO is leading an important strategic meeting. There's a lot of tension in the air. An emotionally mature leader as healer will pause the meeting and just say, just a moment. There's a lot of anxiety here. I'm feeling it. I'm not sleeping well. I'm sure you're all feeling it. Let's just acknowledge that. Ken WhiteYeah. Nicholas JanniAnd you know, what happens in that moment is literally and metaphorically a sigh of relief. But the important thing, Ken, is that after that, we think much better. Ken WhiteYeah, right. Nicholas JanniThe critical thinking we prize so highly does not work well when whole parts of us are suppressed. Ken WhiteRight. Nicholas JanniSo this is a really big part of the work. Teams that can sit together and just acknowledge what they're feeling. And my clients report incredible results from this. I put examples in the book senior board meeting, and someone just says, just a moment, how are we all feeling? Two or three minutes sharing whole meeting changes. Whole meeting changes. It's a human being. Ken WhiteIt makes sense. Nicholas JanniOf course. It makes sense. And yet how challenging it is. Ken WhiteRight. Nicholas JanniThis is often the toughest part of the work. Ken WhiteOh, I can see that. Most leaders feel being vulnerable is a weakness. Right. Nicholas JanniIt's a weakness. Plus, we naturally, I mean, it's a big topic too big for now. But as we develop, we naturally have to close off certain feelings because they were too much to deal with. So this is why I say leader as healer needs to do that in the work. They need to work with a mentor or therapist and get more comfortable with their emotions, or they will not make other people feel comfortable with their emotions. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Nicholas Janni in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation on Leader as Healer, a new paradigm for 21st-century leadership, with Nicholas Janni. Ken WhiteThe second interdependent aspect is the power of embodiment. Can you tell us about that? Nicholas JanniYeah. When we were children, we were completely embodied. Everything was a physical experience. We closed that down, and we have forgotten the power of the body to feel the world, to receive information. We have completely forgotten that. If you look at any pre-industrial culture, Indigenous tribes, their relationship with the natural world is unbelievable. They feel exactly what's happening. We're hardwired for that, Ken. So by shutting off the body, we lose our groundedness, we lose a whole part of our presence, how we come over to people, and we lose this enormous resource of sensing and getting information. When I work with a client, one to one, I'm feeling their interior with enormous precision. How am I doing it? Not through my thinking. My body is feeling. And we don't have to build that. We just have to uncover it. It's our natural state. Ken WhiteAnd be aware. Nicholas JanniYeah, exactly. Ken WhiteInteresting. Third, living a life of purpose. Nicholas JanniYeah, I think it's a big topic now in organizations, as I'm sure everyone will know, more and more organizations. I'm working next week, actually, with a big European law firm who, by the way, bought a program called Leader as Healer, which is pretty interesting. And their CEO just published a report a month ago saying, I've realized we need to pay a lot more attention to our purpose. It's what gives life meaning, Ken. William said living without purpose is one of the most grievous wounds to our soul. And purpose is not to make more money. Nothing wrong with making money. Purpose is much deeper than that. Purpose is always about contribution. And we know from all the psychological research on happiness we get much more satisfaction from giving than we do from taking. Ken WhiteSure. Nicholas JanniAnd I believe many organizations are now waking up to the fact that they need their primary purpose is what are we contributing? And more and more organizations are finding they make just as much, if not more, money when they have that kind of purpose. We're at a very transitional time at the moment. Ken WhiteAnd you work with business school students, too. You see how important that is to them as they're seeking that employer after graduation. Really critical now. Nicholas JanniWell, we know that from data. We know that millennials will accept lower pay while working for an organization whose values they believe in. Absolutely. It's clearest. Ken WhiteNumber four the practice of mindfulness and meditation. Nicholas JanniBig one. I mean, listen, meditation mindfulness is now used in hospitals, prisons, violent schools with incredible results. A colleague of mine, pre-COVID, was in China. The CEO took her into the atrium. One sign said conference from the other sign said meditation room. This is coming more and more in. Why? Because the very act of paying attention, which is the core of mindfulness, activates our right brain. It activates our feeling of our body. So we immediately enlarge our bandwidth when we practice mindfulness. So our perception immediately gets much wider as opposed to what I said at the beginning, this kind of narrow view of reality. So I teach a way of practicing mindfulness throughout the day. And it doesn't take any time. It's very important. There are certain ways we need to be practicing whatever we're doing, whatever meeting we're in before a Zoom call. I mean, I've been working with people who are spending 10 hours a day on Zoom. Don't just sit there absent. Practice for a moment before a call. Take a moment to breathe, to pay attention to your body. You will show up differently, and you will listen differently. Ken WhiteAnd the fifth interdependent aspect is the call. Nicholas JanniYes. So this is a kind of more advanced in a way because I do believe the very simple story. I used to work in the theater. If an actor used to come to me, let's say, with the Shakespeare text and say, oh, Nicholas, I don't know what to do with this. I would always say something like, look, that's not the right question. The only interesting thing is, what will it do with you? Now everyone knows artists, scientists, leaders, sportspeople, whatever the best ideas come to us, we say it in English. The idea came to me, but that has a very deep implication. So I'm actually working on a whole project with Bob Anderson of the Leadership Circle. And the basic thing we're teaching leaders to do is to learn a completely different level of receptivity. What is it that is trying to come through? Not what do I want to do? What is being asked of us here? It's listening to a much higher level of intelligence, which always comes when we're in the right receptivity. Ken WhiteSeems to come when we're calm, correct? Nicholas JanniExactly. For instance, yes. When we're calm when we feel more spacious inside, and we're listening very deeply when we're walking. People get their best ideas in the shower. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Nicholas JanniPeople get their best ideas when working out. It's not a coincidence because our energy is flowing, our energy is flowing, and then suddenly, ideas pop in. That's the call. And that's, by the way, I believe, the basis of innovation as well. We don't do innovations. It does us. Ken WhiteYeah. Interesting. So I can see a leadership team, even a group of managers, saying, wow, my plate is full. And now you want me to think differently. What do you say to them in that instance? Nicholas JanniThe more you embrace this work, the more you will find. First of all, you get much less depleted. Secondly, you get much higher level of connection between everybody, and ultimately you're going to reach a much higher level of performance that will be much more satisfying as well. The argument we don't have time is nonsense. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Nicholas Janni, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. If you'd like to purchase Leader as Healer, a New Paradigm for 21st Century Leadership, it's available now in the UK and will be available in the United States on June 26. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Nicholas Janni and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Molly Nissman](images/molly-nissman-174-thumb.jpg)
![The Psychology of Women Investors](images/molly-nissman-174-thumb.jpg)
Molly Nissman
Episode 174: April 21, 2022
The Psychology of Women Investors
How do you invest your money? Chances are, your gender plays a role in where you invest, how you invest, and the results you generate. When it comes to wealth management, there are considerable differences between the approaches men and women take. Molly Nissman is Vice President, Wealth Management and Portfolio Manager at UBS Financial Services in Norfolk, Virginia. She's spent her career helping people get the most from their money. She was on campus recently for the annual Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit hosted by the William & Mary School of Business and its Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance. She took time to talk with us about women, men, and investing.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. How do you invest your money? Chances are, your gender plays a role in where you invest, how you invest, and the results you generate. When it comes to wealth management, there are considerable differences between the approaches men and women take. Molly Nissman is Vice President, Wealth Management, and Portfolio Manager at UBS Financial Services in Norfolk, Virginia. She spent her career helping people get the most from their money. She was on campus recently for the annual Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit hosted by the William & Mary School of Business and its Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance. She took time to talk with us about women, men, and investing. Here's our conversation with Molly Nissman. Molly, thank you very much for sharing your time. Welcome. Molly NissmanThank you, Ken. It's so nice to be here with you and in Williamsburg and at William & Mary today. Ken WhiteAnd it is quite a day. You've been a part of the Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit. Tell us what you did today, what it was like. Molly NissmanOh, these young women are amazing. They are so smart and organized, and tenacious. There were four teams. I was a judge for a stock pitch and four teams from all over the country. And the women pitched a particular stock, and they did the research and the presentation, and it was all by Zoom, which worked fabulously and just so impressive. These young women are so much smarter than I ever was at that age. Ken WhiteI was going to ask you. Did you do any of that when you were that age? Were you into looking at stocks like they are? Molly NissmanNo, not at all. The only thing that I did was, and I became a stockbroker, which now they call us financial advisers. But back when I was a teenager, I would watch my mother chart stocks on paper on the kitchen table, and she would talk about trends and products and businesses. And I guess that made an impression on me because when I graduated from college, I thought, oh, I think I want to be a stockbroker. Ken WhiteDid you study it in school? Molly NissmanI was a government major, and I minored in economics. So can't really go to school for being a stockbroker financial adviser. And I was the Treasurer of my class in high school a couple of times. So I don't know if that counts, but. Ken WhiteSo how did you get into the field? Molly NissmanI got very lucky. I knocked on the door of Merrill Lynch in Norfolk when I graduated from college, and I was 21 years old. And I told them I wanted to be a stockbroker and the office was full of men. And I was 21 years old. And they said, well, you can have a job as a margin clerk, and you have some experience with numbers. So I took the job, and that was back when the margin calls were calculated by hand. And so I did that for a year. And then there was an opening in the commodity section of the office that Norfolk was a big grain hub and livestock hub back then. And there were ten commodity brokers trading with the different companies like Smithfield Foods and Purdue. And they needed an assistant. So they brought me in as their assistant. And then I did that for a year, and I told them I wanted to be a trader. So at age 24, I became a commodity trader and did that for 20 years. Ken WhiteWow. Molly NissmanAnd then, after that, I had small children at home, and I needed some more flexibility. And it was extremely stressful job, exciting definitely but stressful. So I made a career change and started with PaineWebber, which is now UBS, and began as a financial adviser with my sister. And we targeted women investors, and that was 25 years ago. Ken WhiteWow. Molly NissmanSo as I said, I got very lucky with the twists and turns of my career. So I've only worked for two companies in my whole life. Ken WhiteAnd it was male-dominated then. Still, fairly much pretty much male-dominated today? Molly NissmanYes. That's such a great question. It really is mostly still male-dominated. And I think only 20% of the financial advisers still are women. That really hasn't changed that much over the years. And I think there are a couple of reasons. One of the reasons, I think, is because of the way that we're compensated. We're compensated by selling financial products, and the other way we get paid is assets under management. And so we don't get credit for helping our clients with their financial plans or creating a successful college funding plan, or helping them decide about long-term health care. That's definitely part of our job as consultants, but we don't physically get paid for that. And I think women are not motivated by money and how much money they make. And so it's definitely a problem. Definitely a dichotomy in how we get paid and how we take care of our clients. I think physicians have that problem now also. They're on a time clock, but they have to take care of their patients and do diagnoses on them and care for them. There's not enough time. Ken WhiteInteresting. Do you think it could possibly change with time going as we move forward? Molly NissmanI think it can change. The other issue, I think, for why there aren't that many women, as many women in our business as financial advisors. I think that one of the issues is the markets are always open, which is a good thing because we want the markets to always remain open. But it's hard to take vacations. It's hard to take maternity leave. And I didn't have maternity when I had my children, my young children, there was no maternity leave. You didn't get paid because you were on commission. So that was problematic. Ken WhiteYeah. Molly NissmanAnd so, for women who might want a family and flexibility to go to your child's soccer game or tennis match or take a vacation, it's very difficult. And it's changing because the way that financial advisers are working now is they're working more in teams, which is much more of just a better model. So you might work under a team with two or three or four different advisors, maybe, who are more senior. And that way, you can learn, you can grow, you can have different expertise on your team. And, of course, that's better for clients. Ken WhiteSure. Molly NissmanDefinitely better for clients. And as Adam Grant, who's the best-selling author, talks about that, group decisions are better than single-person decisions. That's definitely the case when you have a team. So I think that trend is going to help women get into the financial services industry more. Ken WhiteYeah. Time will tell. Molly NissmanTime will tell. That's right. Time will tell. Ken WhiteAnd there are certainly differences in the way men and women invest as well, correct? Molly NissmanOh, yes, absolutely. Ken WhiteSo, for example, and we call this what the psychology of the investor basically. Right. For example, we know, according to most reports, that men invest more so than women, a higher percentage of men. Why is that? Molly NissmanI think that is changing, but that trend is a slow trend. But I think you're right. I think, for the most part, more men tend to invest, at least in the traditional stock and bond markets, than women. I think it goes back to women have not controlled their financial destiny very long. It wasn't but 100 years ago where women couldn't vote or own land. Ken WhiteSure. Molly NissmanSo that trend takes a long time to change. And I also think that men are much more willing to take risk. That's in their DNA. They're the hunter-gatherers. Their job is to go out and hunt and protect the family and to take those risks. And that, I think, translates into taking risks in the market. They're much more from what I've seen. They're much more willing to take a gamble. They want to make a killing. They want to do the quick win. And that's not necessarily bad. I've heard from women, I'm not going to invest in cryptocurrency until they get the bugs out. I'm not going to invest my hard-earned money in this until I can be sure that it's going to survive. So, yes, there is a difference. I think a lot of it is just the difference in genetics. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Molly Nissman in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Molly Nessman. Ken WhiteWhat about where men invest, and women invest? What are some of the differences there stocks, gold, and so forth? Is there a difference that you see? Molly NissmanYes, I have seen a difference. I think women have been much more drawn to investments like bonds, which produce an income stream, predictable most of the time predictable, reliable income stream, not as volatile as stocks. And that's more comforting for women who aren't as willing to take risks with their money, but they are willing to invest in stocks, and they're much more willing to hold the stocks for the long run. And so that makes them better investors. It's hard to quantify, but because they're looking at the long run and they're willing to invest for that long term, that gives them a better outcome in the end. And that just goes back to what we talked about, about the men wanting the quick kill, the quick win, the gamble. Ken WhiteBut much of what we read is saying that women outperform men. Molly NissmanYes, and I do think that's true because they are willing to commit their money for the long run and leave it in place. That's the key because if you're getting in and out of the market all the time, you're going to miss a lot of the upward movement. So it's tempting for sure, especially lately when you've seen these huge decreases and increases in the market, the volatility because of the pandemic, and because of the Ukraine situation. It's very tempting to say, well, I'll just get out for a few days and buy things back when the market is down three or 4%. But what happens is nobody can predict that. And so, most of the time, you're better off to leave everything, have a plan, leave everything in place, continue to add money as you can add money, and stay with it for the long run. And women are really good at that. Ken WhiteWho's better at seeking advice from a professional like you? Do men tend to do that more so than women, or women do that more so than men? Molly NissmanOh, that's another great question. I hope I won't get in trouble with this one. I think women, it's the same thing. We are really good at outsourcing. And just like you would hire a CPA to do your taxes because you don't want to do your taxes and you don't want to learn all the tax rules, and they can do it a lot faster than you can and more efficient and less likely to get audited. It's the same concept with financial investments and investing. I think women are willing to say I'm willing to pay somebody for their expertise, and that will save me time and money over the long run. And I think men, it's a bit of a macho situation where I can do this myself. I'm smart, and the men are smart, and I think both men and women can invest themselves. If you have enough time and it's a full-time job, if you have enough time, I do think you could do it yourself, but I think men are probably more likely to say, I want to do it myself, I can do it myself, and I don't need help with it. Ken WhiteWe've seen the pandemic affect women differently than it has affected men. I mean, as soon as we saw people leave work, it was the women who were leaving work in the early part of the pandemic versus the men. Has the pandemic affected the way women have been investing over the last couple of years? Have you noticed anything? Molly NissmanYes, it has. It's made it difficult for women because women were the ones who lost more jobs because they make up a greater percent of the service industry. They also were the ones who were more likely to stay home with the children because the children are out of school. And so when you've lost your job, or you're working part-time because you can't work full time, because you have to get home at two o'clock when your children get home, or you have to help them on their Zoom homework, you don't have as much money to invest, and that's problematic. So, yes, I think the women more likely to make more conservative investments. They had less money, less money to invest, less money to live on, so definitely affecting them more than men in this situation. Ken WhiteYou may have inadvertently answered it earlier, but what advice? You've been working with these young women during the stock pitch competition. Right. Women that age coming out of college, what advice do you have for them once they start getting that regular paycheck? And in terms of investing, what's your advice? Molly NissmanThis is definitely my favorite question. My advice would be very clear would be you've got to start now and save money, and you've got to do that with discipline and regularly and be frugal in your lifestyle. And remember that down the road, you're the only one who's going to be in charge of your destiny. And the earlier you start investing, the better. And always remember to buy quality. Buy quality stocks, buy quality bonds, buy quality real estate, because when the markets turn down, which they always do, real estate, we have downturns. That's a long cycle. Stocks and bonds have their different cycles. There's always some kind of downturn. Quality will hold up better, so in all things, stocks, bonds, art, precious gems, cryptocurrency, do not buy any sloppy cryptocurrency. That's a highly technical term, even furniture. Nobody wants to sit on a lumpy sofa for 20 years. So you want to buy quality for sure. And that if you invest regularly and commit yourself for the long term and continue to add money, even if it's only a few hundred dollars a month, you will be a very successful investor. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Molly Nissman, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Molly Nissman and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Kristen Roby Dimlow](images/kristen-roby-dimlow-173-thumb.jpg)
![Holistic Wellbeing at Microsoft](images/kristen-roby-dimlow-173-thumb.jpg)
Kristen Roby Dimlow
Episode 173: April 8, 2022
Holistic Wellbeing at Microsoft
More than ever before, companies and organizations are placing great emphasis on their employees by offering more flexible work schedules, or investing greatly in education and training programs. Some, like Microsoft, are focusing on the general wellbeing of their employees. Microsoft has created and launched its Holistic Wellbeing Program - a series of offerings that support employees in four specific wellbeing areas: physical, mental, financial, and social. Kristen Roby Dimlow is a graduate of William & Mary. She's Vice President, Total Rewards, Performance, and HR Business intelligence at Microsoft. She joins us to talk about the Holistic Wellbeing Program there, what it entails, and what it's doing for Microsoft and its employees.
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TranscriptFemale VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, more than ever before, companies and organizations are placing great emphasis on their employees by offering more flexible work schedules or investing greatly in education and training programs. Some, like Microsoft, are focusing on the general well-being of their employees. Microsoft has created and launched its Holistic Well Being program, a series of offerings that support employees in four specific well-being areas: physical, mental, financial, and social. Kristen Roby Dimlow is a graduate of William & Mary. She's Vice President, Total Rewards, Performance, and HR Business Intelligence at Microsoft. She joins us to talk about the Holistic Well-being program there, what it entails and what it's doing for Microsoft and its employees. Here's our conversation with Kristen Roby Dimlow. Ken WhiteWell, Kristen, it's nice to see you. Thank you very much for sharing your time with us. Kristen Roby DimlowI am thrilled to be here. Thanks, Ken. Ken WhiteSo when you think about William & Mary. What comes to mind? Kristen Roby DimlowOh, my gosh. I have so many happy memories of William & Mary, and it was a great education. And I also had so much fun being in Williamsburg, and I still have some very close friends. So it's been with me my whole life just about. Ken WhiteThat's great. And I walk these halls every day, and I'm just in awe of the students who are a part of our University and our business school. It's really something here. Yeah. And it's nice to speak to graduates like you. Who've been doing some really wonderful things. So Microsoft, how long have you been there, and what's your role? Kristen Roby DimlowI've been with Microsoft off and on for 23 years, and I'm what we call a boomerang. So about seven years ago, I left Microsoft to be a head of HR for a small technology company in Seattle. And I lasted all of 16 months because I missed Microsoft so much. But my current role there is head of Total Rewards and HR Business Insights. And so that is compensation benefits, global mobility, and people analytics. And it's perfect for me because it's a blend of HR and finance. And my career has kind of been half and half started out in finance and then moved into HR and have found myself in the perfect hybrid role for both. Ken WhiteYeah, fantastic. So tell us about the Holistic Well-being at Microsoft. This is interesting. Kristen Roby DimlowThis is really neat. I think most companies have always been very thoughtful about physical well-being. If you think about benefits, everybody has some sort of health care plan. Many of us have more recently started to accentuate the importance of fitness for a healthy body. But what we've realized is I think of it as a positive success loop where there are different elements of well-being and wellness. So physical, obviously, but mental more recently, I think we're getting more and more comfortable across the globe in talking about mental well-being and mental health, financial well-being, and then we talk about social well-being. And what we found is if you're off on any one of these, it manifests in the others. And so over the last, say, four or five years, we've been really trying to promote holistic well-being. Ken WhiteAnd what's the response been? The reaction? Kristen Roby DimlowFantastic, I would say, especially on mental well-being. This was something that we started a few years ago, and we were somewhat naive. We had an employee assistance program, just like many people do, where people can call and get counseling support as needed. But we started 1 May. May is mental health awareness month, and we started that year with a campaign called It's Okay Not to Be Okay. And our idea was to try to destigmatize mental health. We started in a very sort of small way. We just reminded people about the EAP. We also brought in a few documentaries on mental health. And what we didn't expect was the outpouring of support. And we had leaders who actually stood up and told their own stories. And we got such a positive response that just this little foray into reminding people it's okay not to be okay really started something very, very cool at Microsoft. And we've continued to build since then. One of the things that's been interesting, the COVID pandemic, has really accelerated the destigmatization of mental well-being. I think there was a study that 42% of Americans about a year ago were feeling more anxious. And I would say that anxiety has only grown given geopolitical events, given some of the racial injustice, given just the lack of control in people's lives. My heart really goes out to people with young children where they're trying to juggle school from home or even when they do go back, then having to have them come back because someone in the classroom has become infected. It's just ongoing anxiety. And so we've all sort of woken up to realize this is something we all have. And so it's been, I would say a bit of a silver lining is that it's really destigmatized mental health. Ken WhiteNo question. It is amazing how people will self-disclose in that area now compared to even just a few years ago. I think you're right. It's the pandemic, right. I think it put everybody on equal footing. So other than the initial introduction to that piece of it, have you done more or plan to do more in other things? Kristen Roby DimlowWe have done more. And I would say we're only really getting started because I think there's so much going on in this space that we're just learning every day. But beyond our EAP, we tried to make sure that people understood what their medical benefits included. We wanted to make sure that they understood leave practices. At Microsoft, we have a certain amount of sick days per year. We relabeled them sick and mental well-being days. And that was something that didn't cost us a dime but was hugely influential. And again, saying, it's okay not to be okay. It's okay to take time off from work if you need it. We also have an amazing what we call an ERG, which is an employee resource group on mental health. And so, they have been phenomenal. And then even in our products, Microsoft is trying really hard to build products that are accessible, and that includes for mental health or neurodiverse populations. And so, I would give big kudos to our Xbox group. We have a game studio in the UK that is building a game based on mental health, has a character with mental health condition. And so, all of this is coming together in a beautiful way. My team sort of brings the benefits. We've also introduced talk space where people can do chat counseling. In addition to the EAP, we've offered Headspace, which is a really cool app to support mindfulness and mental well-being. And then the ERG brings in their own expertise. They have people who are very brave and willing to share their own journeys and support each other. We've also worked with our training organization to provide trainings to both employees and managers about what to do when you're not feeling okay, how to articulate it, whom to go to for help. If you're a manager, hey, you don't need to be a counselor. You do not need to be the one to diagnose. 80% of it is listening, and then 20% is helping them find the resources that they need to support. So it's been amazing. I would say it's a beautiful one Microsoft moment where everybody's coming in together to try to lift this initiative because we all have experienced anxiety ourselves, or we know people with mental health conditions. Ken WhiteAre you seeing in terms of participation any more from younger versus older, male versus female, one sector or part of the company than the other? Kristen Roby DimlowThat's a wonderful question. I actually haven't broken it down in a huge amount of detail, but I would say across the board, we're pretty much up. And one of the challenges we've had, and I think everyone's experiencing this is our EAP providers are overloaded. And one of the things I did I had a leadership team strategy meeting, and we invited one of the counselors to come in and talk to us about what they're seeing. And they said they just feel bad, that they cannot get through all of the people in their cues. And so there are cues of people that are sort of waiting. They also talked about the importance of putting their own oxygen masks on. So even our counselors need counseling, so that was helpful. The other thing we learned through this, again from our ERG group. So not from the one on accessibility or on mental health, but our Blacks at Microsoft ERG asked us to have more diversity in the counselors themselves, which makes so much sense, right? There are different cultures around the world, different races, different ideas on things. And so it's important that the counselors look like the employees whom they're serving. And so that was a huge unlock for us. I don't see it as one area or another. I will say that across the board, we have to think of that diversity and inclusion piece. And I'd also say anecdotally. I feel like younger generation is more comfortable saying that they're not feeling okay. So I think maybe some of us call myself out baby boomers. You were taught to be stoic and not complain. And I think that's really unhealthy. So I love to see that earlier in career, are a little more willing to step up and say, hey, I need a mental well-being day. Ken WhiteBeing around young people, they are changing the world for the better, I can tell you for sure. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Kristen Roby Dimlow in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full-time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation on Holistic Well-being at Microsoft with Kristen Roby Dimlow. Ken WhiteSo how about the financial side? What do you seeing there and the needs that you're seeing? Kristen Roby DimlowWell, this is great. So many companies have a lot of financial well-being benefits for employees, starting with pay. And so pay, 401K, some people have ESPP programs. A lot of times, if you have a 401K program, you probably have access to financial counseling. And we do through our provider. And so we try to spend a lot of time working with employees to make sure they understand what their benefits are and then try to also think about what are the different groups, what are their needs. So earlier in career care a lot about student loan payback. So we try to offer that up at the right time. People who are maybe a little older have children who are thinking of going off to college, need assistance, thinking about how am I going to finance that. As you get close to retirement, thinking about how am I going to retire? What do I need to know? So we try to think about those different constituencies. I think another interesting one is people who might be new to the United States. So we have a lot of global mobility. We have people come in from other countries where the financial landscape is very different, or maybe there's a greater social safety net than in the United States. And so we need to teach them what is a 401k program? What is an ESPP? Why is this? I was talking to a young woman, and I said to her, hey, you're investing in our 401k, right, because there's a massive upside for you to do that. And she said I have so many student loans. I'm really not. I have a real cash flow issue. First of all, that motivated me to do more on student loans, but also made me realize I really need to educate people of the importance of retirement and really thinking about how to put their money to work for them. Ken WhiteThis is a massive undertaking. I mean, employers, a generation ago, it was a paycheck and maybe some health insurance. Wow. How did this start? I mean, I know it's a big organization, but where did it all come from and the momentum? Kristen Roby DimlowYeah, well, we were lucky in that we've always had pretty decent benefits, but we have more recently been more thoughtful of our diverse populations and what sorts of things they need. And so we've been trying to ensure that when we look across the landscape that our benefits are inclusive, that they're supporting our culture. So Satya Nadella has been our CEO for about seven years. He brought us the idea of growth mindset. He's very inspired by Carol Dweck, who wrote the book Mindset and brought that to Microsoft. And so, as part of growth mindset, we also have cultural pillars around diversity and inclusion, customer obsession, and one Microsoft. What he brought us was so incredible because we really needed to reinvent ourselves. We were sort of like the 45-year-old startup, and it was time to let some of our old practices go and embrace some new ones. And one of them was this idea of growth mindset where we don't have all the answers. We need to think more about our customers, and we needed to act as one Microsoft. So that sort of started a lot of stuff, including this idea of what do we need to do with our benefits and compensation in order to be more diverse and inclusive and to promote one Microsoft. So that's how some of this started. It's been really great. Ken WhiteYou're obviously doing it for the right reasons, but there are certainly some benefits to the organization. We're seeing people just leave jobs so quickly now. I mean, it is really something. Have you seen some positive effects in terms of the great resignation? Kristen Roby DimlowWe have. So I like to think of it as the great reshuffle because what I see is people taking on new opportunities, and we have been lucky in that while we have seen attrition rates resurge to pre-pandemic levels, I'm not seeing some of what I see in our industry, which is great. And part of that is having a great value proposition. So again, like you're reminding me, one of our challenges was articulating everything that exists for employees at Microsoft. So I had someone on my teamwork with one of our corporate communications people to think about value proposition. And luckily, they didn't listen to me because what I wanted them to do was so far off from what they learned our employees needed. So what they did was global focus groups. They went around the world and talked to all different, and virtually they didn't get on planes. They did it virtually, but they talked to employees all over the world to say, what is it about Microsoft that you love? And it wasn't the pay and benefits. The pay and benefits were like entry into the door. It's the ante to get into the game. But what they loved was it came down to four pillars, community, growth, the ability to grow, well-being, and flexibility. And Ironically, this all happened pre-COVID, which was wild because these pillars are so durable and, especially during COVID, the idea of flexibility. What they meant at that time when we were doing these focus groups was they loved that they were able to go to a kid's soccer game, that they were able to start early, that they were able to work from home a day or two a week because commutes were so difficult. That was their idea of flexibility. We've now learned after two years of this that there is this future of work which was much more nimble, much more flexible. And so I feel like, to your point, it's important for an employer to try to get all of these things right, and holistic well-being is the primary part of that. So when we articulated the value proposition, then we realized, okay, our go-to-market strategy is to start telling people what exists in each of these buckets and the way we did it, which, again, not my idea. Their idea they were smarter than I am was they got employees to tell the stories. So they went and found employees who would tell stories about why is community important to me? Why is well-being important to me? We got people to tell unbelievable stories. And those I'm sure with your background, you probably know this. There's nothing better than a real person telling, like, I can tell somebody, but as the head of paying benefits, people feel like I have an agenda. So it's much better to hear from one of their peers what's going on. Ken WhiteNice. All forms of media in terms of the storytelling. Kristen Roby DimlowYeah. Mostly right now, we're doing a lot with just online because videos, but even just short anecdotes that go in mail. And of course, a lot of people don't read mail these days. So we also promote social media. We have a hashtag Microsoft life, and so we encourage employees to do hashtag Microsoft life. My thing is called essentials. So I do hashtag essentials as well. But I think you'll see Microsoft Life more than essentials if I'm honest. But it's been just a fabulous way. It scales globally. It resonates globally. We sort of did a walking kit for people so with lots of PowerPoints or images that they could use so that they can customize campaigns. So if you're in Germany, you can take our collateral and customize it for what's going on in Germany. So that's been great. I'd love to share one other thing we've learned with you, and I got this from my boss. So she came up with it, but her name is Kathleen Hogan. She's the CHRO of Microsoft, and she was trying to articulate the importance of employee engagement, and she took a riff from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So she came up with the five P's of employee engagement. And so it's purpose at the top, followed by pride, people, perks, and pay. And so, if you think of pay and perks are foundational. It's what I was saying earlier. It's like food and shelter. That's got to be good before you even think about retaining anybody. You need to have a decent story there. But then it's sort of the top of the pyramid are more of the intrinsic benefits. Right. And thanks to Satya for giving us amazing purpose. So the Microsoft mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. And that's one of the reasons, honestly, why I came back to Microsoft. I probably was at a stage where I could have been done, but Microsoft's purpose is so aligned to my personal purpose. And then the pride in the company, so proud of the products we make and what they do for employees or do for people around the world. And then the people with whom I work, it's really cool. We work with some amazing people. And that was another reason why I think I came back. And then the perks and pay are super important, too. But all of that comes together. So both our five P's as well as our essentials. If we can kind of keep that in balance, then we're able to retain people. And some people do leave. Some people feel like the grass is greener, but we have a lot of boomerangs, too. I think 11% of our hires back are boomerang employees. So I think that they kind of go like, you might get a teaser right, you might get a little bit of a sign-on bonus or a bigger stock package. And I do believe you can get pay anywhere. You can get more pay anywhere where you go. But it's the holistic package that keeps you sort of coming in and feeling great about a company. Anyway, we're trying to make all that work. We're not perfect yet. We're still learning a bunch. But I feel like both of these have been helpful ways to try to articulate what the Microsoft deal is for employees. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kristen Roby Dimlow, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you are looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Kristin Roby Dimlow, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female VoiceWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Chris Caracci](images/chris-caracci-172-thumb.jpg)
![The Customer Experience](images/chris-caracci-172-thumb.jpg)
Chris Caracci
Episode 172: March 21, 2022
The Customer Experience
We've all been there: You go to a local business, or visit a hotel, or go online to make a purchase, and the experience is awful. If it's bad enough, you decide to never go back again. Which means the business - at a minimum - has lost a customer. That's where Chris Caracci steps in. He helps organizations improve their customer experience. He spent years at the Disney Institute working with clients across the world. Today he continues to help all types of businesses and organizations deliver a high quality customer experience. He joins us to talk about the customer experience, its importance, and how improvement starts at the top.
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TranscriptFemale VoiceFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, we've all been there, you go to a local business or visit a hotel or go online to make a purchase and the experience is awful. If it's bad enough, you decide to never go back again, which means the business, at a minimum, has lost a customer. In today's competitive market, no business can afford to lose customers. Well, that's where Chris Caracci steps in. He helps organizations improve their customer experience. He spent years at the Disney Institute, working with clients across the world. Today, he continues to help all types of businesses and organizations deliver a high-quality customer experience. He joins us to talk about the customer experience, its importance, and how improvement starts at the top. Here's our conversation with Chris Caracci. Ken WhiteWell, Chris, thanks so much for joining us and sharing your time with us. Great to see you. Chris CaracciI'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Ken WhiteRight before we hit the record button, I was saying that I think literally on every episode we've done, customer comes up. Of course, we're always thinking about the customer. I think you think about customer a little differently when you talk about customer experience. What is that? Chris CaracciCustomer experience, and we hear that a lot is really the accumulation of service experiences end to end. When you have in your business, you have a customer. I'll call them the customer doing business with you, whether they're buying a service from you or they're buying a product from you. It's everything from their first touchpoint with your organization. And that could be through an advertisement that they see online all the way through any kind of follow-up service or follow-up care that they need post them using your service or your product. That's the customer experience. But it's filled with sometimes hundreds of what we call customer touchpoints. And those customer touchpoints are really where the service if you want to use that phrase customer service, that's where the service takes place. But it can be anything. It can be, as I said, it can be viewing an advertisement because there's a service moment there all the way through to a voice to voice experience, a face-to-face experience, a computer to computer experience, whatever that looks like. All of those add up, and they leave an impression. All those touchpoints leave an impression that impacts whether or not you as a consumer walk away with a positive impression of my organization. Who's selling whatever I'm selling to you, or a mediocre impression, a neutral impression, as we call it, a neutral series of touchpoints, or even negative. And the goal is to come out of that with a positive customer experience. That doesn't mean that it's perfect. It's never perfect. Ken WhiteSure. Chris CaracciBut the goal is to have more positive touchpoints than neutral or negative touchpoints because that leaves a positive impression in your head, the consumer. And that is what drives loyalty back to the organization, to repurchase the service or product or to recommend us. Those are the two top measures and a lot of organizations that take customer experience seriously to find out whether people are loyal to them in one of those ways or the other. Ken WhiteThat loyalty pays off, obviously. Chris CaracciIt does pay off because we all know the cost of acquiring new customers is very, very expensive. The cost of retaining customers that you already have is far less expensive. And we know that over time, a loyal customer that stays with you for a long period of time, their average spending with you goes up. So ultimately, it's about creating that loyalty. I think where the confusion happens sometimes, Ken, is that organizations equate customer service with loyalty. They will measure customer service. If I can use that phrase again, they'll measure that and think, well, we just need to be good at customer service. We don't need to look at the continuum of that experience very much. If we're just good at the service points here and there enough to be positive, and there's confusion there because they think that that drives the customer coming back. There's not, at least in my experience with working with industries around the world in different cultures, is that loyalty is not talked about enough. When we talk about the customer experience, we're too focused on the moment, and we're not focused on the long-term effects of high-quality customer experiences. Ken WhiteAnd there could be so many touchpoints. I'm thinking of a local dry cleaner. There's quite a few touchpoints, let alone a massive organization. Chris CaracciAbsolutely. And that dry cleaner needs to pay attention. I'll give you an example. I went to a dry cleaner all the time in a location that I used to live in Florida, and it was a small dry cleaner. And I used to drop off my dry cleaning every week and pick it up every week. But when I pulled up in the parking lot, the dry cleaner had these big picture windows so they could see the parking lot clearly from inside. And by the time I parked my car and came inside, my laundry was waiting for me on the stack, and she'd already rung me up. And that's a small business. Right. But what that tells me is they've hired somebody and taught them that you need to pay attention to the customer, get to know your customers. Not only that, when I walk through the door, they call me by my name. Those are all touchpoints. And at the end of the day, I will pay more for my shirt to be cleaned there. Then I will go across the street where they don't have that kind of personalized service, and the price point may be lower. So we know that customers will pay more if you pay attention to them and give them care. Ken WhiteYou worked for a long time for the Disney Institute. Is there any organization better at this than Disney? I think that's who most people think of. Chris CaracciDisney is up there. I think because it's always historically service has been always historically a part of the organization. It was an important thing, a business piece to focus on for Walt Disney himself. And I think the beauty of the company is that they still live the things that he taught that he believed in all these years later. He died in 1966. That's a long time ago. Ken WhiteWow, yeah. Chris CaracciBut yeah, the fundamentals around how he cared for people, the service that he wanted to give to his customers, the experiences he wanted to get very high quality still with the company today. And the beauty of that, as I've taught it for years, 20 years with the Disney Institute, is that that is so foundational and fundamental that it doesn't change very much. The customer still wants you to pay attention to them, and that has not changed. Maybe you do it a little differently. Maybe technology helps us do those things a little differently in some ways now than it did in 1966, surely, but the customer is still looking for the same kinds of things. So when I work with organizations, as I do now around the world, teaching them these philosophies around, how do you bring that great customer experience to your own organizations? The things that I impress upon them is that you can never take your eye off this. You always have to be making sure you're paying attention to every detail every day. You can't put it on autopilot because it won't sustain. You have to give it attention every single day. So I have especially enjoyed with my years with the Disney Institute, working with healthcare way back when, when I first came out of college, I worked in hospitals as a respiratory therapist. So a lot of my work with the Institute was healthcare-related because healthcare, at least in the United States, is looking to come back to the patient's experience. The patient got lost in healthcare in the United States for many, many decades. You were just another last name on a chart. And the focus became so much around the medical care that they forgot about caring for the human that you're actually caring for. Ken WhiteSure. Chris CaracciSo they came to us early on at Disney and said, can you teach us the same fundamental things about how you've structured your culture around service so that they will work in our environment with our patients. And that's precisely what we did. So, again, even in an industry like healthcare, we're coming back to you have consumers, you don't call them customers, you call them patients, but they're the same thing. They're consuming healthcare. You're providing healthcare. They need to have a quality experience that matches the quality medical care that you're giving them. And those two things have to be married. Ken WhiteYeah. If they have a good experience, they'll come back. Chris CaracciAbsolutely. And in health care, you don't always necessarily want them back. You want them to do something for them, hopefully in some situations where they don't have to come back. But the other part of that loyalty is not only returning to come back for more service, but it's also the recommendation, which means speaking highly about that organization to your friends and to your colleagues and letting them know that you had a great experience there. You may never have to go back there for care, but you have spread the word now to other people that your experience was one that was very worthwhile. Ken WhiteYeah. Having brand ambassadors makes life easier, doesn't it? Chris CaracciIt does. Ken WhiteYeah. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Chris Caracci in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full-time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation on the customer experience with Chris Caracci. Ken WhiteI may have shared this with you. I've actually shared it on the podcast several times because it just stuck with me. When we had Kim Lopdrup on, he's been on twice. He's the former CEO of Red Lobster. He said people who succeed in his field have the hospitality gene. They take great pleasure in seeing a couple of folks come in, a group of people come in and have a great meal and a good time and leave. Is it like that with the customer experience? I'm assuming you've got to have that gene to really get into it. Chris CaracciIt is. So much of service can be trained, but if you don't start out with somebody that's trainable, then you're not going to get anywhere. So it was a definite strategy for Disney, and it still is today when they hire people, especially working in positions where they're dealing with customers every day, but certainly, internally as well, they're looking for the individual who has generally a positive nature and a positive attitude towards everything. Towards their lives, towards their work experience, because we know and the Society for Human Resource Management tells us this, that there is a percentile in the teens of individuals in the United States that don't have that positivity and it affects their whole lives. I don't know the reasons behind that. All that I know is when you're hiring people, and you're hiring people to deliver service and experiences, you don't want to hire anyone coming from that 15% or that 17% of the population that doesn't find, as you call it, that hospitality piece that doesn't find that comfortable or isn't outgoing in a way that they can be positive with people that they're dealing with either internally or externally. So you have to back up the process of good service all the way into your hiring practices to make sure that you hire the right individuals. That, to his point, have that hospitality gene that you can see that's very visible and very noticeable in the individual, because then, you know, we have the service structure, as Disney does, that we can train them to use, and they're going to hit it out of the park every single day. Ken WhiteWe all know those people. Yeah. Chris CaracciWe all know those people. And you know the people who are part of the 15 or 17%. Ken WhiteThat's true. Chris CaracciAs I joke, we have those people in our families, too, right? But we all know who those are. You don't want them working for you. If customer service is a primary focus because you will spend a lot of time and energy with training, that most of the time won't go anywhere. Ken WhiteI think most of us would put Disney up there in the Hall of Fame in terms of the customer experience. Who else is in that group? Chris CaracciSome other names that come to mind immediately. Ritz Carlton. They do it extremely well. They have a system around their service. They have a structure around their service. They hire people into their organization who can function well in that structure. Organizations like Nordstrom, from a retail standpoint, family-owned company originally but very focused on the customer experience and the personalization of the experience. Southwest Airlines to that, now a lot has been going on with Southwest in these last ten years, but their focus has been on customer service and trying to improve the experience, sort of disrupting when they first came on the scene, disrupting the airline industry and doing things differently than anybody had done, all in the name of trying to make the experience better for their customers. So there was a focus there. And you can always tell with a company the way you're treated by their employees, the way you're treated by the experience, whether or not they're actually focusing on it or not, you can tell right away because those things just don't happen by accident. They're highly customized. The experiences are customized, the touchpoints are all customized, and you notice it right away as a customer. Ken WhiteSo who's responsible when you're working with companies and organizations? Is there a certain title with whom you're working? Or does that change from company to company? Chris CaracciVery few companies, even today, will have somebody in charge of the experience, the customer experience. Some of them do. The ones that are out ahead of the rest of the pack will have people devoted to that at a senior position. Typically, the organizations that are looking for my help do not have that. And that sits typically in the realm of human resources because so many of the elements that go into making great experiences for customers, so many of those pieces lie within human resources. It's about hiring the right people. It's about training them. It's about onboarding them to the culture of your company. It's about onboarding them to the things that are important and the values that your company espouses because that is all preparation for that individual's time in front of your customer. And then, you add on training around your service structure and your service framework. It has to be very intentional. So much of my work tends to be with the human resources department because they're the one managing the people processes. They're managing the leadership processes usually, and it's about impacting those because, without a quality leadership experience and a quality employee experience, you will never get to a quality customer experience. Ken WhiteHow has the pandemic affected customer experience in the way organizations view it? Chris CaracciEvery organization, even Disney, has had to pivot and go online with much of what they do. Which meant, I think, thinking, like every organization thinking, how can we do this? How can we translate quality to a virtual environment? Which is difficult because you take away so many of the things that exist in a voice-to-voice interaction or a face-to-face interaction, and they become virtual, which makes them you lose some of that emotional connection that you want with your customers, and that's been difficult. And we've tried to do that because we've had to do that. I think Disney with their parks. The parks came back very fast. They closed in March of 2020. They were reopening again in the summer of 2020 after that break, that three or four-month break, and brought those face-to-face experiences back, even with masks and whatever other restrictions were in place. We knew that as a company, especially in our parks and resorts business, that people were yearning for that even after a few months of isolating at home and being afraid to go out in some cases and doing everything virtually, that there was still a yearning to get out there and to see people again and to have conversations again, even with a mask on whatever that looked like. But again, to have that contact because it's so critical. It's critical for Disney's parks and resorts business, obviously. And since then, they've remained open to some degree. The Disney parks around the world have adjusted how they've needed to adjust and kind of going up and down. But I think we're coming now in March of 2022. We're finally seeing the light out of this pandemic. It's becoming much more endemic to the population, and we're going to deal with it moving forward. But I think our ways forward as industries and businesses now is the freest it's been in two years time. Ken WhiteSo for an organization that is lacking in this area, what is step one for them? Chris CaracciStep one is always, and I do this with every client is, even somebody on that team has brought me in to help them. And that may be a senior leader, it may be somebody in the middle, but the first thing that I do is get all of the senior leaders in the room and say, this is what you've asked me to do. I can help you do this for you, but are all of you on board with doing this? Because if just one of you out of five or ten if one of you doesn't see value in this, then you've automatically handicapped our process. Because you're going to hold us back to whatever extent you have influence as a senior leader in this organization. So I need all of you, and I'm very frank about this with them. I need all of you to line up. And if you can't line up, then I need to ask you, do you really want me here? Do you need to wait until you think you can line up? I mean, I'll help you line up, but if you don't want to, I can't force you. I need you to come with me on this journey, and then I can help you. But if you don't, if senior leadership if executive leadership in any organization doesn't want to make improvement, no matter how much the middle of the organization is screaming for help, it'll never happen because the executive leaders have all the levers. They pull all the levers. And if they're not on board, it's not going to work. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Chris Caracci, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home of the MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If you're looking for a truly transformational experience, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Chris Caracci, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Michael Medline](images/michael-medline-171-thumb.jpg)
![Leading Transformational Change](images/michael-medline-171-thumb.jpg)
Michael Medline
Episode 171: March 8, 2022
Leading Transformational Change
In 2017, when William & Mary graduate Michael Medline became CEO of Empire, he knew the organization was in need of major change. He’d been successful at PepsiCo Canada and as CEO of Canadian Tire but turning around Canada’s second largest grocery retailer, would be a significant challenge. Fast forward to 2022. Medline has executed one of the most effective turnarounds in Canadian retail. Empire and its key brands — Sobey’s, Safeway, IGA, and others — is stronger than ever and people have noticed. Medline was named CEO of the year by the Globe & Mail. He was also named Canada’s most admired CEO. He joins us to talk about leadership, company culture and transformational change.
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TranscriptFemale SpeakerFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, produced by the William & Mary School of Business and its MBA program, offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. For more information, visit wm.edu. Ken WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. Sharing strategies, information, and insight that help you become a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. In 2017, when William & Mary graduate Michael Medline became CEO of Empire, he knew the organization was in need of major change. He'd been successful at PepsiCo Canada and as CEO of Canadian Tire. But turning around Canada's second-largest grocery retailer would be a significant challenge. Fast forward to 2022. Medline has executed one of the most effective turnarounds in Canadian retail. Empire and its key brands, Sobey's, Safeway, IGA, and others, is stronger than ever, and people have noticed. Medline was named CEO of the Year by the Globe & Mail. He was also named Canada's most admired CEO. He joins us to talk about leadership, company culture, and transformational change. Here's our conversation with the President and CEO of Empire, Michael Medline. Ken WhiteWell, Michael, welcome. It's so great to see you in person. Welcome to William & Mary. Michael MedlineOh, I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me on the show today. Ken WhiteYeah. And you're going to be interacting with a lot of students. That's just going to be so fun. Michael MedlineYeah. I always look forward to that. And anything I can impart, but usually I'm learning from others. I'm going to try to impart some wisdom today if I can. Ken WhiteWhen you see and interact with younger professionals, those at the beginning of their career, are they very different from you and your peers at that stage in your career? Michael MedlineIt's hard to compare that many years on, but I do find them more sophisticated, more mature, and that they can take on larger roles than I thought I could take on or some of my peers could at that stage. So I'm really impressed. Ken WhiteYeah. They think differently, but they can get it done. Michael MedlineI think they're better, and they're just as hard-working and just as ambitious. Ken WhiteYeah, that's great. And I know you'll have a wonderful time meeting all the students. You're meeting the whole group undergrad all the way on up to the executive MBA. Michael MedlineThey're keeping me pretty busy, but I'm enjoying it. Ken WhiteThat's excellent. That's great. Well, we want to talk to you not only about your career but especially at Empire—some of the things that you've done. You arrived in 2017. What did you see when you first got there? Michael MedlineI like to look forward, not backward, but in this case, I think there are some learnings from it. And what I saw was a company in total disarray, which you don't see very often. And these things happen. If you're a 115-year-old company, you're going to go through some good times and bad times. And I saw a crisis in leadership, low morale, very regional business, not we're big national company and acting like five different regions. So we lost our way. We didn't have numbers that I would usually associate with running a company. I asked when the weekly operating meeting was, and there were no operating meetings, never talked about brands, and had some very angry customers, especially in Western Canada. But other than that, everything was great. Ken WhiteSo was that an attraction for you? Michael MedlineI'd always, in my heart, wanted to work for Empire Company because I knew a CEO there years before, and I knew that the Sobey family were great and they had a good culture. So I'd always kind of in back of my mind thought this would be a great place to work. I never thought of myself as a turnaround person, but I was looking for a job. And in fact, now I probably wouldn't take on anything that isn't a turnaround if I were ever to do anything again, which I probably won't because it was so exciting and used all the skills I'd learned here at business school and all the experiences that I had in my business career. Ken WhiteIs retail something that's in your blood? Michael MedlineIt is now. I never thought of myself as a retailer, but I've been doing it for over 20 years now, so I guess it is. But I think retail is really broad. I think an airline is retail. I think in many occasions, banks are retail. So I have a big expansive version of it, not just a grocery store or sporting goods store. Ken WhiteYeah. So, where did you start? You get in, you see it, and you say, I've got to come up with a plan. Where do you begin? Michael MedlineI've done a lot of work while I was in the interview stages because they were doing a search worldwide search. And what I did is I quietly traveled the country and went in stores and talked to teammates there and did a lot of reading. There's nothing more boring than reading investor call scripts from years before. And I dedicated myself to it. It was tough going, and so I had an idea of what to do, but we did have to. It took us some months to put together and only three months to put together a strategic plan we called Project Sunrise for the first three years to turn around the company. But you knew that wasn't going to take effect. You couldn't change the place right away. And the number one thing I wanted to do is boost morale. When you're at a company, and you're not doing well, you're embarrassed to work for it. Whether you're a cashier or a senior executive, you want to go to a Christmas dinner and be able to talk about what a great place you work for. And so, how do you boost morale quickly when you still don't have the results? And that was the biggest thing I had to take on, other than traveling around, talking, and putting together the plan. Ken WhiteYeah. How did you do that? Because morale is tough. Michael MedlineYeah. Ken WhiteYeah. Michael MedlineI told them what the vision of the future was going to be. Where we're going to be five years from now, and how proud they were going to be and what they were going to do on the journey. I told them it wasn't their fault that we were unsuccessful and that they would be part of the journey to make it successful. And I used a phrase which I've used often talking to my teammates after that, I said, they're a diamond. They just need to be polished and buffed up a bit and then did some little crazy things like sponsored the Blue Jays or the national baseball team and put our logo on the outfield fence. And so when you see that, you go, okay, I guess my company is not going down for the count. And there's something to be proud of. Little things like that, but mostly just talking about the future and how great it was going to be and how they could be part of that. Ken WhiteYou have over 130,000 employees. What was your strategy, communication-wise, to get to reach everybody? Michael MedlineYeah, it was just over-communicate. You can always talk to the backstage employees more easily than you can than the front line. We have 1700 stores across the country. I can't get in all of them in any given year. But messages get around. So if senior management goes into a store in Alberta, in Calgary, everybody in Alberta knows that senior management's in the store. And if you then talk about it and send out a video or speak about how great the store is, everyone hears about it. So it's a thousand things. It's not just one thing. There's no silver bullet in these things. Ken WhiteHow quickly did people jump on board? Michael MedlineAlmost immediately. Almost immediately. I'm sure there were some doubters. Right. And we've seen this before. It's flavor of the month. This guy won't make it. But I was so ultra-confident in the place. And so they started responding right away. And we started getting results much sooner than I ever could have hoped. Some of them were very not everything you teach Dean at school or the other professors, some of things very crude at first because we didn't have an infrastructure. And so, I knew it would take six years to put an infrastructure that we'd be proud of in place. But I had some advice. Let's put the infrastructure in for five years, then go at it. You can't do that. You've got to start getting results, and your teammates and your customers, and your shareholders expect it. Ken WhiteSo project sunrise was three years? Michael MedlineThree years long. Ken WhiteWhat were you hoping? If there was one main goal. What might that have been? Michael MedlineUnify the country have it run under one leadership team instead of five. We have four regions in the National Oversight Committee. They fought with each other. They had different pricing. Nothing was the same, including when I asked for what's our margin this month? Which region would you like to see? Ken WhiteProbably somewhat convenient if you work in a region, but inconvenient for you, the leader. Michael MedlineYeah, I couldn't do it. And I had said when I interviewed I would not take the job on unless I had the support of the board and the Sobey family, the great Sobey family, to make it one company and to unite it. And they were 100% behind it. You can make way more change when you're in dire circumstances than you can when you're successful. And sometimes I worry now are we still the risk-takers we used to be when we were trying to turn the company around. Ken WhiteOh, that's a good point. Risk, I mean it can be frightening, not just for the CEO, but people on the team. What if we fail? How do you deal with that when that comes into play? Michael MedlineYeah. I knew I was going to get the job, but it was before I was announced, and the company came out with their results. And I remember where I was. I was standing in front of a drugstore, and it was freezing in Toronto that day. And I looked at results, and I called my wife, and I said, I hope I can do this because this was going down. We made, I think, $0.13 that quarter. And last quarter we made over $0.70 in the quarter. And there's a great cash flow business once you start pumping up. But we were going in the wrong direction. So were there times of doubt? Maybe a few dark nights? Not many. Not many. Was I confident in the team? I liked the culture. I like the values. And I thought we could do it because there was so much upside. I look at things, not sort of I go, wow, if we knew what our margin was, then we could really run this company. We could have operating meetings. Wouldn't it be great? If we had better structure and better teammates at the top, what a company this could be. So I always look at things optimistically. Ken WhiteYeah. But there's got to be those times where there's some self-doubt. Michael MedlineI hope we're making the right call here, and you make decisions without perfect data, and you've got to make them. And at the beginning, I had some key teammates, the interim CFO, the head of HR CHRO, who is still there, and they helped, but it was a small team making a lot of key decisions, and that can be a little scary at times. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Michael Medline in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Michael Medline, President, and CEO of Empire. Ken WhiteAnd then, after Project Sunrise, you moved into Project Horizon. What did that entail? Michael MedlineWe now were a national company. We're getting decent results. We're throwing off cash. We had the confidence. We had good teammates. But the infrastructure, especially in technology and data and in our store network, was not as strong. So it was a time to invest in the company. And now we're starting to reap those rewards. And this one, there wasn't a burning platform, so you had to get people excited about space productivity in the store or on-shelf availability or renovating stores. It wasn't a moment where you're really questioning whether the company could go on. It's how good the company could be. But we've had great results through Project Horizon, even though we were put off a little bit by some emergency measures during the pandemic, which put us behind, and the team was unbelievable catching back up after we went through the emergencies. Ken WhiteYeah, I actually took the words right out of my mouth. What about the pandemic? What did that do? Did it derail some things? Michael MedlineI think that if we hadn't been a national company, didn't have the structure and processes and disciplines and people we had in place. It would have been a complete disaster. Instead, I got to tell you that I have far less of a role in the company now, which I'm proud to say, and that my teammates, from the stores to my executive teammates, came through, and I started to realize how important it was that we didn't have to be as centralized. We didn't have to have that top-down, that there were great ideas, especially at the beginning of pandemic, when no one knew anything right what to do. And we were getting ideas from everywhere, and so many were coming from the stores. And I said, okay, we got it now. I feel really good. And in fact, it made the team closer, and it polished their skills. If you could go through this, it really showed your mental in good times. No kidding. I mean, anyone can lead in good times, anyone. But when the chips are down, we saw that so many of our leaders stepped up. Ken WhiteAnd you had some fun. Michael MedlineYeah. I mean, I don't like working out of a basement. I went back to the office as soon as I was legally allowed. But you know what? It was fun because everything I learned at school and, as I said earlier, everything that you're trained to do. Are you any good? Can you put it all in place? And that same test for any leader, not just CEOs, but not just in my company. I think many of our competitors did a great job. I think that CEOs across the world stepped up for each other to help when they could. So it really was a heartening event. Wouldn't want to do it again. And the team is a little tired. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. Michael MedlineBut they're coming back. But it tested you. So in a weird, sick way, it was somewhat fun because it challenged you. Ken WhiteSure. It's interesting in talking to you. You use the word teammate quite often. And when I look at the news releases and reports and your quotes, there's a lot of sports language. Teammates win, lose, offense, defense. Where does that come from? Michael MedlineWell, I like sports. I liked playing them when I was younger, and I love watching them. And it unites my family because my kids are all big sports fans with me. But I do think that a lot of people can relate to sports. They can relate to the competition, to the fact that you have to have the back of your teammate. And I like the lexicon. I like the way to thinking of business is highly competitive, to beat your adversaries, and to succeed while playing within the rules and having values. And so I think I evoke it quite a bit, probably more than I even think I do when you mentioned that because I just write or say what I want to say. But then, if you put it together, I guess there are a lot of sports analogies. Ken WhiteWell, it's competition, right? It makes sense. Michael MedlineYeah. And that is a way to unite the team, too. So we're the second-largest retailer in Canada. We really don't like the largest retailer. Ken WhiteOf course. Michael MedlineAnd I've not been very good at this. I've really not been helpful in terms of fostering a better relationship. And one of the ways to unite a team is to have a common adversary. I might have to tone it down because I think we're doing better. And I do have respect for the adversary. Ken WhiteSure. Michael MedlineBut it does unite a team to say, look, we're behind, and we got there's someone else that we have to go after. We have to be a better team. Ken WhiteI assume you see a big shift in people's attitudes and the culture from when you arrived to now. Michael MedlineYeah, I do see a total shift in the attitude. I would say, though, I was very cautious about changing. I really didn't want to change the 115-year-old culture and values that have made the company so successful. And I think it's not right for one leader to impose on that or try to change it too much. So I really studied the culture and values and the people and then just sort of highlighted. I didn't think we were results-oriented enough. I didn't think we were competitive enough, but I used our current values. I didn't change the values. And I love the culture. I just think that we needed to lead the company better and have a better vision and strategy for the company. And to a change culture and values is probably a task that is not going to be successful and certainly will take too long. And so I just embraced the culture values and just highlighted them and stressed them in different ways. Ken WhiteYeah, well, that's a fine line, right? Because people could take it as criticism if it goes too far. Michael MedlineCorrect. Ken WhiteYeah. Michael MedlineNot many companies are as successful as ours had been over a long period of time. There's some good things there. Ken WhiteYeah. Michael MedlineDon't throw them out. Ken WhiteYeah. You do a lot of work in the community. You work for nonprofits. You're on boards. Why is that important for a CEO? Michael MedlineWell, I think at a certain point when you're first in your career, you're working so hard and trying to learn. You don't have time to. If you do, you're a better person than I am. I didn't have time when I was early in my career, but I always tried to coach kids teams and do things like that as my kids were growing up. But then I just felt I enjoy it, first of all. And I felt that if I could add anything to those causes, that it was pretty well my duty to do so. And if I felt I wasn't adding anything, it wasn't really the cause. They were already good without me. And so, it was places where I thought I could add value. And I've learned a lot from it. Anytime you go out, and you meet other people, and you talk about brand, or you talk about how to treat your teammates, etcetera, you're learning a lot. So I felt it was exposed me to other business leaders and other organizations in a good way. So I got something out of it as well. Ken WhiteSo what's ahead? What do you have planned for the next couple of years? Michael MedlineWell, we are nowhere near perfect. We have a long way to go. But I like where we're going. I don't think we'll do another three-year plan. I think that's for turnarounds, in my opinion, that we are a much more mature company. But that doesn't mean we should be any less audacious. And that's my number one message I sent to the teams and to our board of directors. I'm worried, will we be able to take the risk in a smart way that we did before? Or do we just kind of rest on our laurels. And every single day, I ask myself, when I wake up, are you going to go for it? And can we make this company? The goal is to be the greatest retailer in Canada history and then the greatest company in Canada history. So just kind of sitting around and being happy with where we are is not going to do it, but that's what concerns me the most is that we become a bit complacent, and I'm being in my role now over five years, I can't become complacent, so I'm always trying to challenge myself and make sure that I'm as passionate about the business as I've ever been. I think I am. I think I'm more excited now because I wasn't a turnaround guy. Now I get to do the great things when you have a great infrastructure and a great team. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Michael Medline, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home to the MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. If your life and career are in need of a transformation, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Michael Medline, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. Female SpeakerWe'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks for listening to Leadership & Business. |
![Patrice Lincoln](images/patrice-lincoln-170-thumb.jpg)
![The Hot Job Market](images/patrice-lincoln-170-thumb.jpg)
Patrice Lincoln
Episode 170: February 16, 2022
The Hot Job Market
If you're looking for a new job, now is the time to look. Due to a number of factors, we're experiencing the hottest job market in decades. Salaries are up, the number of openings across sectors and industries has increased, benefits are improving, and employers are becoming more flexible. The news is great if you're a job seeker. Patrice Lincoln is a career coach. She's the Director of Graduate Career Advising and Education at William & Mary's School of Business. She's on the front lines in the job search environment helping graduate business students land the right positions. She joins us to discuss our current hot job market, and how - if you're seeking a new opportunity - you can succeed.
Podcast (audio)
Patrice Lincoln: The Hot Job Market TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteWelcome to Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world, sharing strategies, information, and insight to help you become a more effective leader, communicator and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, if you're looking for a new job, now is the time to look. Due to a number of factors, we're experiencing the hottest job market in decades. Salaries are up, the number of openings across sectors and industries has increased, benefits are improving, and employers are becoming more flexible. The news is great if you're a job seeker. Patrice Lincoln is a career coach. She's the Director of Graduate Career Advising and Education at William & Mary's School of Business. She's on the front lines in the job search environment, helping graduate business students land the right positions. She joins us to discuss our current hot job market and how if you're seeking a new opportunity, you can succeed. Here's our conversation with career coach Patrice Lincoln. Ken WhitePatrice, thanks so very much for joining us. I know you are absolutely swamped right now. How has it been for you this academic year versus maybe some years past in terms of volume and activity? Patrice LincolnVolume has been incredible. Students are just coming in one after the other. They all are coming in for different reasons, but it is busy in career management. Ken WhiteSo we hear and we're reading about this great job market. Is that what you're seeing and you're experiencing? Patrice LincolnFor sure. Right now we are actually 20% above where we were at this time last year. And then to put that into perspective, we are 16% above where we were pre-COVID in terms of full-time acceptances. And so we're seeing that companies are really pushing to get those students in early, signing them and having them sign that dotted line and securing their full time as well as internship opportunities. Ken WhiteSo 20% means that you've got more students that have jobs in their pockets while they're finishing up their degree than you did a few years ago. Patrice LincolnFor sure. Acceptance, yeah, for sure. So that's really good. Ken WhiteWe hear a lot about the great resignation. We've talked about it on the podcast. Is that real, and are you seeing it affecting jobs? Patrice LincolnIt is real, as you can probably see just by driving down the road, that a lot of that is in hospitality, restaurants and hotels. So a lot of that great resignation is coming from that. Not as hard hit in the white collar professionals, but it's still people over the pandemic really struggled because companies had laid people off due to the pandemic, and then those that were left were left with a bigger workload. So people are really starting to reassess what is important to them. One thing that is adding to the Great Resignation is the baby boomers are retiring. People that would have continued to work later are not going past retirement age. And then there are early retirees. They've just really decided this is not worth it. We can bow out. So that's leaving a big gap. Ken WhiteYeah. We've never seen anything quite like this, have we? Patrice LincolnNever, never. Ken WhiteWhen you said what's important, what is important to many professionals, whether they're younger, mid level or mid career, what seems to be important to people when they're looking at maybe leaving or seeking a new job or career? Patrice LincolnI think one of the biggest things is flexibility. So people want to work hybrid or work from home, and especially those that have small children or caring for an elder. They really need that flexibility to work on their own terms, work the hours they need to work. So they are looking for more vacation time. One of the big things that companies are offering now that I'm seeing is just a bigger area of mental health awareness. And so mental health support for those workers that have been through the pandemic, people are just done. They're tired, they're burnt out. And so looking for companies that are offering that support, they're looking for higher wages. Why should I work for this company when I can work for this company for a significant amount of money with the flexibility, the adaptability? Another big thing that our current students are looking for is really that social impact and sustainability. That's been a huge trend over the past couple of years. And I've really never seen anything like it this year compared to this year where students are saying, I want to work for a company I believe in. Ken WhiteYeah. And when you're talking students, you're not necessarily talking 21 year olds. These are graduate students. Patrice LincolnGraduate students, correct. Ken WhiteYeah, you're talking about 40s. Patrice LincolnAbsolutely. And it's important to the vast majority of them. They want to feel good about the company. They want to feel good about their leadership. They want to know that their company is doing good for the world, whether it's environment, whether it's equity and inclusion or just that corporate social responsibility. Ken WhiteSo you mentioned the importance of flexibility. Are companies and employers hearing that and doing something about it? Patrice LincolnI think they are starting to hear it. So with the pandemic came a lot of hiring freezes. And so companies were not able to recruit or hire, which really helped cause that burnout with the people who are left. And so they really need to kind of retool how they go about recruiting people and the same benefits that were important two years ago or not even on the radar anymore. Ken WhiteYou mentioned how they recruit people. Has that changed the process? Patrice LincolnSo one of the things that has changed dramatically over the years is the applicant tracking system. So here is artificial intelligence helping us do our jobs better. And what it really is doing is it's preventing the candidates from meeting the recruiters. And so the recruiters really need to figure out how to get past that applicant tracking system because they're missing out on a huge majority of people that would be well suited for those jobs, but they're not making it through the word match algorithm that they have. Ken WhiteYeah. For those who don't know that, can you explain how that works? The word match? Patrice LincolnSure. So for most large companies, they're going to have something called the applicant tracking system, the ATS. And it's all done by artificial intelligence. So your resume goes in and gets parsed, and there are certain keywords that the hiring manager or recruiter selects as important. And if you don't have that word exactly on your resume, the artificial intelligence is not smart enough yet to figure out that a project manager is the same thing as having project management. And so because it's not 100% word match, you get passed over on that. And so there is a deficit in how many students or how many candidates are passing through that applicant tracking system. And so one way to counter that is I tell our students, please go back and do that tried and true networking. Really go back and meet with people within the company. Try to get your face and your name out there. That likability factor is huge. But when you have a hiring manager walking your resume down to HR versus the machine, saying good fit, not good fit. That makes the world a difference. Ken WhiteIn terms of and no one likes to network. I don't think right. Patrice LincolnThere's like 2% of the class will tell me they love it. Ken WhiteIt feels like of all the human beings I've met, most of them say I'd really rather not do that. Do you coach your clients when it comes to the systems to actually go back and write the resume so that it does match the job description? Patrice LincolnYes. We've tried to pick up some new tools. One of the newest tools we have is called Job Scan, and it does just that. It takes the name of the company and it tells the student or the candidate what applicant tracking system they're using and tips about that particular applicant tracking system. So that's a brand new tool for us. We haven't rolled it out fully, but it is pretty incredible in terms of making these small changes on your resume can get your foot in the door for this particular job description. That's going to take time for students to go back then and tailor every resume for every job they're doing. It's always age old quantity versus quality. Your first year, it's typically quality. You don't even know what you want yet. Recruiting season comes so early, throw it all out there, see what sticks. Second year, we really migrate over to that quality versus quantity. So spend the time on this particular job description. And so those quick applies. Quick applies. We're seeing less and less success with those because they're not tailoring their resumes to that particular job. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Patrice Lincoln in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are each designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Show your employees you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary at wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Patrice Lincoln, Director of Career Advising and Education at William & Mary's School of Business. Ken WhiteYou mentioned earlier people are tired, and there's no question in every industry people are wiped out. It's affecting how we innovate and how we work. If you're tired, is that a good time to seek a new role with a new organization? Patrice LincolnYes and no. I mean, the first thing you need to do is raise the white flag and say, I'm tired. What can we do here in my current position to make things better? And that's where that mental health support is coming in with a lot of companies just trying to retain their employees. And if they're feeling like they're not being cared for, they're not being heard, then the next thing you need to do is really spend that time getting your resume up to shape and getting excited about what type of work would you really like to do if you had your pick right now compared to where you were two years ago and you just needed a paycheck to survive. Ken WhiteIf one of our listeners wants to change industries, what's a good way to start that search? What are some of the steps they should take? Patrice LincolnThat is a great question. So really taking a look at what jobs are out there. There's so many different jobs out there now that just didn't exist pre-pandemic. We're seeing a lot on the equity and inclusion pace. As you know, the country has been struggling with that for the last several years, and we're seeing that employees want that in the company. And companies are now having Executive Director director level roles in corporate social responsibility, in diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging. So those are all things that are important if you're interested in going into something like that. We have a lot of students always coming in that want to go into that space. And years before it was there are no jobs that are out there right now out of school that you can get for something like that. Get into a company that you enjoy their mission, their vision in another function and work your way over. Well, you don't need to do that anymore. And we're also seeing a lot of our students who want to job shift. They're finding it easier because companies are looking for how do we do things differently? How do we do things that are out of the box? And the only way they're going to get there is by hiring people that have a diversity in thought and background. And so no longer is it somebody in finance. You have to have five years of finance to get in here. Companies are willing to train you as long as you come with the basic skills. They can train you on how to do it, but they can't train you on how to bring strategic thinking without bias. Right. So that's something that students are coming with. Ken WhiteThat's a bit of a shift Patrice LincolnIt's a big shift. Ken WhiteYeah. What other specifics are do you see employers seeking today? First of all, I assume they just want people. Number one, get me some people. But after that, what are they in general? Patrice LincolnSo according to the latest GMAC Recruiter survey, 73% of recruiters are looking for versatility in skills. So they're not really looking for those hard skills anymore, although those help if you have them. Communication is the number one. Since the pandemic we're seeing digital savviness. You have to be digital savvy or you're not going to survive in this world when your entire team is remote. They're also looking for employees who can be flexible. So not just the other way around, but employees being flexible. So you can work from home, but we're going to need you at least once a quarter in the office or we have a big event coming up. You're going to have to come in for that. And the final thing that they're really looking for is strategic thinking as I was saying, strategic thinking without bias, but not just that strategic thinking, but how hiring students or hiring candidates who can actually have an impact on that. So drive the great strategic thinking they're thinking about drive that home and really implement that rather than just thinking about it. Ken WhiteThe fact that we're looking for people to lead remote teams, that's not all new. I mean, we've had Salesforces all over the world and all over the country before, but in some respects, it is somewhat new. What do you see employers? What are their concerns in that arena when it comes to hiring? I mean, not all of us have experience leading remote teams. Patrice LincolnRight. I think you're going to see companies coming up with specific training on how to lead a remote team. Some people work better remote than other people, and that's just a fact. And so having checks and balances in terms of not necessarily are you working eight to five? Because as we know, our days have shifted, especially with parents who are caring for children during the pandemic and all the kids who were home from school. But are they getting their jobs done? And so how do you check in with those individual people? So for me, I had a diverse team in terms of how they like to be checked in. So I would call one person on either FaceTime or the cell phone while I was having a ten minute power walk in between meetings. Other ones would want to be on Zoom. And so we do a quick Zoom check in. And so we just made sure we were staying connected during that whole pandemic. So it wasn't like they felt lost and didn't have a chance to ask questions. It's not like you can just pop into somebody's office if you have a question. And if you forget to ask them all the questions at that time, you poke your head back in. Well, now you have to actually call them back or reconnect with them or chat with them on Teams or whatever your instant messaging platform is. Ken WhiteYeah. Patrice LincolnAnd so just understanding how each employee really wants to feel connected. And I think that goes a long way to I had to onboard two new employees, 100% remote, and that's a hard thing to introduce them to people outside of our department, people within the company. And so I really had to make a conscious effort on, hey, let's have a Zoom link with this group so that you can meet them because you don't necessarily have a lot of day to day overlap with them. But it's really nice to know people that you're working with. So when you do need them, it's not like a cold call. Ken WhiteYeah. And it's interesting how it is changing culture. Job searching, to me, is one of the worst things. It's just so difficult. It's on your mind when you're looking 24 hours a day. It's difficult. And now it is an exciting market, but the world is somewhat unknown. What advice do you share with people seeking right now to kind of get through the process and land that successful you know that opportunity? Patrice LincolnThat is a great question as well. I'd say having that resilience. And so you're hearing this is the best job market in 20 years. It doesn't mean that you're going to get hired in a week's time. You have to put the time and energy into your resume and so work with somebody on that. And what you think you are understanding because you're putting it down in bullets, somebody else might not pick up on it. And rather than have it be your job duties, what were your accomplishments? What had a big impact on the company's bottom line? Because that's what management is interested in is what kind of impact can you have? And then they're also looking for ways that you can address your leadership skills, ways that you can address your flexibility or adaptability or innovation. So we're talking about innovation. If you want to get into one of the tech companies, which is one of the big industries that's hiring like crazy, they want to see innovation and they want to know how can you scale it? Ken WhiteSo be smart and hang tough, though, right? Patrice LincolnBe smart, hang tough, keep trying and network. I really can't say enough about networking. So if you find a company that you love. Reach out to people for informational interviews even if there's no connection, reach out to them and ask if you can have ten minutes of their time so that you can get a better understanding of what the company culture is like. And is it really a good fit for you? Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Patrice Lincoln and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business, home to the MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online and the executive MBA. If your life or career is in need of a transformation, check out the William & Mary MBA program at wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Patrice Lincoln and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy and productive week ahead. |
![Megan Cunningham](images/megan-cunningham-169-thumb.jpg)
![Brand Storytelling in 2022](images/megan-cunningham-169-thumb.jpg)
Megan Cunningham
Episode 169: January 22, 2022
Brand Storytelling in 2022
Every aspect of business deals with continuous change, but one area has constantly evolved from the beginning: Marketing. The audience, tools, and channels change rapidly as marketing continues to grow in terms of complexity. It wasn’t that long ago that reaching your audience was as easy as placing an ad in the newspaper. But now, marketing is more sophisticated, strategic, and segmented than ever. And when done right, it’s tied to the organization’s mission and purpose. And while marketers work to manage the changes and opportunities in front of them, our guest says one element is critically important to successful marketing in the year ahead: Brand Storytelling. Megan Cunningham is the founder and CEO of Magnet Media, a creative studio that uses brand storytelling and data to drive business results for some of the top brands in the world. She says brand storytelling has the potential to do great things for marketers and the products, services, and organizations they represent.
Podcast (audio)
Megan Cunningham: Brand Storytelling in 2022 TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
Podcast (platforms)
iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Amazon Music/Audible | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, every aspect of business deals with continuous change, but one area has constantly evolved from the beginning, marketing. The audience, tools, and channels change rapidly as marketing continues to grow in terms of complexity. It wasn't that long ago that reaching your audience was as easy as placing an ad in the newspaper. But now, marketing is more sophisticated, strategic, and segmented than ever. And when done right, it's tied to the organization's mission and purpose. And while marketers work to manage the changes and opportunities in front of them, our guest says one element is critically important to successful marketing in the year ahead—brand storytelling. Megan Cunningham is the founder and CEO of Magnet Media, a creative studio that uses brand storytelling and data to drive business results for some of the top brands in the world. She says brand storytelling has the potential to do great things for marketers and the products, services, and organizations they represent. Here's our conversation with the founder and CEO of Magnet Media, Megan Cunningham. Ken WhiteMegan, great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. Megan CunninghamKen, thanks so much for having me here this morning. Ken WhiteI'm excited to talk with you. I've looked at Magnet Media. I've seen your background doing some really exciting things. For our listeners, tell us about Magnet Media and what it and you do. Megan CunninghamWe are essentially the OG of brand storytelling. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary in business, and while it's been a lot of highs and lows over the last two decades, I really feel like brand storytelling is having a moment right now, and we're in a privileged position where we're growing at an ever-accelerating rate. Ken WhiteWhy is it having a moment? It's been around a long time. But it is being talked about now. Why? What's causing that? Megan CunninghamI think there's a number of dynamics, but I'll just focus on two. I think that when the pandemic hit, there was a real revelation at a lot of large enterprises that their supposed digital transformation that they felt they had already gone through was really in its first inning, and that having a website that they bought a bunch of Google AdWords to drive traffic to was not really being digitally transformed, that there were a lot of other opportunities for innovation that they hadn't tapped or hadn't taken seriously. And a lot of that, frankly, falls under the umbrella of brand storytelling from our perspective. The second is that I feel like Mission and Purpose, which have been kicked around the board room and discussed and debated for many years, are finally arriving as a not nice to have, but a must-have, and so there's been a lot of indicators in prior years, even on the global business level. Right. With Larry Fink's letter at BlackRock and conversations at Davos, and endless Ted talks, that mission and purpose is really a key driver of value in the business community. I still think that a lot of people, frankly, we're paying lip service to that or avoiding the topic altogether. And what the last two years has shown us is that that's a real mandate for attracting and retaining talent in addition to attracting and retaining customers. Ken WhiteThat's what I was going to ask the customers. Where does that audience fit in when it comes, and it's a tough question, I realize. But where does the audience fit in in terms of storytelling? Megan CunninghamI think it's like a tree falls in the woods if no one's heard it, even did it even fall. Similarly, what's the story told if no one's ever heard it or viewed it? It's an open question, existentially. So I think the audience is absolutely a key element to creating value in storytelling. And I think that there's been a misnomer for many years that either it's all about audience, and there is no actual real storytelling or craft there. Right. And that, I would say, as evidenced in the era of content farms where people were just sort of flooding the internet with articles and poorly written sort of blog posts to try to hijack search engine topics. Right. And drive traffic to their lame-looking microsite at its worst moment. At the same time, I think that what we found over the evolution of brand storytelling as it's become more strategic as it's become more thoughtful that you can now see branded content that rivals traditional media and entertainment. And that to me, is where the future lies, really aspiring to well-crafted stories that are created in partnership with your audience, cocreated even, and that resonate and are searched for and shared socially and celebrated instead of advertising in its traditional forum that is increasingly blocked and skipped and avoided. Ken WhiteDo you think often about the length of the story? I know personally, I love to watch YouTube, and we've got 5 seconds, right. 5 seconds to hook the audience. And some campaigns do it so well. And I think, wow, what another hurdle in the storytelling realm. So do you think much about length? Megan CunninghamI think duration is interesting. Duration has been something that has been in some ways overthought if that makes sense. I do think that there is value in short-form content. I also think there's value in long-form content. And some of the most impactful brand stories are not just sort of little gifs or social posts, but they are full-length episodic content that may exist on YouTube that may be celebrated in Spotify as a podcast. Right. I mean, there's lots of ways to bring brand stories to life. And I think that, again, the original vision was like, oh, we have to kind of like adapt our story for this really short attention span audience. I think that sometimes works, but it's not the only way in which you can execute on-brand stories by any means. Ken WhiteIn terms of video production and the overall quality of the look. Does it need to look great? Can it be pedestrian looking like someone off the street shot it? Where does it need to lie? Megan CunninghamI think it depends. And I know that that's not the greatest of answers to any question, but it's the truth. I think that when you are engaging with authentic content created in partnership with influencers or brand ambassadors, people do want something that is real, feeling real. It feels like it was shot on a selfie Cam or that you're talking about this pet food while walking your dog or something that's really like in market, infield, and that feels raw and rough, almost like you're catching a weathercast like from the eye of the storm. Right. That's like you're really there. You're getting a first-hand experience. It's believable. It's trusted because it's witnessed by someone who is experiencing something themselves and telling you personal story about that experience. I think that there's on the other end of the spectrum of production values, real value in things that are glamorous and that are shot on a produced level. And I think that we've seen that work very successfully with drone cameras and celebrities and things that just excite the audience so much because they know that they're going to be taken on a journey and entertained and informed in a really dazzling way. And so I think both of those have meaning and usefulness in the sort of customer journey or employee journey if you're doing something that's aimed at new recruits, but it's not a one-size-fits-all if that makes sense. Ken WhiteI find it interesting how sophisticated that the customer and the viewer have become. I mean, I worked in television a million years ago. No one knew how video worked. They had no idea. They were impressed with pretty much anything. Now we all shoot our own stuff. We have iPhones, and we know how to create videos. That's a sophisticated audience now that really looks at production quality, don't they? Megan CunninghamI do think that is the case. And I think that there's been an emergence in even Hollywood productions of complimentary parallel content series like, for example, you'll see something launched a series on HBO and almost always now they have a stay tuned for after the episode where we dialogue with the cast and the directors, and they will really do what normally pundits would have done, where they analyze the episode and separately you also have pundits that are frankly supported by the show. And HBO has commissioned original podcasts from The New York Times, and New York Times has been paid by HBO to create content now. So it's this whole merging of traditional media and independent commentators and audience members, all participating in, again, a cocreated way around the creation and celebration of a brand. And I think that's super exciting. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Megan Cunningham in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The full-time MBA program at William & Mary is one of the nation's best, according to The Princeton Review and its Best Business Schools for 2022. William & Mary's full-time MBA program was named Princeton Review's top ten in five different categories, including Best MBA Professors, Best MBA Students, Best Resources for Minority Students, Best MBA for Human Resources, and Most Family Friendly MBA Program. You can find the Princeton Review's Best Business Schools for 2022, where you buy your books. And you can learn more about the William & Mary MBA program by visiting wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Megan Cunningham. Ken WhiteSo storytelling has been around always been important, very important today as we're going into the new year. What else do you see in terms of marketing? That we should keep our eyes open? What might we see? Megan CunninghamI mean, I feel like those that are winning are moving quickly and nimbly at this challenge of digital transformation and innovation. And they are not taking themselves too seriously. They are not sort of breaking their arm, patting themselves on the back for doing something that was sort of seen as innovative, maybe last year or the year before. I think that they're constantly evolving and committed to continuous improvement. And so underneath that sort of theme and strategy, I would say test and scale is the name of the game. It's taking a look at things like if you've been in the podcasting space and you feel like, wow, that was like a big breakthrough for us. We're now able as a brand to produce a podcast like so many of our clients have. Now let's take it to clubhouse. Let's make it a live recorded experience. Let's put it on replay there and really adapt as the audience is moving into new networks and environments. If you've been successful at events and gatherings, and it was a big transformation for you to go from live dinner parties and trade shows to virtual experiences that had similar dynamics. Think about where you could show up in the metaverse. And so I think just constantly moving forward and thinking about what's next, what's new, and what's next. That's the role that we play with brands at Magnet Media. And I'll say there is one thing that we come out with every year that is called the State of the Story Trends Report, and we drop that in various chapters now. It used to be once a year at annual trends. It's now sort of an ongoing quarterly release that we've structured based on the fact that things are changing at such a rapid pace that we want to keep people abreast of those changes. Ken WhiteSo if I'm a small business owner, if I'm a part of a small organization, my head just exploded as you're saying that how in the world can I possibly keep up with that? What advice do you give? Maybe smaller organizations who have to be in this realm, they have to be playing in the game but may not have the expertise or the people on board. Megan CunninghamI think the simplest thing you can do as a small business owner is put a mirror to your organization. And by that, I mean survey your customers and survey your team and really get a sense of where the puck is moving for them. What are they curious about? What's a change that they've made in their own consumption habits over the past 6 12 18 months? And ensure that or what are they thinking ahead about testing themselves? Are they increasing their podcast listenership and retiring their YouTube consumption? Whatever it is, that's sort of a change. I think knowing that from your own customer base and your own team is very vital as a data point, and then that to me gives you really like reading into the tea leaves that gives you the basis for your content strategy. You don't have to be everywhere by any means. In fact, one of my advisors once said to me this known mantra of you can be anywhere, but you can't be everywhere. Right. And I think that's very true when it comes to brand storytelling and posting and building community on these different channels. Ken WhiteAnd we definitely see that, don't we? We see organizations trying to be everywhere. And if you're everywhere, nothing is effective. Right. When you go that route. Interesting. So taking it to that next level, thinking greater, thinking bigger, moving on. And as you said, being nimble, what else do you think we might see in terms of marketing and promotion in the new year? Megan CunninghamI think there's going to be continued development of real community on behalf of businesses. And I think that again, we've seen this already where there are sort of cherished gatherings in different sectors that people gravitate towards and look forward to, and they're more than just, oh yeah, I have to go to that annoying trade show, and it's going to be exhausting and whatever. They're actually looking forward to connecting with their friends to learning new things from fresh content. And I think that sort of a well-run experience is something that is at the foundation of a community. But that what we've learned is that a community is also ongoing, and you're providing opportunities for members of that community to connect with one another. Whether it be through setting up a Slack or a Reddit channel, or a standalone app providing that opportunity and reasons for people to connect with one another, that, to me, is a big asset that businesses can be developing and creating that will add to their value and their sustainability. Ken WhiteWhat role did the pandemic play in the experience and in the community and our need for those? Megan CunninghamA huge one, probably the biggest one that we've seen, frankly, since the birth of the internet. I think that I've been interviewed repeatedly about sort of events and gatherings and sort of what's on the horizon. And I'll say there's really four reasons why we gather, whether it be on a personal level or on a professional level. And I think when it comes to marketing and business leaders, thinking about those four reasons of why people are coming together is really critical. I'll just quickly list them. It's exclusive access, unique experiences, social connection, and a solution to a challenge. And to me, the more you can kind of layer in those four value props into your experience or event, the better off you will be in terms of perceived value from the participants. Ken WhiteSo as we wrap up last question, people thinking about the new year, their brand, their stories, where they need to go, connecting with the customers. What last piece of advice do you have for them as we move into the new year? Megan CunninghamI think being intentional about your own objectives and sort of what value are you putting out in the world? What gift are you giving to your constituents, whether that be to your team, your investors, your customers? I think that, to me, is like a great place to start in terms of focus because it can be very overwhelming. And I think that is the case for all of us. We work with many of the world's leading brands, and it's a huge privilege. But I often hear that sort of like swirl and sort of chaos is cluttering people's thinking and decision making. It can be like analysis paralysis. So I do think that just thinking through as we have hopefully time to take a break over the coming weeks and months, thinking through what is your purpose and mission and how does that inform your choices? To me, that's a great way to start. Ken WhiteThat's our discussion with Megan Cunningham, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. William & Mary's MBA program is among the best in the nation. In Best Business Schools for 2022 by the Princeton Review, the William & Mary MBA program was named in the top ten list in five categories, including best Professors, Best Students, Best Resources for Minority Students, Most Family Friendly, and Best MBA for Human Resources. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Megan Cunningham, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Jennifer Engelhardt](images/jennifer-engelhardt-168-thumb.jpg)
![Work Reimagined](images/jennifer-engelhardt-168-thumb.jpg)
Jennifer Engelhardt
Episode 168: January 5, 2022
Work Reimagined
As we’ve seen, the pandemic has changed just about everything; the way we live, the way we communicate, and no doubt the way we work. Transformational change is taking place at work and it will continue for the foreseeable future. And at the center of the changes: People. How can employers create a new work environment that attracts, retains, and satisfies the best people? One organization has its finger on the pulse of the evolution of work - EY. The global organization recently conducted a study that included over 1000 business leaders who shared their strategies to reimagine work. In addition, EY surveyed over 16,000 employees worldwide. The result: A report titled “Work Reimagined - How are companies redefining work with humans at the center.” Jennifer Engelhardt is a principal at EY. She joins us to discuss EY’s Work Reimagined report, and the implications and opportunities that come along with a new work environment.
Podcast (audio)
Jennifer Engelhardt: Work Reimagined TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, as we've seen, the pandemic has changed just about everything, the way we live, the way we communicate, and no doubt the way we work. Transformational change is taking place at work, and it will continue for the foreseeable future and at the center of the changes people. How can employers create a new work environment that attracts, retains, and satisfies the best people? Well, one organization has its finger on the pulse of the evolution of work EY. The global organization recently conducted a study that included over 1000 business leaders who shared their strategies to reimagine work. In addition, EY surveyed over 16000 employees worldwide. The result, a report titled Work Reimagined, how are companies redefining work with humans at the center. Jennifer Engelhardt is a principal at EY. She joins us to discuss EY's Work Reimagined report and the implications and opportunities that come along with a new work environment. Here's our conversation with Jennifer Engelhardt. Ken WhiteJennifer, nice to see you. Thanks very much for taking time with us. Jennifer EngelhardtThank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Ken WhiteAnd you taught a class this morning. How was that? Jennifer EngelhardtI did. I love being in front of the students and just seeing how resilient they are with everything that's going on and just hearing their feedback and fresh voices and perspectives. So it was great. Ken WhiteWhen you meet William & Mary students, you kind of think future is going to be okay. Jennifer EngelhardtYeah, you do. You do, indeed. Ken WhiteYeah. It's fun to be around them. No doubt. Thanks very much for sharing EY's report; work Reimagine Employer Survey 2021. And I like the subtitle how our companies redefining work with humans at the center. This is different from other reports like this because it's very people-centered. I assume that was very intentional. Jennifer EngelhardtYes, talent is, I think historically, may not have been the most nurtured asset of an organization, but that shift is definitely happening. And it's great to see. Ken WhiteAre you seeing a shift in terms of the influence employees have with their employers? Now that through the pandemic? Jennifer EngelhardtAbsolutely. And I was just talking to the students about just how the role of the employee and the employer has changed. When our grandparents went to work, they would go to work, show up, clock out, and then go home and be done. And now we expect so much more of our employers. We want them to. Students are coming out of school saying, I want to work for a carbon-neutral company. I want to work for a company where the board looks like my graduating class. I want to work for a company where my leaders are transparent about their promotion decisions and espouse my values, and have a focus on wellness, not just physical wellness, but emotional wellness, financial wellness. So the role of the employer has changed quite a bit, and that change has been accelerated, I think, and compounded by everything that's happening with social justice and with the political landscape and obviously with the pandemic. Ken WhiteYeah. No question in the report talks a little bit about this. Are employers on the same page as employees in general? Jennifer EngelhardtIt varies so much by different dimensions. The survey talks about where are the biggest disconnects, and I think the survey shows three personas, really. One is the people who want to stay remote 100% remote, which is a small number; I think it's around 7%. We have about, I think, 20% or so who want to be back in the office full time. And then the balance is what we call this hybrid hopeful. And what's interesting is that people want flexibility, not just in terms of where they work, but even more so in when they work. As a parent myself, just having to tutor my kids all last year, and still, we need that flexibility. And people are demanding that some companies are saying, come back or else, and people are saying, see you. So it's something that trend is, I think if you've heard the term with a great resignation. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Jennifer EngelhardtYeah. So that's definitely a phenomenon that's been a byproduct of the pandemic. Ken WhiteIt's a totally different landscape. Yeah, no question. Flexibility does seem to be the key. But leadership is also throughout the report and how leaders need to take on some new behaviors, such as what moving forward? Jennifer EngelhardtYeah. I think historically; they've been called soft skills. I don't like that term. I call them behavioral competencies. So the ability to DENI space, the ability to create an inclusive culture, the ability to be agile and react to new technology. If you're the CIO, what new technologies, all these technologies being brought up so fast, which ones do we want to integrate and build into our platform? So yeah, I think it's changing very much. And there's a lot of that's happening in that space. Ken WhiteFairness and equity seems to be a big umbrella, sort of the umbrella over all of this. How do we make all of these changes moving forward? And be fair, what are some of the things you saw in the collection of the data and in the report about fairness and equity and what companies can do? Jennifer EngelhardtYeah. It's interesting. So when we look at equity, we're looking at more and more at diverse segments. And historically, the focus has been primarily on gender and race, and ethnicity. Now we're looking at things like diversibilities, military status. We're finding that there's actually a lot of unconscious bias in job postings. I had a friend come back from Afghanistan with amazing experience. These adaptive skills, things like being able to function very well under pressure, being able to manage conflict. These adaptive skills are much more important, and experience moving tons of material around the Middle East and managing multimillion-dollar budgets. And he says, I can't find a job I'm qualified for. So working with clients to reduce bias in job postings and all along, the hire to retire, schedule, or cycle. But I do think that one of the things that's really notable is that the focus on EQ versus IQ because if you don't have the correct mindset and you don't come across as an inclusive leader, if you're not transparent if you don't really hold your company's values, show that publicly and react in a certain way that blends with the values of your organization. People say this is not authentic. Ken WhiteYeah. Jennifer EngelhardtIf you say you're a diverse and inclusive organization, but your board is all white men. No one's going to believe you. Ken WhiteSo we could see some very different leaders moving forward. Jennifer EngelhardtAbsolutely. Ken WhiteI think the report is just so interesting, and it breaks down into various segments that EY has looked at, and one of them is addressing the desire for flexibility in the new normal. And we talked about that just a little bit. But what does flexibility entail when employees and employers are thinking about that term? Jennifer EngelhardtI think it's where they work and when they work. And so we're seeing a lot of I had a client, a regional bank located in Minneapolis right before the pandemic. They were doing a location strategy to decide if they wanted to open another regional headquarters in Austin or Atlanta. And since then, they have decided not to do it at all because the thing that the pandemic has done is it's accelerated this transformation of the talent value chain. What we thought was going to happen in ten years has happened in ten months. And for the first time in human history, geography is no longer the primary driver of where people work. Your next best employee might be in Bangalore or Liverpool. So we're seeing where people work and when they work. So on the real estate point, you can see it reflected in the corporate real estate market. Right. There's so many organizations who are moving out, and there's definitely been a lot of visibility and focus on that in the markets, but just reconfiguring office spaces for safety, having collaborative spaces, downsizing, and then people at home, they want that flexibility in terms of giving me the right set up so that I can look professional online so that I can have my Internet compensated. And then when they work. So with caregivers, child caregivers, elder care, people need that flexibility in when they work. So they're looking at flexibility on those two fronts. Ken WhiteYeah. You sort of touched on one of the segments, the approach to workplace safety and real estate. So it looks like the redesign of office is happening and will continue to happen. Jennifer EngelhardtYes, especially with the Biden administration and the mandate around vaccination or testing. So we are working with a lot of our clients in that space right now on how best to respond to that. Ken WhiteInteresting. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Jennifer Engelhardt in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The great resignation continues as record numbers of people are leaving their jobs. Gallup reports almost half of all professionals in the U.S. Have their eyes on other opportunities. Well, if your company or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's, part-time MBA, online MBA, and executive MBA programs are all designed for the professional who works full-time. So the employee and the organization both benefit from the experience. Employees want to feel supported by their employers. Show them your organization cares by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Jennifer Engelhardt. Ken WhiteAnd then there's another piece, the need for enhanced digital tools and technology that you sort of touched on a little bit. Collaboration tools seem to be sort of at the head of that. Jennifer EngelhardtYes. Ken WhiteIn terms of what are companies looking for? Jennifer EngelhardtThey want ways that they can share documents in the consulting space. How do we share documents with our clients in a secure way? They want collaboration tools that allow for the ease of use. There's lots of different maturity in terms of skills and proficiency levels and using the different tools. Obviously, they want reliability in the tools the whole home set up that you have to have now with all the cameras and things like that, especially if you are presenting at a conference and we're doing all kinds of conferences online now. So there's a whole host of different infrastructure that you need in that space. Ken WhiteYou just can't open the blinds and hope it's sunny outside. Right. Jennifer EngelhardtExactly. Ken WhiteYeah. It doesn't work. I love the part future of work. Remote hybrid work is here to stay. I know there are people trying to fight it, but it's here to stay. Jennifer EngelhardtIt is here to stay. Yeah. And I think it also talks about the concept of work as being a place or an activity. And I think how many months are we in now? Almost two years post COVID, we've proven that our productivity, we can do work remotely. We have proven that. I think at the beginning of COVID, there was a lot of focus on let's look at productivity metrics, and now that the world has, we're still building shampoo bottles and curing diseases and doing everything else that we always did in a different way. We have shown that we can do that. So I don't think there's any going back in that regard. Ken WhiteThere's an interesting video that EY's put together, just a 1-minute video on YouTube that sort of summarizes the study. And there was an interesting quote from an employee saying that I'm not sure when my day begins or when my day ends because I'm just working from home and working constantly. Is that something employers need to be concerned about? Jennifer EngelhardtYes. Ken WhiteAnd what can they do? Jennifer EngelhardtThere's been a tremendous focus on wellness, and I have a friend who's a nurse, and I check in on her regularly for obvious reasons. But one of the things that surprised me a bit, she said, forget the COVID stuff, not forget it. But what's really disturbing is the attempted suicides. And I think if you can even say this that COVID has a silver lining, it's been destigmatization of mental illness. And at EY, for example, we have focus on emotional, physical, and financial wellness and having people speak up. Even on our internal calls. People they ask leaders to come forward and tell their stories, talk about everyone has struggled with we all have life events, and everyone is struggling having care available, having therapists available. We have unlimited vacation now at EY. So employers really are responding to that. And because employees are demanding that the well-being of their employees, we are at the nexus of huge, tragic events, with social justice, with the pandemic, with the political and sociopolitical environment. It's a tough time to be alive right now. Ken WhiteYeah. Jennifer EngelhardtAnd so, having mental health and mental illness as a focus area is something that's very good to see. Ken WhiteRight before we started recording, you and I were talking about a completely different subject. And the bottom line was we can talk about mental illness now if there is a silver lining, and it's okay to talk about that. And then when you do, you find out there's some colleagues who have been in the same boat that you've been trying to paddle the whole time. Jennifer EngelhardtYeah. And it's fact that EQ versus IQ, the ability to empathize, and the ability to have a shared purpose and purpose being the new currency. I've heard that investors want to work for to invest in companies that espouse their values, supply relationship management, having supplier diversity. I can't tell you how many RFPs we get these days that ask us if we're a minority-owned business, for example. So it's good to see that while some of the events have not been pleasant, it's enacting change that needs to happen. Ken WhiteSome of the quotes and some of the interesting, I think pieces of this report talk about culture within organizations and how some employees and employers feel the culture has gotten better because of the pandemic and other events. Is that what you're hearing? Jennifer EngelhardtIn many regards, yes. I think we are looking at culture, and I think skeptics who think that culture is kind of the soft and fuzzy thing we're really showing how it is. I look at culture as being a collection of behaviors and mindset. So if you want to be an inclusive leader, for example, we work with different tools that encourage behavior nudges we call them. And I'll give you a quick example. We used a tool that said, every morning on your smartphone, it would come up with some quote or some statistic about the benefits of an inclusive culture. And it says today; I want you to reach out to somebody in a diverse segment who you haven't talked to in three months. Will you do it? And you have to click on yes. And then at the end of the day, it comes up, and it says, Did you do it and to participate? We actually did this for our partners in Asia Pack, and we've done it with several clients as well. We had 92% participation rate. Of course, we had different very type-A folks competing. And once you throw some competition in there, everyone participates. But if you look at culture as being a collection of behaviors and mindsets that then if we can make people do these little actions day after day and give them ideas of how to be inclusive, then it becomes part of the ways of working and ways of working leads to culture. So we're seeing a lot more. We're seeing that one it's actionable, and we're also seeing that it's measurable. So we're seeing things like we've always had engagement surveys, but really taking to heart the feedback from those surveys and reacting to it because data that's not reacted to is really not valuable—so making sure that the data that we collect and the social listing that we do with AI predictive analytics, we can really start to take that unstructured data and make sense of it and take action based on what we're finding. Ken WhiteThe last piece we haven't talked about in the report is restarting business travel. People want to travel somewhat. Jennifer EngelhardtYes. Ken WhiteYeah. Is that surprising to you? Jennifer EngelhardtNot so much. I think people miss. Regardless of whether you're a hybrid or remote or an office person, people miss that connection, and you're starting to hear terms that would have surprised us five years ago having on-sites versus offsite meetings. So I think travel will continue to increase, but I think it's going to be much more limited. I was talking to a colleague who said. I cannot believe how much time we spent before in airports when we can work just as well the way we are. But there's nothing that human connection. You can't get that on a Zoom call. It's better than on just a conference call, but it's still not the same as being able to sit across the table from someone. Ken WhiteSo when someone looks at the report, when you look at the report, what's the major takeaway? What should people be thinking about as we move forward? Jennifer EngelhardtI think that we're still in a time of tremendous change. I think that most of the changes that are happening, even though they've been caused by very unfortunate events. I love that we call it the radical transformation of the talent industry, and I think these changes are all for the good. I think that we have a lot of work to do. But I think that in the end, once we get this figured out and nobody hasn't figured out yet, there's no optimal mix. I know people who go into the office, and no one's there, and it has the reverse effect it's a ghost town. I hate this place. If you're in the office two days a week, how do you make sure that your colleagues are in the office on those two days a week? So there's still a lot of strategy that needs to be determined. And as we continue to progress along, as we continue to progress and eventually get COVID behind us, it will be very interesting to see where we land in terms of how we work. And I think it's going to be very different than before the pandemic started. Ken WhiteThat's our discussion with Jennifer Engelhardt, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If your company or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's part-time MBA, online MBA, and executive MBA programs are all designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit from the experience. Employees want to feel supported by their employers. Show them you care by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding our podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Jennifer Engelhardt, and thanks to for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Kelly Crace & David Long](images/kelly-crace-david-long-167-thumb.jpg)
![Flourishing Through Life's Transitions](images/kelly-crace-david-long-167-thumb.jpg)
Kelly Crace & David Long
Episode 167: December 21 , 2021
Flourishing Through Life's Transitions
For those who’ve spent years in the military, or intelligence community, transitioning to the private sector (or any sector) can be daunting. That’s why William & Mary, and its Center for Military Transition has created a unique two-week on campus program to be held in June called Flourishing Through Life’s Transitions. Designed to be a transformational experience, the program will train veterans and members of the intelligence community to transition to civilian positions while flourishing in their lives and careers. It’s a transition program like no other. Two of the program’s faculty leaders join us today to talk about this unique program. Dr. Kelly Crace is the Director of the Center for Mindfulness and Authentic Excellence at William & Mary. David Long is a veteran and professor at the William & Mary School of Business where he teaches organizational behavior. They join us to discuss flourishing through life’s transitions, what makes the program special, and how it will prepare each participant to be successful during the transition and beyond.
Apply for the Flourishing Through Life Transitions certificate
More information about the program
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, for those who've spent years in the military or intelligence community, transitioning to the private sector or any sector can be daunting. That's why William & Mary and its Center for Military Transition has created a unique two-week on-campus program to be held in June called Flourishing Through Life's Transitions. Designed to be a transformational experience, the program will train veterans and members of the intelligence community to transition to civilian positions while flourishing in their lives and careers. It's a transition program like no other. Two of the program's faculty leaders join us today to talk about this unique program. Dr. Kelly Crace is the Director of the Center for Mindfulness and Authentic Excellence at William & Mary. David Long is a veteran and professor at the William & Mary School of Business, where he teaches organizational behavior. They join us to discuss flourishing through life's transitions, what makes the program special, and how it will prepare each participant to be successful during the transition and beyond. Here's our conversation with Kelly Crace and David Long. Ken WhiteKelly, David, welcome. Thanks for joining us. You both have been on the podcast before. Nice to see you again. Thanks for being here. Kelly CraceThanks, Ken. It's good being here. David LongThanks for having us. Ken WhiteKelly, we'll start with you. Flourishing for those who subscribe to the podcast, they've heard of it. You've been here. But for those who haven't, how do you explain and describe the concept of flourishing? Kelly CraceThere are so many wide and varied definitions of flourishing these days. But in our work around our research and both our application of thinking about flourishing, it's this deeper level of effectiveness. It's kind of taking well-being and wellness to this higher level of more effective productivity, fulfillment, and resilience. It's not looking for a perfect level of it, but it's looking for a more consistent, deeper level of productivity, fulfillment, and resilience. Ken WhiteNow, in the program that you'll be offering this summer, you're spending quite a bit of time on flourishing as an individual. What are you looking for in the program? Kelly CraceSo flourishing looks different for every individual, and especially when you bring those three variables in. In terms of what does productivity look like for me, I think the word that's most characteristic is what is optimal productivity, what is optimal fulfillment, and resilience that looks different for everyone. As you kind of explore this further, it has to be very individualized. We've learned a lot through our research as to things that can predict flourishing. But when you look at the pathway and the journey of that and what that process looks like for every individual, it's a little different, and so we want to honor that individuality. We want to bring people in as a group. We find that doing it in a collective with other people. It enhances that sense of understanding what flourishing looks like for me, but it needs to be personalized and individualized enough to where they feel like this connects to me. This is not a general self-help book that is generally applicable. It's designed to be something that's personalized and very specific to them. Ken WhiteAnd so, while it's individualized, there is the group. What does it mean to you to have the group with similar backgrounds transitioning from the military or from the intelligence community? How does that affect it? Kelly CraceHaving that shared social reality is a form of support that really is helpful when we're doing hard personal work. This is the work of flourishing. Flourishing is not a feeling. It's a mindset, and it's a mindset that requires work. And we all know that we do hard work better when we feel supported around us, and support can be both challenge and affirmation. It can be. When do I know this person needs encouraging? And when do I know this person needs to be challenged and coming from a shared social reality, like the military or like the intelligence services. That is one thing that has done very well in terms of providing that right blend of challenge and support to really grow through something that, at first glance, looks impossible to me. I don't see how I'll ever be able to do that. And yet, they find themselves looking back and seeing just how they did that. I'm when they look back. Other people are around them. It's not just them by themselves. And that's why we try to do it as a group. Ken WhiteSo that first week, what are some of the objectives that you have in store for the participants? Kelly CraceSo we've learned in our research that a lot of this mindset of flourishing actually involves paradigm-shifting. It's taking away from our just natural way of thinking. We're kind of challenging some of the platitudes that exist in our society and in our world as to what leads to success or what leads to flourishing and really looking and taking some things that we have learned truly predict flourishing and applying them to their lives. And what that basically involves is paradigm-shifting, thinking differently about values, thinking differently about stress, thinking differently about fear. It's about building from the strength that is already their foundation of where they're coming from. But the important issue in all of this, Ken, is transitions are stressful. Even the best of transitions. The best of change is still seen as stressful because our body processes change as I'm leaving something. So you experience that as loss and what I'm going to is uncertain. And I experience that as fear. And so, how do we manage this stressful experience in an optimal way? So for us, we're going to take different paradigm shifts that move them toward the work of flourishing, and they'll end up with an action plan. We call it dynamic blueprinting, where each of them will end up with a blueprint print that has their mental training program that's designed for them individually. And that's for individual as a person. And then they move into the second week with you and David, in terms of how does this compare to my professional identity? How do I apply this to my professional identity working in the business world? Ken WhiteDavid, you transitioned. Did those terms sound familiar, right? Uncertainty and fear. David LongAbsolutely, yeah. And that's kind of the benchmark of that major transition is the uncertainty and the fear. I was in Florida this past weekend, and I was at a big military ceremony with some friends that I've known for 25 years. I was talking to one of the senior wing commanders who's going to be retiring at the end of next year, and I was talking to him about that transition. And I said to him, I said, what are you looking for? What are your goals here as you go through this transition? And he said I don't know what it looks like. I just know I want to find something with purpose. I said, okay, I completely understand that. And that, to me, has a lot to do with what this program is about. It's helping people find purpose, whether it be in their personal life and flourishing in their personal life, in that transition, or in their professional life in that transition, and how to flourish in that aspect, too. And that's really what the second week does. It builds on what Kelly has introduced in the first week and that personal aspect of it into the professional aspect of it. Ken WhiteSo to break down that week, too, the professional, I'm a participant. I don't even know where I'm going or what I want to do. So what will I learn in that second week? David LongRight. And Kelly hit the nail on the head with the paradigm shift and thinking about things differently. So if you think about a professional life, you can really break it down into five different components. There's the job you do. And that's the first pillar, the second part of the relationships you have in the workplace and in your professional life. The third is in your leadership and your ability to be a good communicator and to lead other people. The fourth is teams. In your professional life, you work in teams. You're put on teams, often voluntarily or involuntarily, and you need to find a way to work effectively in those teams. And the fifth pillar really is more of an umbrella term, which is career. And so, If you think about the sub-components of your job and your teams and your relationships, they all kind of work into a greater career. And so, for example, in the first of those pillars, the job aspect, we call it the craft. What our research shows is that people who flourish in their craft find meaning. And this is what my friend was talking about when he said purpose. What is it about a job that's meaningful and the things the antecedents of meaningful crafts are things like having variety in what you do, not feeling stuck and doing the same routine every day, having differences and variety across different things, different experiences throughout your job? Second part is something called identity. Identity is where you have identity with your work so that you can look at your work and say, there, I did that. That's something that I can see from beginning to end a finished product. A lot of times, we find ourselves in jobs where we're contributing a piece of it. But we never see the total and so finding identity. A third thing is significance if you think that your work contributes significantly, not necessarily to yourself but to others. If you're making an impact on someone else, that's another way that we find meaningfulness and flourishing in the craft. And so in this second week, that first day, we focus on the craft, and it culminates with the transitioning students, the students going through the transition, getting to spend time locally at one of our alumni's workplaces. And it happens to be a brewery. So they'll get to share a pint and hear about how somebody who graduated from here found flourishing through opening a brewery and really applying the components of a flourishing craft. Things like meaningfulness and making beer. We'll hear a lot about hops and barley, but we'll also talk about customers and impact and coming full circle on a craft that's flourishing. That's kind of like the first day they'll get to learn about it and then see it applied in the workplace. Ken WhiteThose elements, the identity, the significance, that meaningful component, in your opinion, most people in the military feel that? Don't? Does it depend on the position? David LongYeah, I think let's go back to something we learned from week one is about the paradigm shift. Some people may know it, but they may not understand exactly what it means. And so thinking about it differently, thinking about it, as it's saying like, hey, I'm looking for a job, and I need a job to provide certain things for me. It can be, hey, I'm looking for a job, and I want this job to have purpose and meaningfulness, and I get it through these things. This is the path to get that. It's a lot different than just the means to an end. It's more of a journey along that path to provide those things that we find are so important to people. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Kelly Crace and David Long in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The great resignation continues as record numbers of people are leaving their jobs. Gallup reports almost half of all professionals in the U.S. Have their eyes on other opportunities. Well, if your company or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's part-time MBA, online MBA, and executive MBA programs are all designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit from the experience employees want to feel supported by their employers. Show them your organization cares by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Kelly, Crace, and David Long. Ken WhiteNow you've gone through some transition programs, and Kelly, you've taught in somewhat makes this different? The one that's being put together for William & Mary? David LongYeah, I'll take it first. So I have gone through the transitioning programs before, and they're effective at the blocking and tackling much more of the basic skills that you may need. Here's how to write a resume. Here's how to land a job, and this can be extremely invaluable. This is a much deeper level of understanding. This is much more of a requires some introspection. It also requires you to have a little bit of a growth mindset because you're going to have to get uncomfortable. You're going to have to learn some things that weren't necessarily intuitive to you and to then think about how you're going to apply those things so that you can thrive. And so, it does force you to learn some new things and step outside of your comfort zone a little bit. But that can be extremely rewarding to people. And it's just different than the typical transitioning programs that we see offered. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly, what do you think regarding those you've seen? Kelly CraceI would echo what David said, but also, I think for me, one of the things that makes it distinctive is there is an assumption of strength. We're taking a very positive approach from this. There are oftentimes transition workshops, and seminars can be based on an assumption that's more remedial, implying that there's deficits that need to be corrected. We're taking the opposite approach that the career they have had so far that is moving them into this next chapter in their life has built strength, has built a foundation that we can then use to take them to a deeper level. So it is less kind of remedial, less surface level, and more advanced. We're not talking about resilience. We're talking about advanced resilience. We're not talking about various platitudes that people here to make us feel good. This is about moving people from emotions-centered habit-focused kind of approach to a value-centered healthy-focused approach, and that takes work because our own neurology and the culture around us can move us in directions that actually lead us astray. Well, we're taking the evidence-informed approach of, well, what have we learned about consistent flourishers, the ones that do it at a deeper level and more consistent level. What have they taught us? And what can we predict from that? And then how do we apply those strategies in a more personalized way? And frankly, we've just learned that there are no natural-born flourishers people that flourish work at it. So what is that work, and we get in for two weeks of hard work. The good thing that we know about this group of individuals coming in, they're no stranger to hard work. So we're going to take that platform and that foundation and build on it. Ken WhiteAll of us agree that the transferable skills these folks have because we see it. We see it in the business school. We see it at the University. So to me, I find it so fascinating that some people don't see that as a positive. It's so evident to us when we see our military students walk in the door. It's like, wow, look what you've done and look what you can do. But it is David, isn't it speaking another language practically? It's like you have to be bilingual. David LongYeah, it is. It is a different language. And sometimes there's those language barriers that don't allow the proper communication to flow as they go through that transition because they really have known one way to speak, and the language is often different in the different context. One of the things that we focus on is building strength across mind and body can be very important in your personal life and in your professional life. The two things that we do, especially in the second week, is focus on relationships and building deeper connections. And how if you have deeper connections in the workplace, not only is it better for your professional life, it's better for your own health, your own health, and wellness. Right. We know that having social connections, having closeness with others can be good for destressing. It can be good for having energy. It can be good for your professional life. It can really help you get along and get ahead in the workplace. And so there's a mutual beneficial aspect of this when you combine the personal and the professional side through flourishing. The other thing is, you mentioned all the different experiences that people who are transitioning bring into—we kind of cap this with the career aspect, that pillar of professional life. But we talk about career, not as a career path but a career portfolio. And when you start to understand the experiences that people in the military and in the intelligence community and government have and how that's part of their portfolio and a portfolio of experiences is extremely invaluable to prospective employers. They want people who think differently who look at problems differently, not just with a unidimensional mindset, but come from it different perspectives. And so when you think about all your experiences, not as a path I've been on, but a portfolio like a diversified investment portfolio. That's the power of that. And you bring that to the table, and it can be really beneficial to the individual personally and professionally. Ken WhiteSo if someone is listening and they're getting ready to transition, and they're from the military or the intelligence community. Kelly, what question or questions should they ask themselves before deciding I want to be a part of this program? Kelly CraceI think any question the most common question before engagement in anything is what purpose does this have for me? Being able to lead with purpose moves you away from what we naturally move to as human beings are most naturally motivated by fear and comfort. So we just drift into this thing of dealing with all the have toos of the day and then seek comfort. But the deepest form of motivation and resilience, and engagement starts with the question of the why? What is the purpose of this to me? So I think people that see this as a good thing to check off a good credential to add to their portfolio probably would not be the best people that will find meaning out of it. It's them asking, what's the purpose of this transition for me? What do I feel I need to be able to move myself to the next level and then look at our curriculum and see if that fits that purpose. If it does, then we're the right fit. If it doesn't, there's something else out there somewhere else and keep on looking for that. Ken WhiteYeah. David, what do you think? What questions? David LongAbsolutely, yeah. Just to build on that, I think a good question to ask is, am I willing to step out of my comfort zone a little bit? It depends on the level of the person who is transitioning. I expect that we're going to see a lot of different levels. And what we find is that the more senior you get, the less willing you are to take risks and to make yourself vulnerable. Well, I think a lot of this program is going to be willing to accept some of that risk and to look at things, new ways to build new relationships, to be self-deprecating, to show some humility, and that can be tough for certain people. So if you're willing to take off the heavy armored coat and learn from other people, I think this is going to be a good fit. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly CraceWe're going to create a safe environment, but not a comfortable environment. And I think anybody, when they look back at their lives, can see, was there ever a time where they comfortably grew? And so we're going to take them through a growth process that's uncomfortable but safe. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kelly Crace and David Long, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. If you're interested in learning more about the Flourishing Through Life's Transitions program, there's more information on the William & Mary website for both participants and companies, and organizations who would like to get involved, go to wm.edu. And type flourishing in the search box, and you'll find everything you need. The dates of the program are June 6th through the 17th, 2022. Be held here on the William & Mary campus. You can also contact the Center for Military Transition for additional information. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guests, Kelly Crace and David Long, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White from all of us here at the William & Mary School of Business. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. |
![Brad Martin](images/brad-martin-166-thumb.jpg)
![Qualities of Great Leadership](images/brad-martin-166-thumb.jpg)
Brad Martin
Episode 166: December 5, 2021
Qualities of Great Leaders
There is no one path to a leadership position; some people are asked to lead, some are assigned. For others, leadership is a goal. At an early age, Brad Martin sought leadership roles. As a 20-year-old, with no political experience, he ran for public office and became the youngest person ever elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives where he served for five terms. Later he turned to business where he became the CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue and its predecessor firm for nearly 20 years. During his tenure, the value of the company's stock increased more that 12-fold. Martin's leadership journey also took him to higher education where he served as interim president of the University of Memphis - his alma mater. He's currently chairman of RBM Ventures and CEO of the Riverview Acquisition Company. He visited the William & Mary School of Business last month as part of the 10th Annual McGlothlin Leadership Forum. He joins us to discuss leadership, his experience, and the attributes he says are critical to being a successful leader.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership and Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. There is no one path to a leadership position. Some people are asked to lead; some are assigned. For others, leadership is a goal. At an early age, Brad Martin sought leadership roles. As a 20-year-old with no political experience, he ran for public office and became the youngest person ever elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives, where he served for five terms. Later, he turned to business, where he became the CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue and its predecessor firm for nearly 20 years. During his tenure, the value of the company's stock increased more than twelvefold. Martin's leadership journey also took him to higher education, where he served as interim President of the University of Memphis, his alma mater. He's currently chairman of RBM Ventures and CEO of the Riverview Acquisition Company. He visited the William & Mary School of Business last month as part of the 10th annual McGlothlin Leadership Forum. He joins us to discuss leadership. His experience and the attributes he says are critical to being a successful leader. Here's our conversation with Brad Martin. Ken WhiteWell, Brad, welcome to William & Mary. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. I appreciate your time. Brad MartinGee, Ken, it's absolutely terrific to be here today. Ken WhiteWell, thanks. You're interesting as a leader, and that you sought leadership roles at an early age. What drove that? What made you do that? Brad MartinI felt like I really wanted to get involved in some serious things. And initially, it was public policy. It was politics. It was issues in the community, and in high school, I had done service projects and things of that nature and felt motivated to serve and thought, gee whiz, do I want to get in line or do I want to go the head of the line and have the opportunity to really sit down and try to have an impact on things. And so, really, the only way to do that is to find a leadership role and jump right in. And I was privileged to do that. Ken WhiteIf you think back to your 20 21-year-old self, did you know what you were in for at that time? Brad MartinNo. When I was 20, I decided to run for the Tennessee House of Representatives. And my friends, I think the most encouraging thing I heard from anybody was it will be good experience. You will get your name out in front of the community. Later on, it'll be helpful when you want to pursue a career in politics. But I told my friends, no, I plan to win the election, and winning the election is how I could go have a seat at the table and deal with some of these community issues that I thought were serious, and that needed some attention. And so I just jumped in, ran for office, and kind of in spite of no experience and probably no qualification, I won. Ken WhiteYeah. What a great story, right. What a great story. And I imagine incredible experience at that age. Brad MartinWell, it was clearly when I showed up as a 21-year-old member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, there were kind of two approaches I could take. One was act like I knew everything about everything because I'm 21. And here I am, boy wonder. Or I could show up and say, I'm here to learn. I actually gravitated to the most senior and, in some instances, the oldest people in the legislature and just sopped up everything I possibly could from them to really help me understand how to get things done. Ken WhiteInteresting. And that was just the beginning of many leadership roles. And when you talked to our students here, you said that you shared some attributes that you've seen in successful leaders throughout your career, seven in particular. And I thought for our audience. We just sort of walk through them. Brad MartinSure. Ken WhiteThe first one, purpose-driven. A successful leader is purpose-driven. What do you mean by that? Brad MartinI think that you really have to show up for a reason that people are willing to follow the leader. And so it could be in the not for profit area because there is something absolutely critical that you've got to do for a population or a community or a neighborhood, or it could be in a business where you believe there's a service or a product that is absolutely important to people, to customers, again, to communities. So I think there has to be something more than the work involved in any successful enterprise and the leader's job. One of them is to define what that is. What is it about we're doing that is important and therefore purpose-driven. Ken WhitePrinciples-based. Brad MartinYeah. I think you have to stand for something. Many of the great leaders I have seen are very clear in what they believe in. if it's their personal integrity, if it's their transparency, if it's hard work, if it is relationship-oriented, if it's service oriented. So again, I think if you follow a leader, you want someone who you understand and can sign up for what they believe in what their principles are. And if you're comfortable with those, jump on that team and be willing to be part of that team. Ken WhiteInteresting, you say the best leaders need to and have a growth mindset. Brad MartinYeah. I hate working with people who know everything about everything. I absolutely find that boring and unproductive. I want people who want to learn. I want people who want to get better. At our session here last night, I was taking notes from this enormously successful speaker that we had. I learned so much last night, and I'm going to share those notes with my business colleagues, my family members, et cetera. And again, I've seen the best just want to get better. And you do that by being willing to change and being willing to grow. Ken WhiteI think early on, for many people in their career, they assume the leader knows everything. And then once they get in, they realize sometimes the leader knows the least amount in the room. Brad MartinWell, I think that's right. And I think that's why you better be darn good at asking questions and also establishing a relationship of trust with the people that you work with. I mean, you really want to know the truth, right? I would visit one of our Department stores. I remember one day I visited one of our stores and terrific store manager. And I said, Ralph, I'm here to talk about the business. I said, what can we do at the home office with better advertising to support your store? Nothing, everything's great. I get great support from the advertising department. Okay. How about Merchandising? I said I'm sure there's something we could do in women's apparel or men's or home furnishings. No, I get great support. I got everything I need. It's all fine. I think a third issue I asked him related to staffing or funding for the budget. Everything was perfect. And I told him, Well, that's great because the company is running a 7% sales growth rate. You're running two. And if everything that the home office is doing for you is fine, we must have a problem with the store manager. Ken WhiteOops. Brad MartinHe said, Well, actually, there are a few things that I think we could do better, but he needed to understand not only did he have permission to tell me what I needed to do better, what my colleagues at the home office needed to do better. We have to know that. And the only way you can get that is to have a relationship of trust. Ken WhiteInteresting. Collaboration is key; you say to good leaders, you have to have a collaborative mindset. Brad MartinYeah, you really can't. Particularly as the organization gets larger. You can't do everything by yourself. And what I found as our team got bigger and bigger is there are a number of jobs that I couldn't do at all. In fact, I told our team one day my goal was to have a series of leaders around me, all of whom could do their job better than I could do their job. A I wanted that sort of talent. But B, I wanted everybody to have the opportunity to chime in on, to push back on, to challenge each other. Really interesting experiences where I knew darn well what the decision was I wanted to make. And but by fostering an environment where my colleagues could push back, challenge, question, argue, we ended up getting to a better place. There was one particular instance where I had told my management team I was going to promote a particular person, and they clearly had a different point of view. And they went around the room and told me why that was a bad decision. And I looked at my colleagues and said, Well, you know, this is my decision. I'm the CEO, but I'm supposed to be collaborative. I'm supposed to let you weigh in value your opinion. So what we're going to do is I'm going to wait six months just to show you how much I respect your insight. But I know I'm right. Within six months, that person had left the company. I had fired that person, so I was about to promote someone who would have been a disaster. My colleagues had the permission to tell me it's a mistake, even though they knew I felt otherwise. And by collaborating and listening and letting them win one, we got to a much better place. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Brad Martin in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The great resignation of 2021 continues. Record numbers of people are leaving their jobs. Gallup reports almost half of all professionals in the US have their eyes on other opportunities. If your company or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's part-time MBA, online MBA, and executive MBA programs are each designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit from the experience. Employees want to feel supported by their employers. Show them your organization cares by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Brad Martin. Ken WhiteFor that up and comer, that new professional, it's critical that they speak up and share their mind. That's what the boss wants. But for some, that's pretty tough to do, especially when you're early in your career. Brad MartinOh, sure. You just really don't want yes, ma'am and yes, sir, all the time. Right. Because you just don't want the salute, and let's go. You typically have attracted people with new talents and different talents and immediate understanding. You want them to show up with that day one and feel comfortable. Now you've got to create the environment where they can do that on a risk-free basis, where they can feel safe. And they also can say, I don't quite understand that issue. Help me better see how you're thinking about that. Ken WhiteSuccessful leaders communicate with clarity. Brad MartinYeah. I think that that's hard. It seems sometimes that the more intelligent one might be, the more difficult it is. I mean, I remember one instance where I asked a very smart, highly educated, IV-type MBA to do a session on return on invested capital for our store managers. And I watched the draft of the presentation, and I had a lot of trouble understanding. Now, this was a finance guru, but I didn't need the finance guru to show me everything he or she had learned in business school. I needed a store manager to understand here's how much we spend on the building. Here's how much we spend on the merchandise. Here's how much we spend on the equipment. Here is the revenue we generate. Here are the margins associated with that. Here's what you can do to impact return on invested capital. So simplifying complicated matters is really important for a great leader. Ken WhiteYou say the best leaders are willing to accept accountability. Brad MartinYeah. That's something that I think can be a challenge for all of us. For me, I was willing to because my only job I ever had in the department store business was the CEO. It was a small company that we acquired. I was the lead investor. I became the CEO without having any idea what I was doing. So I clearly was accountable for performance. The thing I had to learn was to drive accountability throughout the organization, too. I know there were instances where I would say, Gee, this person in finance is great at accounting, but not very good at transactions, but I'm good at transactions. So I'll help that person. Or this colleague in apparel is really good at women's, but not men's. But I'm pretty good at men's apparel. I'll help that. And I would tend to do that with six or seven or eight or nine or ten individuals in my organization. Next thing you know, I'm doing part of their job, not mine, and their accountability is diffused by me being involved in doing their job. So really, driving that accountability throughout the organization is a key element of leadership. Ken WhiteSo the leader being accountable but also holding everyone else accountable to what they're supposed to be getting done. Brad MartinAbsolutely. And if you don't, it's not fair to the organization, and it's not fair to the team, and they know it. Ken WhiteOr the person. Brad MartinExactly. Ken WhiteYeah. I've had so many interviews with human resource professionals who say people know when they're not performing. They're the first ones to know. As a matter of fact. Brad MartinIt's really the company's fault. And the leaders fault if they're not because they're obviously not in the right job. Ken WhiteBelieve everyone matters. Brad MartinYeah. This is a big deal to me. We actually operate on a first-name basis at the company. We had an organizational chart where we actually put the customer at the top of the organizational pyramid and the CEO at the bottom. I really looked at my job as a servant leader-type responsibility. And while the CEO's job gets a higher degree of compensation than somebody working in the distribution center. The human value of the individual we're the same from my perspective. And so very, very important to me that we had an organization where every single individual was treated with dignity, with value, and had the opportunity to be everything that individual wanted to be in the work. Ken WhiteI assumed then people felt very comfortable approaching you regardless of what they did for the organization. Brad MartinAbsolutely. There's no question. I had many relationships throughout the organization. A couple I can recall. One evening I'd work late, stopped, and got some a quick bite to eat. It's about 830 at night, and I decided I'm going to drive over to this kind of suburban locations, see the store. So I walk in about 30 minutes before closing, and I see one of our associates in one of the departments. Barbara and Barbara said, Brad, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for coming. And I'm so glad you didn't tell us you were coming. And I said, well, why Barbara? She said because we're kind of busy. I got a lot to get done. And if we had known you were coming, we would have had to drop all of the important things we're doing to get ready for your visit. So thanks for coming. Thanks for not telling us. So is that sort of an environment that you really want to work in? Ken WhiteWell, that leads to your last one. And that is personal authenticity being yourself? Brad MartinYeah. I think that, as I always quote Oscar Wilde, who said, be yourself because everyone else is taken. People get it when you are authentic, and they get it when you aren't. And I think they want to work with and for somebody who brings the honest, authentic self to work. Not something they've read in a textbook seen on TV or attempting to model because there was a successful entrepreneur executive somewhere that they heard that's the way you manage. Ken WhiteHas leadership changed since you at the beginning of your career? What I mean by that is culture is a little tough these days with a lot of gotcha mentality out there. You make one mistake. It could be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Has that changed or what has changed, I guess, is my real question. What has changed with leadership from the time you started to today? Brad MartinI think the existence of the digital and social world just magnifies everything and gives a voice to everybody that didn't quite exist obviously before that. And that's good and bad. It's good that there's no filter in terms of access to bringing the spotlight on something inappropriate behavior. It's bad in the standpoint that there's no filter for unfair or unaccountable, if you will, observations or postulations. I think that there's a lot of sensitivity associated with the social world that I never had to deal with before. But I think you always have to operate on the assumption that what you do will be second-guessed, questioned, pushed, and be comfortable in your own skin. I had many successes. I had many failures, and I was never really permitted myself to be defined by either. I am who I am, and I had a better idea than the person writing about me. I was never quite as good or quite as bad as I tended to read. Ken WhiteGreat point. This might be an unfair question, but as you look back at the leaders whom you worked for over the years, are there a few that really stand out that helped you and affected you positively? Brad MartinOh, there are so many, I think the Pope said. Part of all I have met and anybody that comes on the podcast and talks about being a self-made man or woman, throw them off, cut them off. It doesn't exist, right? You can work hard, and you can overcome a lot of obstacles. But I guarantee you each of us have had mentors, supporters along the way. I knew nothing about the department store business, and ex department store retired executive took me under his wing. And when I was CEO, the company said, I'm going to teach you something about the business. Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx unbelievable executive who taught me the humility associated with executive leadership as well as the absolute critical importance of culture. Henry Loeb, the former Mayor of Memphis, Mayor of Memphis when Martin Luther King was killed, a political leader who was quite controversial, also had this very, very private part of him that was involved with providing a lot of personal support to disadvantaged and disabled people. And Loeb taught me there are no little people. Ken WhiteWhat advice do you have for a young professional who thinks leadership is something they might want to have in their future? Brad MartinI'd say, just go for it, just go for it and be prepared. In my view, the biggest risk you're going to face is the risk of embarrassment. So what, right? If you don't lay it all out there, you'll never have that opportunity. So don't worry about the risk of an embarrassment. You're the only one that's going to remember that for very long, and then just pick yourself up and do it again and again and again. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Brad Martin, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The great resignation of 2021 continues as record numbers of people are leaving their jobs. If your company or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's part-time MBA, online MBA, and executive MBA programs are all designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit from the experience. Employees want to feel supported by their employers. Show them your organization cares by investing in their growth and future. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Brad Martin and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Quimby Kaizer](images/quimby-kaizer-165-thumb.jpg)
![Creating Value](images/quimby-kaizer-165-thumb.jpg)
Quimby Kaizer
Episode 165: November 21, 2021
Creating Value
In today's highly competitive environment, the best businesses, organizations, and professionals create value. How and for whom may differ somewhat, but the outcomes's the same: Creating value helps you succeed. The target may be customers and organizations, stakeholders or others, but the goal is fairly consistent across sectors. Creating value often means delivering an outcome the client seeks. One that leads to a benefit. Quimby Kaizer knows all about creating value, she's a consultant and principal at KPMG. Over the course of her 25 year career in consulting, she's learned that value does not manage itself. It's deliberate. She visited the William & Mary School of Business recently as a guest speaker in an undergraduate consulting class, afterward she joined us on the podcast to talk about creating value and the necessary steps involved, such as presenting a fresh picture of the problem, defining value, and nailing down the goal.
Podcast (audio)
Quimby Kaizer: Creating Value TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. In today's highly competitive environment, the best businesses, organizations, and professionals create value. How and for whom may differ somewhat, but the outcome is the same. Creating value helps you succeed. The target may be customers, an organization, stakeholders, or others, but the goal is fairly consistent across sectors. Creating value often means delivering an outcome the client seeks, one that leads to a benefit. Quimby Kaizer knows all about creating value. She's a consultant and principal at KPMG. Over the course of her 25-year career in consulting, she's learned that value does not manage itself. It's deliberate. She visited the William & Mary School of Business recently as a guest speaker in an undergraduate consulting class. Afterward, she joined us on the podcast to talk about creating value and the necessary steps involved, such as presenting a fresh picture of the problem, defining value, and nailing down the goal. Here's our conversation with Quimby Kaiser, consultant, and principal at KPMG. Ken WhiteWell, Quimby, thanks for joining us, and welcome back to campus. Quimby KaizerHappy to be here. Ken WhiteHow was class? You just taught a group of undergraduates. How was it for you? Quimby KaizerIt was great to be back in person. I'm so delighted. Even masked, it's better to be in person and interacting with the students than doing it via Zoom. So it's great to be down here. Ken WhiteIt's interesting to just watch their reaction and listen to their questions. Our undergraduates are so sharp; what an interesting time to interact with them. Quimby KaizerYeah. And fun to be with them as they've already started their projects, their consulting projects, and they're already coming against some stumbling blocks, which is fun because it makes it more relevant, less theoretical, and more practical of I really need to do this, and I can apply this immediately. Ken WhiteYeah. Quimby KaizerSo that's a really good questions. Ken WhiteYeah. So it was a consulting class, and you came in to talk to them. Basically, what you're talking to them about is value and creating value and how consultants do that how you and your colleagues do that. What is value? How do you define that? Quimby KaizerWell, I think value is achieving an outcome that your client will benefit from. I guess in the simplest terms. We call value management or value delivery benefits realization. There's tons of different terminology for it, but ultimately, achieving an outcome that has benefit. Now how you define what the benefit is and who defines that benefit is part of what we talked about. But ultimately, I think that's what value is. Ken WhiteSo if they're bringing you in, there's usually a problem or an opportunity. How important is seeing that the correct way? Quimby KaizerI think it's critical to as a consultant when you are deliberately trying to define what value is. Since value is in the eye beholder, and that could be different people. It could be the sponsor could be multiple people who are involved in a particular project, but really understanding where you can have an impact and what is going to help them accomplish what their goal is. I'm amazed that the more that I'm in this field, which has been quite a while. It is really going back to basics and asking people, what are you trying to accomplish? Starting with the end in mind and just asking that question really will sometimes kind of shake people up because we're so used to whatever we've been doing or whatever we've always approached, how we've always approached things. We just keep doing the same thing, but saying, what are you really trying to accomplish so that we can design something that does that, and that's where I think the value that is achieved. Ken WhiteAnd how do you get there? I assume conversations. Quimby KaizerYeah. Lots of questions. And I think we talked about in the class, too. It's lots and lots of questions, but not the questions about necessarily the technical aspects of what you're trying to do. But what is the outcome? Who will be the recipient of those? What do they want to accomplish as a next step from what you're doing? What is happening in their environment that may influence what you might do? Like there's a lot of things that are context. We talked about painting done, but there's a lot of context that is a presenting problem you might not otherwise be privy to. So making sure that you're asking lots of questions so that you're getting the full picture, the full, colorful picture of what the context is. Ken WhiteAnd I'm assuming different people have different context. So it's not so clear, is it? Quimby KaizerYeah. Lots of questions. And I think we talked about in the class, too. It's lots and lots of questions, but not the questions about necessarily the technical aspects of what you're trying to do. But what is the outcome? Who will be the recipient of those? What do they want to accomplish as a next step from what you're doing? What is happening in their environment that may influence what you might do? Like there's a lot of things that are context. We talked about painting done, but there's a lot of context that is a presenting problem you might not otherwise be privy to. So making sure that you're asking lots of questions so that you're getting the full picture, the full, colorful picture of what the context is. Ken WhiteAnd I'm assuming different people have different context. So it's not so clear, is it? Quimby KaizerNo. Actually, typically it isn't. Even if you think about meetings, we're in a lot of meetings every single day. I mean, how often does someone say, what are we trying to accomplish here and starting from that vantage point, if you can just take it down to the meeting and saying, so everyone has a different context, knowing what their paradigm is, and really, if possible, even walking in their shoes in order to really understand that will help really give you a leg up on being able to add value versus doing what you've always done or doing what I think might be valuable. But it isn't going to be valuable to you. Ken WhiteYou said value doesn't manage itself. It's very deliberate. Can you talk about that? What do you mean? Quimby KaizerWell, the concept of when you are thinking about what outcomes you're trying to accomplish, you can never lose sight of that. That you need to be thoughtful about it on the onset. You need to frame and think about what you're doing from a project perspective. But you also need it to be your guiding light throughout the entire project. It's very easy to get enamored with the technology or enamored with the data, or where it's easy to lose sight of what are we trying to do? So it's easy to get lost in the forest. And I think value is a way to rise above and really look at the point. Which can also help you be more efficient and effective, too, because you're not necessarily doing things that aren't needed, right. You can really kind of keep that bigger perspective in mind. And I think value is a great way to do it because, ultimately, consultants do projects right. There's a beginning, there's a middle, and there's an end. There's always an end. Typically, otherwise, you're probably not a consulting. So knowing that there is an end and staying focused on that, I think, is a way to just ground the project. Ken WhiteYou said beginning, middle, and end the beginning. The beginning that's an important time to create that value. How do you approach that at the beginning? Quimby KaizerReally, by asking lots of questions, setting a lot of expectations, getting a lot of feedback. So I think we tend to shortcut the start-up phase of projects, maybe because of demands or because we're moving really fast, we don't stop and really explore. What are you trying to accomplish? What would success look like for you? Where have you been successful before? Can you tell me about that? What would be the next step that, if we're successful, would help you accomplish your goals? What goals are you trying to accomplish? Where does this project sit in the context of your strategy? So a lot of those types of questions we quickly go through or never go through and kind of jump in on the task at hand, which doesn't always necessarily you not necessarily failing. But you have a greater likelihood of being successful and really achieving value. If you do have those questions on the onset of the project with the right people, by the way. Ken WhiteThat was going to be my question. Because you said to the students, you got to start with who, who is important, and that means identifying the right individuals. Quimby KaizerYeah. Absolutely. So the sponsors, the stakeholders, we talked about the stakeholders being anyone who can influence or is influenced by a project and stakeholders. I think the more integrated our businesses get, the more complex the stakeholders get. Right. And so I think knowing and understanding who those people are, why they're important, what voice they're going to have in the process, the different perspectives, the whole concept of go slow to go fast. I think sometimes, on the front end of projects, we want to quickly get into the analysis or quickly start to show, quote, unquote progress. And we miss the foundational settings that really ultimately are going to help us guide what success, ultimately, what it will be. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Quimby Kaizer in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The great resignation of 2021 is in high gear, as record numbers of people are leaving their jobs. Gallup reports almost half of all professionals in the US have their eyes on other opportunities. If your company or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's part-time MBA, online MBA, and executive MBA programs are all designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit from the experience. Employees want to feel supported by their employers. Show them you care by investing in their growth and future with a William & Mary MBA. To learn more about our MBA programs for working professionals, visit wm.edu. Now back to our conversation on Creating Value with Quimby Kaizer of KPMG. Ken WhiteYou mentioned complexity in organizations in your career. Are you seeing is it fair to say organizations are more complex today than they were when you started? Quimby KaizerI don't know if they're more complex. I think there are more complex parts of organizations. I think with technology and data becoming so just so common. I think that adds an element of. I guess an element or maybe a dimension of complexity. But I think we tend to overemphasize that. Where we think it's going to be. It's funny to me, after being in this business for a long time, people still think there are silver bullets out there. There are no silver bullets. Truly. I just don't think they exist, right? But I think it's almost easier to think that there's a silver bullet because of what's available to us. But Interestingly enough, we don't step back and say, Why are we collecting this data? How are we going to use this technology? What are we trying to accomplish ultimately with what we're doing? So if all of those things would be put into context, I think they would be a lot more effective than what they are today. I think we do a lot of suboptimal investments because we really don't know what we're trying to accomplish, or we kid ourselves on what, and when I say kid ourselves, we're unrealistic about how much energy it will take to actually adopt or implement. So we just don't get the full value of what we set out to do. Ken WhiteAre we working faster? It seems like the pace is pretty high right now across most industries. Are you seeing that? Quimby KaizerOh, yeah. I think it was that way before, but I think it's even more so now everyone is very heads down, very operationally oriented, and I think a lot of even bringing it back to the value part of this. It's heads up. It's heads up thinking to stop and say, Why are we doing this? What are we trying to accomplish? I think it's harder today to do that and have the patience to do it because we're so busy. Busy feels good. I guess in one sense of the word, if I'm really busy and I'm always multitasking, I feel like I'm getting things done. But am I really getting value from what I'm doing? Right. And I think that's slowing down, maybe a good thing. Ken WhiteYeah. Absolutely. Activity doesn't necessarily mean excellence, right? Far from it, you said value is in the eye of the beholder. You were telling the students that can you tell us about that? Quimby KaizerThe more I know, the less I know, right. I think that it's sort of the idea of just what I want to accomplish isn't what may be valuable to you. So my objective is to really, truly walk in your shoes and understand what are you trying to accomplish? Paint your environment, paint your organization. Make sure that you've got all of the perspectives, which maybe is the harder part these days. Is there's enough variety of people that are involved in a particular project or initiative, or what have you? But bringing those people together in a way that is truly helping the organization move forward or accomplishing whatever the goal is it's maybe bringing people together is becoming more important in order to get that focus on priorities. I guess that's the other thing that I see, too, is I've been doing a lot of work. A lot of strategy workaround setting priorities because I think it's harder and harder for organizations to discern the few things they need to do really well because everyone is always heads down tactical. Right. And so that prioritization the strategy being able to stick to a strategy kind of the same idea. Right. Stay focused on what are you trying to accomplish? Ken WhiteAnd we all know that we all know we should be doing two or three things, but our list has twelve things on it. Quimby KaizerAnd we do them poorly, or we never finish them right. It's funny. It's not hard. We all get it right. When you talk to anybody, everyone says, well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Why can't we do it? What makes it so hard for us to stop and just focus or stop and ask a question? It is hard, though. Ken WhiteYeah. No doubt. Let's shift from consulting and creating value as a consultant to that professional, the manager, the young professional in an organization. What kind of advice do you have for those folks to create value? Do you take some time out of your when you're thinking when you're strategizing? Where does that come into play do you think for a professional? Quimby KaizerIt's a good question when I think about a person in an organization. That role is there for a purpose. Right. So you have a job description. You have outcomes that hopefully you're aware of, right of what you're trying to accomplish in the organization. You have a role. You have potentially performance outcomes that you're measured on. I think if you even think about it from a role perspective, there's an opportunity for every single person to say, how am I adding value to the organization? How do I connect what I'm doing to my team or to my division, or to my organization? So that one, you're grounded in that, and you understand what that contribution is. But then two, you may have the ability to influence impact, change, improve on that as well. I think a lot of people desire clarity on the why. Why am I doing this? I think by asking that value question, you can also unpack the why, which also can help you, maybe even just kind of rekindle that purpose with organization as well, too. Ken WhiteIt'd be great if people look at you and say that's someone who creates value in this company, right? Wow. Quimby KaizerYeah, absolutely. Ken WhiteAnd I assume that some of the steps you talk about as consultants find the problem, figure out what it is. Talk to people that would be the same for the professional. Quimby KaizerAbsolutely. Every organization and every person in an organization is just a microcosm of a project. Right. And there is unlimited ways to stop and say, how am I adding value? What is success look like seeing opportunities for improvement? I think there's so many changes going on in the world today, and there's so many opportunities to frame value and your value in an organization or to reframe what that looks like, or god forbid that you're bored in your job. Right. And you say, I just need a challenge to go find ways to add value, and just having those conversations with people, I think, will rekindle a conversation around where the needs are at. Right. And how people can step up and start to fill those needs or fill those gaps. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Quimby Kaizer, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Record numbers of professionals are leaving their jobs in the great resignation of 2021. If your company or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's part-time MBA, online MBA, and executive MBA programs are all designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit from the experience. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Quimby Kaizer, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Strauss Zelnick](images/strauss-zelnick-164-thumb.jpg)
![America's Fittest CEO](images/strauss-zelnick-164-thumb.jpg)
Strauss Zelnick
Episode 164: November 5, 2021
America's Fittest CEO
Leadership is tough. For that matter, just about every job today is tough; the hours, the effort, the competition, the people, the pandemic. Success today requires a certain level of mental and physical fitness. As a result, exercise is key. And while it's important, it can be challenging to find the time to work out regularly. If you're ever in need of some motivation, look to Strauss Zelnick - the Chairman and CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software, and founder of the private equity firm Zelnick Media Capital. A successful leader, entrepreneur, and executive, he's in his 60s and he's often called "America's Fittest CEO." He's the author of "Becoming Ageless: The Four Secrets of Looking and Feeling Younger Than Ever." Zelnick believes that if he can do it, you can do it. He visited the William & Mary School of Business last month as part of the 10th Annual McGlothlin Leadership Forum. He joins us on the podcast to discuss the connection between success and fitness.
Podcast (audio)
Strauss Zelnick: America's Fittest CEO TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
Podcast (platforms)
iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Amazon Music/Audible | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you to a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Leadership is tough. For that matter, just about every job today is tough; the hours, the effort, the competition, the people, the pandemic. Success today requires a certain level of mental and physical fitness. As a result, exercise is key. And while it's important, it can be challenging to find the time to work out regularly. Well, if you're ever in need of some motivation, look to Strauss Zelnick, the chairman, and CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software and founder of the private equity firm Zelnick Media Capital. A successful leader, entrepreneur, and executive, he's in his 60s, and he's often called America's Fittest CEO. He's the author of Becoming Ageless: The Four Secrets to Looking and Feeling Younger Than Ever. Zelnick believes, if he can do it, you can do it. He visited the William & Mary School of Business last month as part of the 10th annual McGlothlin Leadership Forum. He joins us on the podcast to discuss the connection between success and fitness. Here's our conversation with Strauss Zelnick, America's fittest CEO. Ken WhiteWell, Strauss, welcome back to William & Mary. And thanks for joining us on the podcast. Strauss ZelnickThanks for having me. Ken WhiteSo in terms of fitness, what were you like as a kid? Into sports, not into sports? Strauss ZelnickNo, I wasn't particularly athletic. I was a student. I played guitar. I wrote music. And athletics just weren't a primary interest to me. Ken WhiteHow did you get into it? Strauss ZelnickWell, I did run, and I lifted weights when I was a teenager because I was so skinny. I wanted to put on some bulk, and it seemed to be impossible. There was nothing I could do. I think when I was 17, I think I was 5'10" and weighed about 115 pounds. So you get the idea. But I sort of got into weights as a result of trying to address that. And then what really motivated me was I was in grad school, and I was hanging around with some friends one night, and my buddy Ted looked at me and said, "Strauss, you have a ponch." My response was, "No, I don't. I'm skinny. I've always been skinny." And he said, "Well, you may be skinny, but you have a ponch." And I looked down, and I thought, wow, that's probably not so far off the mark. And the next day, I decided to get involved with fitness. And I went to the gym at school, which wasn't much of a gym, and developed a very rudimentary program and started really slowly. Ken WhiteAnd isn't that the key for people who are new starting slowly? Strauss ZelnickI think so. First, you have to be realistic about your goals, and the media doesn't do us any favors here. So when you see a website that says, take this pill and you can have perfect body in three weeks, everything in that sentence I just said is not true. A pill won't do it. You can't have a perfect body, probably ever, and certainly not in three weeks. And the second thing that you're told or people feel they're told often is do this program for three weeks or four weeks or 90 days, and you will be transformed. That's also not true, but it's actually worse than that. If you take someone who is sedentary and ask them immediately to engage in robust exercise, their mind may discipline them to do that for a week or two, but that's about it. You just can't do it for longer than that. It's just too hard and unpleasant. So what I recommend is start very slowly and gently and be kind to yourself. And if you're not getting any exercise now, start by walking one day a week for 15 minutes, preferably with a friend or a partner, to make it more enjoyable. And as you get used to that, maybe bring it up to 30 minutes and make it two days a week, and do that for a few weeks. And your body will ease into it. And your body will let you know when you're ready for a bit more. And then maybe add a day of calisthenics. So some push-ups and sit-ups for five or 10 minutes at home. Add that. So now you're walking two days a week, and you add one day of calisthenics. And then, if that feels okay, add a second day of calisthenics. And maybe at that point, you go either do an online fitness program, which is super easy to do. Just go to YouTube, and I can give you some recommendations and maybe add a bodyweight fitness class. And then, if you're motivated, join a gym and meet a trainer. But what I just described that period of induction, if you're not doing anything right now. That should probably take you two or three months. And if you push it and you make it go faster, you run the risk of abandoning the program. Ken WhiteOr injury, and then you'll never get back again, right? Strauss ZelnickExactly. Ken WhiteYou mentioned cardio and strength. Important to do both, in your mind? Strauss ZelnickI think unquestionably as you move along the process. When you start, however, anything that you do to start is okay. Whatever feels best. Ken WhiteSo how do you work when you're at home, not traveling? How do you work your workouts in? What's your plan? Strauss ZelnickSo I schedule my workouts like a meeting. I treat my workouts with the same respect that I would treat having a cup of coffee with a friend or having a meal, or having a business meeting. So as I look at my calendar for the upcoming week, and I do plan ahead with flexibility as things have to change, I'll make sure that my workouts are scheduled. And by scheduling those workouts, I have a sense of the variety that I've built in or lack of variety sometimes. I do a lot of weightlifting. Ken WhitePreferably, are you a morning lifter? Evening? What do you prefer? Strauss ZelnickI like to get exercise in the morning. I generally do, but not always. And then sometimes I'm fortunate enough to get back to the gym and do some more exercise in the evening. Ken WhiteWhat about when you travel? Strauss ZelnickPretty much the same. I'm pretty good. This morning I missed my workout. It was a late night last night, and I knew that I needed more sleep than I needed more exercise. But I'll work out this evening when I get home. Ken WhiteYou'll push a little harder tonight to make up for missing this morning? Strauss ZelnickMaybe or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just give myself a break and understand that I've already worked out a lot so far this week. Ken WhiteSo you've touched on it a little bit in terms of what do you do. What would be a typical workout for you? Strauss ZelnickA typical workout would be high-intensity interval training where I'm lifting weights and doing some cardio, often with a timer with other people for somewhere between 40 and 60 minutes. Another typical workout would be a weights workout built out of supersets. So one exercise followed immediately by another exercise before you take a rest. Ken WhiteTwice, you've mentioned other people. Is that important to you to work out with others? Strauss ZelnickVery much so. I think working out by yourself is boring and a missed opportunity to connect with other people and enjoy their company and in a low-stress, natural way. So I think it's why people play golf with other people, and it's why we go to the movies with other people. It's nice to pursue leisure with other people, but no matter what kind it is. And lifting weights can be boring and painful, so if you have someone else there, it takes the edge off. Ken WhiteYeah. I assume you've worked with personal trainers? Strauss ZelnickI have and still do. Ken WhiteWhat do you think? How do they help you? I guess number one. Strauss ZelnickWell, their expertise helps, and you definitely want to work with someone who knows what they're doing, who's not going to get you injured, and who's going to help you along your path. They're also motivating, and I often train with my trainer. So not always I have a trainer I'll be training with Friday who does not train with the group. In other instances, though, the trainer actually will work out with me, and that's beneficial in two ways. First of all, it's motivating. Secondly, I seem to do better when I see something done, as opposed to listening to the words about how it should be done. Ken WhiteYeah. So how does fitness, physical fitness help you as a professional? Strauss ZelnickI think fitness is really tied to leadership. First, I think to lead people. You have to convey energy. And being reasonably fit will help you feel energetic and appear energetic. Secondly, I think looking your best is a sign of self-respect and respect for others, and it's probably not popular to say that, but I believe that. And I think if you show up feeling fit, feeling energized, feeling young, even if you're not and I'm not and looking the best you can look, these things are consistent with doing a good job in business, doing a good job in relationships. It's a way of showing up for yourself and others. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Strauss Zelnick in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The great resignation of 2021 continues as record numbers of people are leaving their jobs. Gallup Reports, almost half of all professionals in the US have their eyes on other opportunities. Well, if your company or organization wants to retain your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's part-time MBA, online MBA, and executive MBA are designed for the professional who works full time so both the employee and the organization benefit. Employees want to feel supported by their employers. Show them your organization cares by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Strauss Zelnick. Ken WhiteHow does it affect your mental health and your attitude? Strauss ZelnickOh, hugely. Once you get into exercise, it's hard not to do it. If I don't exercise for more than a day, and I have to force myself to take a rest day. If it goes on for more than a day, then I start feeling low. And even my wife will say, you should probably go to the gym even though she thinks I work out too much. So getting exercise really is an emotional boost. Ken WhiteThose who work for you, do you try to promote it verbally or by example? Strauss ZelnickEverything comes from the top, good and bad. I don't need to promote fitness. What I do say to people is, at all my organizations, look, no one will ever criticize you for leaving the office to go watch your kid play music or play sports. No one will ever criticize you for taking an hour to go to the gym during the day. We encourage you to have a personal life, and they know that I do that. And they know that I go to the gym and I work out with my colleagues sometimes. But I stopped well short of saying because I like this, you ought to do it. So any more than I would say because I like I don't know. I like to read nonfiction about US history that you should do that. But when the leader of an organization is doing stuff that's positive for him or her, that comes across that. People see that. And so, as a result, we have pretty fit organizations, but it's not demanded. We also pay for gym memberships or partially pay for gym memberships. And at our biggest company, we have an array of fitness-oriented programs because the team likes them, and we're happy to provide them. Actually, my biggest company, I lead two workouts a week on Zoom that people join from wherever they are in the world, and I usually have somewhere between 60 and 100 people show up. Ken WhiteWow, what that does for culture is going to be fantastic. Strauss ZelnickCertainly for the people who come. Ken WhiteYeah. Now food, of course, is critical. I think of my friends who work out. Food might not be terribly important. You pay attention to that. How did you get interested in food? And how did you start looking at food? Strauss ZelnickWell, I don't pay meticulous attention, frankly. I try to eat a healthy diet because, again, that's consistent with feeling good and longevity and health, and we ought to pay attention to it. And you know what's good for you? In the book that I wrote about fitness and health, there's a whole section on food and diet, but it's relatively straightforward, which is there are certain things you just shouldn't put in your body, like soda. Diet or otherwise or fruit juice, because fruit juice is just sugar and water or vegetable juice, same thing. You shouldn't drink your calories. It makes no sense. You should shy away from as much as possible; highly refined carbs and fried foods. But I eat dessert, so I mention that just so people don't think I'm misleading anyone. You should eat a lot of vegetables and salads. And I have a salad before lunch and dinner every day and keep the dressings as light as possible. You should eat whole carbs more than refined carbs. But again, some refined carbs are okay, too. And then lean protein. And then the truth is, if you put too many calories in your body, then you're going to gain weight. If you manage the calories you put in your body, you will either maintain or lose weight. And that's pretty much what any dietitian will tell you. You can spend lots of time and write lots of pages, but that's pretty much what people will tell you. Ken WhiteSo many people will say I work out so I can eat. So that's difficult to get on that healthy eating path for many people. Do you recommend they do it slowly like you recommend starting a fitness program? Strauss ZelnickYes. Again, if you decide, I'm going to go on a keto diet tomorrow and some extreme diet. You can lose weight quickly. You'll probably gain it all back. If you are aiming to lose weight, the only way you can lose it and keep it off is with a very gentle approach. And it's easiest to just understand there are certain food groups that you have to eliminate or limit strictly, and then you have to watch your portions. Those are the easiest ways to look at it. In terms of I work out to eat. Well, you better be working out a whole lot because working out really doesn't burn calories. If you're running a whole lot, you will burn calories. But I'm talking about someone who runs for hours. If you go and run for 20 minutes or 30 minutes, you burn 300, 400 calories. That's one and a half candy bars. That's it. You can't really outwork your mouth. You got to control what you put in your body. Ken WhiteYou mentioned your book. Why did you write it? What got you to sit down and actually do that? Strauss ZelnickWell, I have a lot of friends in the fitness business. And my friend Dave Zinczenko, who runs his own media company and was formerly responsible for Men's Health magazine, encouraged me to write a book. And his label published it through Simon & Schuster. I think the motivation was that I've been doing this for a long time. I'm now in my 60s, and his view was, you have a great story to tell about how you can look pretty good and feel very good and be very energetic well into an age where a lot of people don't think that's possible. And so the book is called Becoming Ageless. And it's about taking care of your health. It does mention diet. It talks about exercise as well and then having a spiritual life, which I think are the four tenets to a healthy and happy life at any age. Ken WhiteYeah. We've had many guests who've written books on the podcast. I always have to ask, how did you write it? Because I know we have a lot of listeners who can write books. What was your process? Strauss ZelnickWell, I had a co-author on this. I've written two books. One, I did not have a co-author on. This one, I did, Zack Zeigler, who is a great writer and is editor in chief of Muscle and Fitness. And so Zack did a great deal of the writing with me. He interviewed me. The interviews were transcribed that formed the basis of a lot of what's in the book. I then physically wrote a bunch of the book, but he also wrote a lot of it and edited it carefully. And he had a great deal to do with the sections on specific exercises and specific diet plans. So that was a help. But basically, we spent about a couple of months doing interviews. I spent perhaps six or eight months writing, and then we spent about a year working on the editing the final copy and the design. Ken WhiteNow you're here at the business school. You've met with a number of undergraduate business students and MBA students as well. Man, these are busy people who do like working out, but it might be the first thing to go when their list is heavy. What advice do you have for them and for all professionals who might say, I'll skip that workout, and eventually they're just not doing it? Strauss ZelnickLook, you can't have it all. You have to decide what your priorities are, and it's a uniquely American fantasy that we can be all things to all people at all times. We can't be. And there are times in one's life where certain things do have to take a backseat. And you have work to do. You're going to school. You have kids at home. You have partner with needs. These things may have to take precedence at times. However, you also have to know what you want. And truly, to show up for yourself and others, you do have to take care of yourself. You have to engage in self-care. And for me, exercise is part of that self-care. So I think there are times in one's life when you can easily create a priority around fitness, and there are other times when it will be harder. I think you have to be gentle with yourself. But I think if you're really not going to get exercise for more than a week or two or three, then you're going to pay a price that probably will be more costly than finding time to exercise along the way. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Strauss Zelnick. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding our podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Strauss Zelnick, thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Kim Lopdrup](images/kim-lopdrup-163-thumb.jpg)
![Successful Turnarounds](images/kim-lopdrup-163-thumb.jpg)
Kim Lopdrup
Episode 163: October 20, 2021
Successful Turnarounds
Virtually every leader has been faced with a turnaround situation - bringing a failing organization back to its former successful state. Or finding a high-quality solution to a problem that can no longer continue. A new leader is brought in to direct the turnaround situation in some instances. In other cases, the current leadership team is expected to get things back on track. And most often sooner rather than later. Because turnarounds are challenging, complex, and often situation-dependent, each one is unique. But all turnarounds have one thing in common: They require effective leadership. As Rosabeth Moss Kantor wrote in Harvard Business Review, "turnarounds are where leadership matters most." Kim Lopdrup knows how to lead turnarounds. He successfully faced a number of them in his career at Red Lobster, where he served as CEO for 14 years across two different stints before retiring this past summer. Under his watch, Red Lobster has more than exceeded expectations through the pandemic. He joins us today to talk about the elements of successful turnarounds, including communicating with employees, believing in the plan, and getting it done quickly.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, virtually every leader has been faced with a turnaround situation, bringing a failing organization back to its former successful state or finding a high-quality solution to a problem that can no longer continue. A new leader is brought in to direct the turnaround situation in some instances. In other cases, the current leadership team is expected to get things back on track and most often sooner rather than later. Because turnarounds are challenging, complex, and often situation-dependent, each one is unique, but all turnarounds have one thing in common. They require effective leadership. As Rosabeth Moss Canter wrote in Harvard Business Review, turnarounds are where leadership matters most. Kim Lopdrup knows how to lead turnarounds. He successfully faced a number of them in his career at Red Lobster, where he served as CEO for 14 years across two different stints before retiring this past summer. Under his watch, Red Lobster has more than exceeded expectations through the pandemic. He joins us today to talk about the elements of successful turnarounds, including communicating with employees, believing in the plan, and getting it done quickly. Here's our conversation with the recently retired CEO of Red Lobster, Kim Lopdrup. Ken WhiteWell, Kim, thanks for joining us, and welcome back to William & Mary. It's nice to have you back. Kim LopdrupThank you. It's great to be back, Ken. Ken WhiteAnd you'll be seeing some students later on today. I'm sure that'll just be a lot of fun for you. Kim LopdrupYes, I'll be in Professor Ron Hess's class. Really looking forward to that. Ken WhiteWhen you and I talked about sitting down again for the podcast, we thought turnarounds might be an interesting topic. You've led quite a few of these in your career. Tell us about that. Kim LopdrupYeah, actually, I've been part of five turnarounds at this point. The first was when actually my first chance to be CEO. I was CEO of what really the international division of Dunkin Brands, which was Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins. The business was losing money, and the parent company frankly lost confidence in it and said the assignment was, please stop losing money quickly. And we did within 90 days and went on to get profits 82% above the previous record in about three years. The second one, I was not CEO, but Chief Operating Officer at Burger King, which was suffering declining same sort of sales. The parent company was looking to sell it, and we were able to turn around same thing. Get the trend from like minus five to plus five. Get the company restaurants from being some of the lowest-performing in the system to some of the best performing in the system. Third one was at Red Lobster, where the brand had really kind of become dated and suffering declining results, and Wall Street had lost confidence in it. When I joined, there was an analyst report from one of the investment banks titled Dead Lobster. But we were able to build a very comprehensive turnaround that dramatically improved the guest experience and updated the brand, and led to the seven most profitable years that the brand had to date and then went off and did some other things, other assignments at Darden and the parent company at the time. But while I was away, unfortunately, things eroded at Red Lobster, and they decided they were going to either spin it off or sell it. Asked if I wanted to be CEO, so we sold it to a private equity firm. I came back as CEO for a second seven-year stint, it turned out, and we were able to again get it turned around quickly by dealing with solving some of the mistakes that had been made and really improving the kitchen and the quality of the food and building the off-premise business. And then the third turnaround was really one sparked by COVID, where the government required that we closed all of our dining rooms across the U.S. Ken WhiteWow. Kim LopdrupAnd then, of course, that's not very good for sales in a casual dining restaurant. So we work to triple our off-premise business and make some very rapid pivots to putting in rapid red curbside pickup, touchless delivery. Areas of opportunity and we simplified our business model, and we were able to get through the crisis and refinance the business. And anyway, those are the five turnarounds. Ken WhiteWow. Fantastic. So what's the key to success, so to speak? When you're thinking of a turnaround? What made things work for you? Kim LopdrupWell, by definition, if you're in a turnaround, you're in a crisis, so you have to very quickly take steps that will, first of all, retain your employees. The key ones are going to be successful who are key to making you successful in the future. And so they need to understand what the current situation is because you're going to have to do some tough things, and they need to know why you're going to have to do tough things. They then need to see you've got a solution to the problem pretty quickly because their patience is thin. Actually, I remember with the first turnaround of the international division of Duncan Brands when I took over, they've recently done an employee survey, and an alarming percentage of employees didn't really expect to be there in three years. And it was a situation where we were losing a lot of money because of the financial crisis that had hit Russia and East Asia. But what we were able to do is I took 30 days to decide which of my senior team was going to be on the team. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kim LopdrupAnd we then took and to work together with a team to come up with a future plan. Took 30 days, and in that 30 days, we not only simplified the senior team, but we looked at all of our markets around the world based on whether we thought we could have a future there or not. And we looked at the unit economics of the business, the growth potential of the business. Obviously, if there was a lot of growth potential and good economics, we would fund those markets. If it was low potential and bad economics, we would exit those markets. If it was good economics but limited potential, we would support them in a really efficient way. If you had a market with a lot of theoretical potential, but the economics weren't working. You'd figure out, can we change the business model? Japan Baskin Robins Japan was an example of that, where it actually was a public company. And following the bust, they had years of decline in Japan, and the stores had lost average sales, and they'd raise prices to try to make up for it. And we did decline to like half, I think from 500 units to 322, and those 322 were only breaking even. But we were able to figure out we backed into the solution. We said we have to grow. We're operating our factory at way too low utilization. We have to grow. We think we need a 30% ROI to the franchisee to get people to invest to grow. But we're only at break-even right now. We knew we had a new design, a store design that could raise sales 15%, but that wasn't nearly enough, and we've actually backed in to give franchisees 30% ROI. We'd have to cut ice cream prices by 23%, and our J.V. was already only at break-even. So we backed into okay, how do we save money to enable a 23% price reduction? And we went to franchisees and said, tell you what, if you invest to remodel your restaurant to this design, we'll cut your ice cream prices 23%. They all signed up. They all signed up, and we were able to over-deliver on our cost savings targets. And it turned out that 15% sales increase. Well, that was the year one number. It was 20% if you include the year two growth. So we dramatically turned around Japan, there are over 1000 stores now and very profitable. Ken WhiteWow. Kim LopdrupBut here's the thing. We took 90 days to implement that plan. So on day 90, we were above break-even again, and we were able to tell communicate to employees why we were going to have to do some painful things but assure them there were no other shoes to drop. And we kept that promise. And surprisingly, on our next employee feedback survey, the percentage of people planning to be with a business in three years had tripled despite the fact there were some tough things. I thought I was going to be viewed as Darth Vader. This is my first time doing it. I thought I was going to be vilified for having to part company with some employees who've been around a long time, which we had to. Ken WhiteBut like you said to say that no other shoe is going to drop. And then you follow through, that's huge. Kim LopdrupRight, and we saved a lot of jobs we wouldn't have saved had we not taken decisive action. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Kim Lopdrup in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. You know, the great resignation of 2021 continues as record numbers of people are leaving their jobs. Gallup reports, almost half of all professionals in the U.S. have their eyes on other opportunities. If your company or organization is interested in retaining your best people, consider enrolling them in one of our MBA programs for working professionals. William & Mary's online MBA, the part-time MBA, and executive MBA programs are all designed for the professional who works full time. So both the employee and the organization benefit. Employees expect to feel supported by their employers. Show them your organization cares by investing in their growth. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Kim Lopdrup, the former CEO of Red Lobster. Ken WhiteWhat's interesting about your store you never said I it was always we. It sounds to me like your team was extremely important to you in this. How do you choose the team? How do you decide? Kim LopdrupWell, first of all, it was a great team. And the interesting thing is, they were all there when I came in as CEO. I had to part company with some people because we had more people than we should have had, and that made it too hard to make decisions. Some of those people had contributed to the problems, frankly. But in life, it's easy to say. I wish I had all perfect people, but yet I'm not one, and I haven't met one. You got to make it work in a turnaround. You really don't have the time to totally rebuild a team. You've got to figure out it's like an Apollo 13 when they had all the systems go out, flight director Gene Kranz says, well, what is working and start with that. Ken WhiteWhat type of motivations involved? If I'm one of those team members, I kind of contributed to getting us in this spot, right? And now you're looking at me to get us out. So, where's the psychology and the motivation? Where's that play into that? Kim LopdrupWell, first of all, you don't go in blaming people. That's completely unproductive. You have to focus on what we're all in this together. Failure is just not an option. For all of us to have jobs, but more importantly than us for all the people in the organization to have jobs, for this organization to have a bright future. We have got to get through this, and you have to be willing to look at all options, including those that are painful. And what's fascinating is what I found is when you explain to the organization what needs to be done and why they actually are willing to accept a pretty high degree of pain to get to a bright future. But you can't come out and just shock them. Like when we were reorganizing, and we were going to make some jobs go away. We didn't just blindside people with it. We actually told them we were going through this process. We were looking. We'd give them an answer on a certain day. Nobody was blindsided. And I think that is so important as you're leading an organization along the way, giving people foreshadowing what the next step is and then directly telling them, so they're not surprised. Credibility is everything, building and maintaining credibility. And to do that, you can't surprise people even on bad news. Ken WhiteYeah. I mean, the trust that builds is incredible. Speed, you're saying 90 days, 30 days, boy, that's fast. Kim LopdrupPeople can put up with uncertainty, but only for so long. You have to move extremely quickly in dealing with a crisis. Some people are dusting off their resume, sending it to other employers if they're not sure about the future. So you have to compress that time by articulating a clear vision and then following through on it. Now, sometimes you have the problem. Well, gosh, to figure out the very best solution, that's going to take all this research and this time. Well, actually, I had a boss once, Joe Lee at Red Lobster, who once said, if you know, you need to be over in the other corner of the room someplace, but you're not sure the exact spot. You might as well start walking and then figure out the exact spot as you get closer. So on that first turnaround at Red Lobster. Interestingly. We looked at our research, and we said, Gosh, the most important things to consumers are that the food be fresh, that the restaurant be clean, the service be friendly. Those are the three most important things. And our gap versus our targeted competitors was widest on those three things. It was pretty obvious we needed to work on those three things. Ken WhiteYeah. Kim LopdrupAnd so phase one was fresh, clean, and friendly, and a whole bunch of things designed to enable that. But over time, through research, refined a more precise and more compelling brand vision that was built around that but in far more detail. You remember the old Polaroid pictures where you take the picture, and it's like, well, okay. I think I can see there's sort of a car there, and there's sort of a house over on this other corner. But then it just gets clearer and clearer and clearer. And that's sort of the approach we took. There was a vision, but it was blurry Ken WhiteRight. Kim Lopdrupin the early days. But then, as we got more research, we were able to clarify it for people and ultimately lead people through a transition that got pretty remarkable improvements in guest satisfaction and allowed us to outperform the industry by a pretty strong margin over a seven-year period. Ken WhiteWhat'd that do to the team? I mean, when you experience something as a team, they tend to get a little closer and turnarounds like that when you come out the other end, a winner. What's that do to team dynamics? Kim LopdrupWell, it obviously helps a lot. When things are not going well, unfortunately, people tend to start pointing fingers at everybody but themselves. But when things are working, people are really happy to take the credit. And I think it is important to give the credit to the team. And I think finger pointing is completely, utterly unproductive. But the other thing is, it builds confidence. When you go through a turnaround, it builds confidence. And one of the things I've learned in life is that because, candidly, when I was a William & Mary student, I wasn't a terribly confident individual. And you started getting some successes, actually, here at William & Mary that built confidence and led to greater challenges that built more confidence. And now I'd say I'm pretty high on that scale. But to lead other people effectively, confidence is actually one of the biggest determinants of success because everybody will have massive challenges and struggles in life. I don't know anybody. I know lots of incredibly successful people. I don't know anybody who hasn't gone through extreme challenges, Ken WhiteSure. Kim Lopdrupbut what allows them to keep going that they're confident. They can overcome things. People who start companies, they have to be confident, they can succeed, or they won't even try. And to lead other people, people look you in the eye, and they say, do you really believe we can do this? You can't fool them. They can see right there. At least I can't fool them. Having that inner confidence that people can see is absolutely critical to leading others successfully. So it's kind of like Tom Brady just completed his 50th game-winning drive the other day for Tampa, and he's got all these comebacks. But when he gets in these impossible situations, it's like, yeah, we've done that before. No problem. Ken WhiteYup. Kim LopdrupAnd he just calmly keeps doing what he needs to do. Anyway, those situations build confidence that makes people better equipped for the next challenges that come along. Ken WhiteThere's always times where the confidence is waning a little bit, right? You're just not feeling super confident tomorrow, as you might feel today. And we all hear about the imposter syndrome. There's got to be times where you're saying I'm right. Right? What do you do in those situations? Kim LopdrupFirst of all, I'd say choose your assignments wisely because what I found is that if I'm working on something that I truly believe is incredibly important, you start to forget about. Well, what are the risks here? You're doing it because it's important, and it's necessary that you be successful. And when you get to that point, you quit thinking about the risk. But it's really important that you choose an employer, a job, an assignment. That's something you're really passionate about, and say no to those things that you really don't care about because you won't be a great leader unless you are passionate about it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kim Lopdrup, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding our podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Kim Lopdrup, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Atul Minocha](images/atul-minocha-162-thumb.jpg)
![Lies, Damned Lies & Marketing](images/atul-minocha-162-thumb.jpg)
Atul Minocha
Episode 162: October 6, 2021
Lies, Damned Lies & Marketing
What does your CEO think about marketing? Or if you’re the CEO, what do YOU think about marketing? The way CEOs position marketing and the way they partner with the Chief Marketing Officer has a huge effect on results and the bottom line. Unfortunately, though, for many CEOs, marketing is nothing more than a source of frustration. In some cases, the marketing team has overpromised and under delivered. In other cases, the leader struggles with the investment marketing requires. Whatever the case, it can be disappointing to the CEO. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The CEO and CMO can be close partners, working together to generate positive results. Atul Minocha is a partner at Chief Outsiders, a marketing consulting firm. He’s also the author of “Lies, Damned Lies & Marketing,” a book recognized by Inc Magazine as one of 8 books to sharpen your strategic thinking. He says with help, CEOs can understand the benefits of marketing by partnering with their CMO and utilizing their dollars for real results.
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Atul Minocha: Lies, Damned Lies & Marketing TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. What does your CEO think about marketing, or if you're the CEO, what do you think about marketing? Well, the way CEOs position marketing and the way they partner with the Chief Marketing Officer has a huge effect on results and the bottom line. Unfortunately, though, for many CEOs, marketing is nothing more than a source of frustration. In some cases, the marketing team has overpromised and underdelivered. In other cases, the leader struggles with the investment marketing requires. Whatever the case, it can be disappointing to the CEO, but it doesn't have to be that way. The CEO and CMO can be close partners working together to generate positive results. Atul Minocha is a partner at Chief Outsiders, a marketing consulting firm. He's also the author of Lies, Damned Lies, and Marketing, a book recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of eight books to sharpen your strategic thinking. He says, with help, CEOs can understand the benefits of marketing by partnering with their CMO and utilizing their dollars for real results. Here's our conversation with Atul Minocha. Ken WhiteAtul, thank you very much for sharing your time with us. It's nice to see you today. Thanks for being here. Atul MinochaThank you, Dr. White. Glad to be here. Ken WhiteBefore we dive into the book, we have so many of our listeners who are great professionals and subject matter experts. They could probably write a book. And so I love to ask some of our authors who are our guests. How'd you do it? What was your process of writing? Atul MinochaA great question, actually. I think two paths. One is just building up to writing the book and then writing the book. Right. So building up part was that as I was practicing my craft of marketing consulting and helping other businesses use marketing effectively, I discovered that there was a gap in the understanding at the CEO level of what marketing is and what it can do versus what they thought it was. So it's not as if they got it wrong, but they definitely had an incomplete picture. So I kept on sort of saying, These are the things that I need to inform my CEOs about when I get a chance. And of course, I was doing it as I went along, and the list kept growing and growing and growing. But I never put a stop to it because, heck, the list was growing. So you don't want to cut short anything good, right. Then COVID happened. And then I said, you know what? I think now is the time to directly put it in a book form. So that was when the decision was made. Part of my thinking about writing the book was that I felt that my consulting business was going to go down. But actually, it did not. So what happened is when I signed up with the publisher to write the book, my thinking was that I'll have more time. I can write the book, and it could be a good, productive use of my COVID stay-at-home kind of time period. But since it didn't happen that way, I had to switch gears. Now I'm answering the second part of the question as to how did I actually write? So when I had to switch gears, I switched to the process, which was a little more extensive, but it was a little less time-consuming. So instead of literally writing for 2 hours every day, which was what I was beginning to do. I realized that it's much faster if I actually gave an interview or if I spoke to somebody who actually wrote it for me. So for the first two, three, four weeks, the person transcribed so-called scribe, sort of we worked back and forth to make sure that he actually got my voice, he got my tone, he got my style. And then, after all, after all that, it was simply a matter of speaking to him, you know, an hour, an hour and a half, once a week, or twice a week. And that's how the book came about. Ken WhiteExcellent. Well, it's fantastic. You know, recently featured in Inc magazine as one of eight books that sharpen your strategic thinking. Boy, that's nice to have that attached to the book. Yeah, it's interesting. Atul MinochaIt is very nice to be attached to books, which are other books which are on that list. I'm the only first-time author on that list. So I feel, talk about impostor syndrome. I think this is the perfect case of that. Ken WhiteSo why did you decide to focus on this? This CMO CEO sort of relationship? What was it about that that you like? Atul MinochaI think it's extremely important for any CMO to be successful that they have a very positive and a two-way relationship between CEO and CMO. It's not that the CMO has to worship the CEO. CEO also has to have respect for CMO. Otherwise, they're not going to do what the CMO is going to recommend. In my work experience, I realized that it was extremely important to have that positive, healthy relationship, even to the point where if you disagreed, you could say it so and explain why you're disagreeing. And it cuts both ways. And I found that the foundation for that relationship for that healthy relationship was missing in most instances, especially in small to mid-sized companies. Why? Because for various reasons, previous experiences that CEOs had had with marketing was less than positive. So they actually had very low opinion of what marketing is or what marketing can do. And there was a fair bit of misunderstanding. There was a fair bit of gap in understanding. And that was what I was trying to fill in. Ken WhiteWhy? What causes that this many CEOs to have that less than positive experience? What were some of the issues that you saw? Atul MinochaI think there are a few reasons for that. And some of the I don't want to call it blame, but some of the attribution perhaps lies on the CEO side. Much of it lies on the marketing lead side. So on the CEO side, the reason could be that A marketing is if you look at sort of all the MBA kind of functions right. Production, marketing, finance, accounting, HR. Marketing is perhaps the one which is the broadest in terms of you can sort of say this is marketing and that is also marketing. Whereas in most of the functions, it's slightly more narrow. So many CEOs don't have the full understanding of what marketing is. I'll give you an example most CEOs think of marketing as, oh yeah. When I think of website, I think marketing, but when they think of what new products they should launch three years from now, five years from now, they don't think necessarily of marketing. What new markets to go after. They don't think of that as a marketing function. They'd rather talk to the CFO and say, I'm thinking of going to Asia, or I'm thinking I'm going to Lithuania, but they will probably not bring in the marketing guy or Gal. Do you think there's a market for this in Lithuania? So I think there's that sort of incompleteness in CEO's understanding. But then a big part of the attribution for this misunderstanding is on the CMO side, and that's or the marketing lead side that often many of my peers and I'd probably have been guilty of this myself some time in the past. Where I may have overpromised that yup, marketing can do this. Why? Because I just wanted to get out of that hot atmosphere in the CEO's office or get away from the stare of the CEO. Or I was put in that spot in a leadership team meeting where everybody was signing up for something good. And I didn't want to be the only one, as the naysayers. I also said, yeah, I think we can do so. We tend to over-promise sometimes, and that leads to dissatisfaction. So I think those are some of the main causes of why CEOs have had some bad experiences in the past. Ken WhiteSo what advice do you give to the CMO? We could easily say don't over-promise. But I get that I could see being at the table and saying, I want to add, I want to show my value. How do you coach the CMO in that sort of a situation? Atul MinochaThe way I would coach the CMOs is that don't be so short-term-focused. In other words, it may be an easy way out for you to say yes and sign up. And then when you get to your office, you yourself are sweating as how the heck am I going to deliver this? It's better to take time, and it's better to actually build that relationship with your CEO. That when you do say no or when you do say we need to rethink this, the CEO has respect for you. He said, you know what, since you are saying it, why don't we spend some time together? Why don't we go out for lunch? And maybe you can explain to me why you think this may not be the best thing. So it really starts by building that relationship or having that relationship so that you can actually explain to the CEO how it actually works, as opposed to simply saying yes, sir, or yes, ma'am. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Atul Minocha in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Our world continues to change, meaning new skills and new approaches are required. Well, those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats in the MBA, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our continuously changing world. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with Atul Minocha, author of Lies, Damned Lies, and Marketing. Ken WhiteIs there any confusion among many CEOs that you've seen between sales and marketing? Atul MinochaOh, absolutely. I mean, on one hand, sales and marketing have to work together. So when people think of sales and marketing, the fact that they say it almost without losing a breath is a good thing. But on the other hand, when people use the word sales and marketing, what they're really saying is sales. And the reason I say that is because sales is about making something happen right away. Marketing is about making something happen, maybe a little bit down the road. So urgent always wins over important, as Steven Covey might say. So sales always wins. Ken WhiteWalk us through the book a little bit. What were some of the main topics? What were you trying to get through to your reader in the book? Atul MinochaYeah. If I can share a little secret. And I think I already told you how the book germinated. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Atul MinochaSo there are about 19 chapters in the book. They did not occur in my head in that sequence. In fact, the first seed was planted in what is now chapter 14 in the book. So sort of that's where it started, and then it kept expanding. So when I started to write the book, I realized that it cannot be sort of a random list of the way it thoughts and my experiences occurred because they occurred in that sequence only based on what kind of projects I was doing when. So there was really no sequence to that other than circumstances. So I broke it up into what we at our company Chief Outsiders called Big M marketing and small M marketing. So let me explain what that is. So small M marketing is actually the most visible part of marketing. If you talk to anybody who's not from marketing, if you ask them what is marketing, they'll say it's the website, it's the logos, it's the advertising, it's the Facebook thing, it's the LinkedIn thing. It's the fade show. It's the radio ad. It's the Billboard. That is marketing. But the way I look at that is, yes, that is marketing. But that's what we call small M marketing or the tactical side of marketing. But then there's a big M marketing, which is the most strategic foundational part, which is what segments to go after? Who are your segments? What are the customer's pain points? How should you price it? What channels should you use? Those kind of big M marketing questions are very important. So I actually structured my thoughts. Those 19 chapters is in either big M or small M, or the ones that sort of transcend those two put them in the third category of big M and small M, so that's how the book is laid out. Ken WhiteInteresting. I'm guessing; correct me if I'm wrong, do some CEOs focus or some CMOS focus on the little M more so than the big M, and could that cause some issues? Atul MinochaAbsolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I would say nine out of ten CEOs focus on small M. And if you explain to them the big M and small M, they'll say, yeah, intellectually, I agree with you, but I really want you to do this on the small M side. In other words, they don't want to invest the time on the big M because that looks like a little nebulous. What will I get out of that? My answer to that is there's somebody who said 60, 70 of years ago that I know half of the marketing dollars are wasted. The only problem is I don't know which half is wasted. So that's what I use to explain the value of big M. If you just focus on small M, you'll end up with wasting at least half the dollars. If you spend a little bit of time, not too much, a little bit of time, maybe 10% of your overall marketing time and 10% of your overall marketing budget on big M, you are very likely to improve that 50% waste stage down to maybe 20%, maybe 10%. You'll probably never bring it down to zero. But heck, if you can get you know 40 50% improvement on your marketing spend, that's a heck of an ROI. Ken WhiteHow deep into the spend the details should a CEO be? Atul MinochaIt really depends on the CEO's personality. Let me sort of turn the question around a little bit. It's not so much how much detail they should get into. What I would like the CEO to do is get into as much detail as you want, but don't start from the weeds. It would be my point. In other words, let your marketing person have an overview and spend some time both the CEO and the CMO. As to why are we even doing this? Instead of sort of saying, let's get to what can we do in social media? Why aren't we doing social media? Do our prospects at least spend time on social media and with social media? I mean, I've run into so many instances where they'll say, okay, we'll have LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter on our website. But are your prospects or customers even spending time on Instagram? I mean, I have nothing against Instagram, but I'm saying use what's useful, not because everybody is using it. Therefore, I should use it too. Ken WhiteThat's interesting, and some of your responses, it shows that a close relationship between these two individuals can really pay off. How do you create that? Have you given advice to CEOs on getting closer to the CMO and spending more time? Atul MinochaYeah. So in my current role as a partner in a consulting firm, I work with CEOs. And the truth is that that relationship is, for the most part, very easy to establish because the CEO has hired you. In fact, if that relationship is not there, the project will end pretty soon. So that's kind of an obvious way that if the relationship is there, the project is there. If the relationship is not there, you just part company and go on separate ways. I think the more difficult challenge is in a corporate environment. That you have been hired as the Marketing Director or a Vice President of Marketing or a CMO, and yes, they hired you. So they obviously liked you, and it respected you. But then, over time, you may find that they treat marketing as though that's just a service side of things. Business really doesn't depend on that. Or we lean on the marketing Department when a trade show is coming up or when a new press release has to be made, as opposed to having a strategic seat at that primary leadership table. So that is a more difficult challenge, and you just have to try. You just have to sort of work and make sure that there's deeper understanding on the CEO side of what marketing can deliver. One other point if I may make on this is that what can really help to build that relationship is that instead of answering the question of what marketing can do, answer the question, what marketing can do for the business. In other words, don't make it a marketing thing. Make it a business thing. Why? Because the CEO is really not interested in a marketing award. CEO is interested in the business achieving certain goals. So put your services, marketing services, translate the value of that in terms of the business as opposed to that it's just good for marketing. Ken WhiteIf there was one takeaway you'd like readers to have after reading the book, what might that be? Atul MinochaI'll give you two cause the two are related. Ken WhiteGreat. Atul MinochaOne is don't discard marketing in spite of your bad experiences. Marketing is extremely important, and the related part that I would say is that if you read the book, you will find ways you can actually use marketing very effectively in spite of your bad experiences. So A don't throw the marketing away, and B, there are really nice, creative, simple ways by which you can extract more value out of marketing. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Atul Minocha, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding our podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, thoughts, and questions with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest at Atul Minocha and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![JD Due](images/jd-due-161-thumb.jpg)
![Transitioning from the Military](images/jd-due-161-thumb.jpg)
JD Due
Episode 161: September 21, 2021
Transitioning from the Military
Every year over 200,000 U.S. military personnel separate from active duty. Transitioning servicemen and women cite a number of reasons and motivations for their departures For example, they may be retirement eligible, others have completed their service agreements, some are seeking a career change. For others, the move is related to family. Whatever the reason, transitioning from the military to the civilian world is challenging. According to militarytransition.org, about half of all veterans say their transition was more difficult than expected. Not surprising when you consider their entire world, in essence, changed. JD Due is the Executive Director of the Center for Military Transition at William & Mary. The center is located in the William & Mary School of Business and was created to help active duty and veteran students at the university successfully navigate their transactions. He joins us today to discuss military transitions, the importance of networking, and how a successful transition includes patience, and a plan.
Podcast (audio)
JD Due: Transitioning from the Military TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Every year, over 200,000 U.S. Military personnel separate from active duty. Transitioning servicemen and women site a number of reasons and motivations for their departures. For example, they may be retirement eligible. Others have completed their service agreements. Some are seeking a career change. For others, the move is related to family. Whatever the reason, transitioning from the military to the civilian world is challenging. According to militarytransition.org, about half of all veterans say their transition was more difficult than expected. Not surprising when you consider their entire world, in essence, changed. JD Due is the Executive Director of the Center for Military Transition at William & Mary. The center is located in the William & Mary School of Business and was created to help active duty and veterans students at the University successfully navigate their transitions. He joins us today to discuss military transitions, the importance of networking, and how a successful transition includes patience and a plan. Here's our conversation with JD Due. Ken WhiteJD, thanks very much for sharing your time. Great to see you in person. Thanks very much for being here. JD DueAbsolutely. It's interesting. One of the I guess positive upsides what is a catastrophe, and the pandemic is that you find out that people are ready to be together, right? To be a part of a community. You find out who's maybe not normally a hugger, and they might be a little bit more of a hugger. And again, keeping all those things in mind. But it is wonderful to be here in person. So thank you for having me. Ken WhiteNo, our pleasure. So as the Executive Director of the Center for Military Transition, what an interesting job. How did you even get into the field? Where did that start? JD DueWell, I've always been a fan and a friend of serendipity, right. In some cases, I literally stumbled into the field of myself, and it starts out biographically. Whenever I was at the culmination of my 20 years in the Army, I was actually granted an extraordinary opportunity. I was working at the Pentagon. I had been there for just a little bit over a year, but the US Chamber of Commerce had a what they described as a corporate fellowship program. And really, within my last six months of active duty, I got to spend twelve weeks with one of their corporate partnerships, and I was in a program manager role, and I worked in that civilian firm while the Army still took care of pay and housing and all of the wonderful things that the Army can take care of. But I was a program manager for four days out of the week, and then on the fifth day, the Chamber of Commerce would organize different transition skill-building events. And so there were about 25 of us going through this program at the same time. So we were able to share experiences, good and bad. And then we went to these different host companies. And the HR element of Deloitte gave us a rundown of what resumes should look like. If you're interested to go into consulting. Amazon gave us a rundown of if you want to go through an intensive interview process. Here are different sort of skills to refine. And in the midst of that process, about two weeks in, I realized I was in a role I did not want to be in beyond that fellowship. But what I discovered is this desire of what I really wanted to do is run a program to assist veterans in transitioning broadly. And that's sort of how I came into this place as well as then simultaneously and again; this is where serendipity comes in. A colleague whom I had never met but had been closely associated with on LinkedIn shared an opportunity that was the Pat Tillman Foundation. I saw the job description. I shared it with my wife. She looked at me. She's like, hey, don't mess this up. This seems like a great opportunity. And it was. And that's how I got into this business of providing resources, conceived broadly to assist veterans transition into a new chapter of service. Ken WhiteFantastic story. And I know just in the short time you've been here, how the active-duty military and the student body just love to talk with you and interact with you. The transition is a big deal for everybody, but especially for people in the military. Why is that? JD DueWell, for one, I think the military is a huge and complex organization, right? I mean, one of the joys in the national treasures that the all-volunteer force is. Is it has an opportunity to bring people from many different parts of the country and many different backgrounds together. And so, even students that are in the military on active duty now, part of the reason why the Army or the Navy or the Coast Guard send them here is actually broaden their experience. So they're going through a transition themselves, of moving from maybe a tactical focus in the Army to then helping out the institutional level of how does the army conduct marketing for these broad institutional pieces? So that's one of it. But then, over the past, really 40 years of the all-volunteer force, each of these services have a very strong culture process, right. When you go into the Army, you'll spend six, sometimes up to twelve or 18 weeks in any one of the services learning your job. And just the first thing isn't even learn your job in the military is to learn how to be a soldier or a sailor or a Marine. And then when you leave, you don't have that benefit of time always, right. That was the key thing that fellowship program I was a part of. It gave me additional time to ask really big questions of how does my identity fit in a new culture? And those are really important first-order questions to try and address. And that's, I think, a key element of the challenge that's there. And it applies to any human being, but particularly in the military, right. Ken WhiteRight. JD DueThe military helps you choose what to wear when you go to work, right. We can joke and chuckle about that. But there's so much of that regimentation and framework that's there that sometimes it can be very challenging when you're entering a realm that doesn't have that same framework. Ken WhiteYou and I were talking earlier before we started to record, and you said for many transitioning military personnel, it's not what do I want to be is who do I want to be in that transition? How do you figure that out when you're trying to transition? JD DueWell, I think one of the best ways to sort of figure that out. And it is probably I think it is the question. It is the first-order question to figure out. I think you figure it out in the context of a community. You figure out in terms of introspective questions. If you're asking yourself, what does light my fire, what are my interests, what are my strengths? But then, if you're able to do that in a community where you have allies, where you have other people within that network, mentors this case here professors to be able to ask those questions of and get feedback. I think that's a really, really important mechanism because by communicating those pieces, it helps you really refine not only what your experiences mean, and it helps translate that, which is great on a resume. But that's not the first-order question. It really helps you understand, hey, what are different areas that I can move to, that I can still serve, that I can still be a leader, but doing so in a new context. Ken WhiteWhen you look overall at the types of folks who have served our country, male, female, older, younger, a long amount of service, a shorter amount of service. What are some of the similarities they face in their transition? What are some of the differences among all those various different groups? JD DueWell, I think some of the similarities that they face is the fact that they will have unique experiences that also occurred in the unique context. So similarities are the challenge of taking those experiences and translating them to new context, right. That is, I think, one of the key challenges, and it is generally universal across the veteran community to be able to clearly articulate. This is how I can be a asset to assist any organization, be it one that wears uniforms or one that does not. Solve problems and do so in a creative manner. And I think in a lot of ways. And although it might not be at the forefront of their tongues, they actually have a lot of creativity that the military has so much regimentation and framework it's because it's designed to operate in the realm of chaos and uncertainty. Ken WhiteRight. JD DueThis was as true for the Greeks as it was for the Persians as it is for us. It is just madness and chaos, and being able to take some of those unique experiences and put it into new context actually is both the challenge and an opportunity that's there. Now the difference is is that just like anyone else, the members of the military are unique. The way that they process the experiences that are there are going to occur in wildly different manners. So the stereotypes that might exist really, really don't necessarily apply. And one of the challenges that the Department of Defense has been doing a lot of good work really over the past six or seven years to refine their transition assistance programs. But the Department of Defense is a big, big Bureau. It is a big organization, and some of those processes tend to be a bit generic. So if you're able to look at an experience that then has very personalized transition plans and to have centers and programs help an individual piece those different things together. That's where some of those differences occur. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with JD Due in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Today's world requires new skills and new approaches. Well, those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary by visiting wm.edu. Now back to our conversation with JD Due, Executive Director of William and Mary's Center for Military Transition. Ken WhiteWhen you're talking to someone who's serving, and they know at some point there will be a transition. When should they start thinking and doing? When do you start acting on your transition? How many months? How many years? JD DueYeah. The thinking probably starts now, right at any point in time. And it's really interesting. Here one of the wonderful joys, and it's really a gift that William & Mary is able to bring. It's collaboration with the Army and the Major General James Wright fellowship. So these are fellows that come from a highly selective process in the Army, and they're at the midpoint of their army career. So they probably have at least ten, sometimes 15 years of additional service. But it's also an important transition and an inflection point in their career. They will be moving from doing direct leadership-type tasks to then be part of this broader institutional basis. And again, the Army, the Navy, the Coast Guard. These services are large institutions as they exist. And as they make that transition, it also gives an opportunity for them to really build and diversify all the resources and the human resources that they have contact with, right. They look within the Marine Corps or the Air Force. They're going to have a long list of folks that they can count on as allies and mentors. Well, a trip here as that broadening assignment as the military will often call it. Helps them to broaden that network. And it does so in a way that's actually transformational and not transactional. And so by starting to think about, hey, how can I maintain relationships that could benefit my service, could benefit and augment my service to my country? How can that also then establish a relationship that creates future opportunities whenever that time comes? And it always does come regardless of the rank that you depart. Where it's time to unlace the boots and hang up the uniform, and then probably within about 24 months, that's when serious series planning should really be initiated. To answer the more specific questions of what industry do I want to go into? Is that industry more important to where I want to live and to do that in a systematic manner? Just to be able to reduce some of the variables and a really, really complex equation that they're going to have to deal with. Ken WhiteAnd there are opportunities and programs for those serving that they can experience to kind of get them moving on their transition? JD DueAbsolutely. Again, one of the current ones and it grew out of the program that I was able to participate in back in 2018. It's called SkillBridge, the Department of Defense SkillBridge program, and it is oriented to a wide array of military personnel. Some that have been enlisted personnel. And sometimes, that might mean that they are then transitioning to get a bachelor's degree. Officers commissioned officers s have to have a bachelors degree already, but then it allows them to be in a position to get a professional degree, a Masters or even higher degree, to again add aspects of specificity to their skill set, to be able to again address those challenges and opportunities of what comes next. Ken WhiteMany of our listeners are professionals, leaders and managers, business owners. What can companies and organizations do in terms of the transition to help to get involved, to bring veterans on board? JD DueWell, I think one of the key aspects is A recognizing that the service members are actually an integral part of their community, and they always have been, right. One of the huge benefits is the G.I. Bill. So when we think about 1944, in terms of military history, massive things are going on. There's an invasion of Normandy. There's the Battle of the Bulge. The tide is turning against the Nazi regime. But at the same time, we're passing the G.I. Bill, and that's really significant. So at the height of combat in World War II, Congress actually has the foresight to establish this program that allows the reintegration of a very, very huge army compared to what the size of the military is today back into the civilian world. We still have elements of that going on right now. The post 911 GI bill is a wonderful benefit that is really, really geared towards, you know, MBA programs. Towards law degree programs in terms of the amount of time and benefits that folks have. And so for companies to be able to look at those opportunities as well as even inside their own companies, they're going to find, oh, wow. I didn't realize that this leader that she was a Marine Corps veteran. Ken WhiteRight. JD DueAnd yet those human beings are going to be there listening to them in terms of their own stories as well as listening to our students and clearly communicating, I think, is the answer of how folks can help best. Ken WhiteSo tell us about the Center for Military Transition. This is new at William & Mary. We've always had a I call it a love affair between the military and William & Mary. It's been going on forever. But we've got a good number of servicemen and women here in our school, undergrad, and graduate programs. But this is a big deal. Tell us about the Center for Military Transition. JD DueIt is and Bob Merkle who's the Special Assistant to the University President on Military Affairs. He talks about William & Mary that we have an abundance of riches. And he's absolutely true. Dean Pulley talks about that. Active duty and service members have always been this integral part of the Mason School and this broader community. And it's really this element on opportunity for the Center of Military Transition to integrate all of these things that the Mason School does so well, right. You know, when we look at professional business education, when we look at leadership development, this development of skills, mentorship programs is what the executive partners are able to provide for life. Those are all the key contributors of a really world-class transition program. And that's what makes this opportunity so exciting. All the necessary factors are here. And then, the center can help to integrate those and again right-size them to a personalized experience. That's really the huge opportunity that we have. And I think it will be differential. It'll make a huge difference in the lives of the student veterans that are here. It will help inform students that are coming through the Mason School that have no or very little exposure to the military as well. And that is the wonderful aspect of this ecosystem that can really make a big difference. Ken WhiteAnd working with those who will be transitioning soon and maybe not so soon. JD DueExactly. And again, you can almost think of it as a timeline. And for those that are coming out of the military, they are used to some very regimented timelines. They know hey within X number of months at some point in time at 42 months, I was going to receive a promotion, right? Why it was 42 months and not 48. I'm not quite sure. But how can we then create similar timelines that might not be as regimented because they don't need to be mindful and to take advantage of the plethora of opportunities that are out there? But what are different steps that someone can do? How can they take something that might come out of a course that they take in the first two months here and then the center can help extend some of the tools that they're building with their professors and then link those in with potential employers and where a student wants to go. Again I think that's what's really, really exciting as we both develop individuals and then empower them to really be able to serve and to lead and to be the assets that they have the potential to be in a wide variety of companies. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with JD Due, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guests, JD Due, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Phil Wagner](images/phil-wagner-160-thumb.jpg)
![Stepping Up Your D&I Efforts](images/phil-wagner-160-thumb.jpg)
Phil Wagner
Episode 160: September 7, 2021
Stepping Up Your D&I Efforts
In the last decade, the interest in Diversity & Inclusion has grown significantly at companies and organizations. For the most par D&I has been accepted: It's seen as a positive contributor to employee engagement, employee retention, company culture, and a healthy bottom line. While D&I has become mainstream, not every organization has it figured out. For some, Diversity & Inclusion efforts are simply transactional - a series of workshops or lectures delivered by a vendor. Our guest today says it needs to be transformative in order to make a real difference. In other words, D&I vocabulary and knowledge should be shared among all employees and leaders as a supportive and inclusive culture organically grows. Phil Wagner is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Management Communication at William & Mary's School of Business. He teaches communication and D&I to undergraduate and graduate business students in addition to working professionals. He says, while considerable progress has been made in the D&I space, there are still opportunities for professionals, leaders, and organizations to be more effective.
Building upon other D&I experts' work, particularly Jennifer Brown's How to be an Inclusive Leader, Aiko Bethea's work on transactional vs. transformational D&I leadership, and Brene Brown's Dare to Lead, this discussion focuses on practical takeaways that leaders can employ to demonstrate their commitment to inclusion.
Podcast (audio)
Phil Wagner: Stepping Up Your D&I Efforts TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Amazon Music/Audible | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. In the last decade, the interest in diversity and inclusion has grown significantly at companies and organizations. For the most part, D&I has been accepted. It's seen as a positive contributor to employee engagement, employee retention, company culture, and a healthy bottom line. While D&I has become mainstream, not every organization has it figured out. For some, diversity and inclusion efforts are simply transactional, a series of workshops or lectures delivered by a vendor. Our guest today says it needs to be transformative in order to make a real difference. In other words, D&I vocabulary and knowledge should be shared among all employees and leaders. As a supportive and inclusive culture organically grows. Phil Wagner is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Management Communication at William & Mary's School of Business. He teaches communication and D&I to undergraduate and graduate business students in addition to working professionals. He says while considerable progress has been made in the D&I space, there are still opportunities for professionals, leaders, and organizations to be more effective. Here's our conversation with Professor Phil Wagner. Ken WhiteWell, Phil, thanks for taking the time to join us. Great to see you. Isn't it nice to be in person? Phil WagnerIt is nice to be back in person. Ken WhiteAnd you're in the classroom because classes have started. How's it been? Phil WagnerFilled to capacity 118 bright MBAs so eager to be there, you can feel the energy. It's great. Ken WhiteIt is it's so fun. So thanks. It's a busy week. Thank you for joining us. D&I DE&I your area this is something you teach, something you're passionate about. We were talking earlier before we started recording, when I said to you, What's the difference between doing this? Maybe right and wrong? And you said there's a transactional model and a transformative model. What does that mean? Phil WagnerNumber one, I think we back up and say there's just so many different models. Look at the terminology D&I, DIEO, DIEB. I mean, it's constantly iterative. And you look at how things have developed, particularly over the last 20 or so years. It's been a rapidly changing conversation along that rapid sequence of change. I don't think we've paused to make sense of all of the pieces. Ken WhiteRight. Phil WagnerWe know we have to do diversity, equity, and inclusion work, but I don't think we've stepped back to ask what that really means. And so we've done a lot of that transactional stuff. We have built a culture in which we say D&I matters. So I'm going to put on four different lunch and learns. I'm going to have another training on microaggressions. I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. I've done a lot of programming. I've collected a lot of data, and we say, let's respond to that. And so what you've done is we created this culture where people are shamed into participation. They're guilted into participation. They're pushed into participation because we say this is important. But we never stop to explain why. And so where we need to get to, I truly believe, is to really focus on that why. To move from transaction to a more transformational model, one that really stops and asks, Why are we doing the things that we're here to do? And I think that transformational model doesn't build a culture in response to D&I. It says we first build our diversity. We first focus intentionally on inclusion, on support, on culture. Once we've got those locked and loaded, we've invited everybody to participate. That can then be a transformational experience, one that's harder to push back against and one that's inclusive for everybody to get involved. Ken WhiteWhere does the leader, the CEO? Where does the head honcho? What's the role of that individual in these efforts? Phil WagnerI think that's another misconception we tell ourselves. We think a lot about diversity and inclusion crises. Somebody getting canceled, somebody who makes an inappropriate sexual comment. Cuomo being a great example recently. You've done something, and you sort of tap out. I think we think that in times of diversity and inclusion crises, it's going to be human resources and public relations. HR and PR are they're going to swoop in. They're going to save the day. And I, as a leader, get to sort of just step back and let them do the work. And that's a fundamental misconception. As a leader in the current climate in which we exist, you have to have the vocabulary of inclusive leadership communication. You have to have a knowledge of what the current D&I issues are. You have to have a hand on the pulse of the political and social climate. You are hiring people in that climate. You have people in your organization. We're clocking in nine to five who come in from that climate. So you've got to be well prepared to orchestrate a culture that recognizes it's complicated out there. You got to reflect that complication in here with the nuance of our D&I work. Ken WhiteAnd in the past six to eight to twelve months, we've had several instances where leaders have had to react and say something about what's happening in the real world. That's where that vocabulary, knowledge, and understanding comes into play. Phil WagnerYeah, this is about storytelling. Right. Ken WhiteYeah, it is. Phil WagnerAs a leader, you need to be able to tell the right story and accurate story and authentic story that exists in response to the public because that public is comprised of storytellers who can get out ahead of you if you're not telling the right story. And so they're increasingly looking for you to figure out how all these things merge, how they align. Ken WhiteYou thought you talk about authenticity; how does that? What do you mean by that? Phil WagnerI think it's a variable that's often missing in D&I work because it's so cheap for us. It's easy to put on again. Those lunch and learns those microaggression trainings, and so that's devoid of an authentic connection, particularly for the leaders who are putting them on. You need to be the person that the people in your organization look to set the tone for inclusion there. And so that's going to require some work on your end, some uncomfortable, deep digging, some self-reflection, certainly some time. But all of those things are definitely going to work out to make you a better leader in the end. Beyond just increasing your D&I knowledge, they're going to make you more self-reflective. You're going to have a better pulse on the culture within your organization. All of this, though it takes work certainly worth the effort. Ken WhiteI would assume some CEOs are afraid. I mean, that's tough to step into some of these issues. Afraid that I might offend this group or not offend that group. What have you? A tough spot to be in at times. Phil WagnerYeah, because things have transpired so rapidly again past 20 years. Look at everything has happened post 911, just politically, socially. The conversation has changed so quickly. It's gone in so many different directions. We have terminology that's on the spot, introduced in 1 second and 20 minutes later, it's expired. It is bewildering to do this work. It requires a significant amount of vulnerability. There's some significantly discomfortable, uncomfortable, I should say, conversations that need to happen. And I don't think we've appropriately prepared people to have those leaders in the making. I don't think MBA programs historically have done a good job of isolating space to really focus in on these issues. And so you've got a generation of leadership that knows that this is important. I truly believe wants to engage in it. They simply don't have the toolkit. They don't have the knowledge to do this well. So, the authenticity piece, how can it be authentic? Because it's changed so much? Ken WhiteWhat are D&I officers doing today? What are they spending their time on? Phil WagnerI think D&I officers spend most of their time helping leaders set an agenda. So they work in the nuances of data gathering and collection. But they're also going back to what we talked about with storytelling, helping leaders tell the right story. And I think what D&I leaders are struggling with is that rapidly changing climate, and they're helping those leaders who have not been historically well prepared learn how to deal with the real raw issues in the professional setting. We like to think that the world of work is an apolitical context. Excuse me, but you don't get the luxury of clocking in nine to five and forgetting about discrimination or me too or pay inequity or all of the issues that our employees bring to the world of work. So it's doing a deep dive into sort of that human-oriented perspective that I think D&I officers help leaders get to. Ken WhiteA tough job. Phil WagnerA tough job, a job that can be fundamentally rewarding and also humiliating, exhausting, because, in many ways, you're always wrong. I mean, you're always outdated because this is a conversation that never has no endpoint. It's constantly growing. It is iterative. And there are so many different pockets or factions of people that have ideas about diversity and inclusion. Who's right, who's wrong? We're always looking for that binary, black or white, right or wrong. This is a space where that doesn't really exist, aside from some significant extremes. And so this is about equipping people to toil in that nuance to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. That's a core component of our curriculum here to take initiative to say; this is all so complicated. What do I do? And to rest in that but to be able to lead through that with clarity and transparency, and authenticity. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Phil Wagner in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Our post COVID world will require new skills and new approaches, and those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Phil Wagner. Ken WhiteWho makes a good D&I officer today? I mean, some jobs, that job description is so easy, right? The qualifications so simple. Where do we begin with D&I officers? Phil WagnerI think a D&I officer has to know that they want to be a D&I officer. Has a strong understanding of the realities of that position, how it has come to be as a sort of now permanent fixture in most successful organizations, and a person that understands that that job description is going to update constantly. As the world around it updates. But I also think that this is work beyond just becoming a D&I officer. I think in many ways, we now have an organizational sphere that expects that every new hire, every emerging leader, every C-suite executive has that knowledge and that vocabulary of diversity and inclusion. So while this focus is good for D&I officers, I really think it's an important focus for everybody because, again, the public is looking to the organizational sphere, and they're expecting people who are succeeding and thriving and becoming leaders in that sphere to have this knowledge, to respond to the climate, to speak the language of diversity and inclusion. Ken WhiteSo how does that C-suite member or someone knocking on the C-suite door? How do they get the information? What's a good way to train and be well versed so that you're as comfortable as possible in this space. Phil WagnerYeah, this is such a cheesy answer, and it's simplistic, and it's not to be a land-all. But take some time to read. I mean, you have now so many new spaces of knowledge that are being published, new authors of color, new books, new blogs, new initiatives solely dedicated to these conversations. Uncomfortable conversations, conversations on inclusion conversation that take really age-old ideas, but update them for where we are in the here and now. So as a leader, quiet yourself. Spend some time in your own self-development process, dedicating some of that content to this and also another cheesy answer. But as a communicator, I think it has great value. Take some time to talk to your people. Get a pulse for what the culture and the climate is at your organization. That's not just a culture and a climate conversation. That's a diversity and inclusion conversation. Your people, I think, will often reveal to you where you can focus your energy to make that world of work a more inclusive place for all. Ken WhiteWe hear our Dean Larry Pulley say it because he does that. He'll listen. He says it over and over again. I learned something new. I had no idea. I never thought about it that way. So those conversations, they get anything, are huge. Phil WagnerAnd you have to have that growth mindset because it's really easy to retreat into a shell and be offended or feel like your ideas are outdated; therefore, you are outdated. I mean, you have to be ready for growth, and you have to be ready to encounter ideas that you don't agree with and be willing to not quite know what to do with those. That disagreement there's this great tweet Adam Grant, who's at Wharton, talked about this actually on Twitter this week, and he says, intellectual friction it's not a relationship bug. So just because you find yourself in an uncomfortable conversation in the context of your organization, with people who are bringing new ideas that you have not fully yet grappled with. See that as something of great value, that vulnerable space. You can do a lot with that. And that friction can be actualized for some great good. So again, it goes back to get comfortable with becoming uncomfortable regularly. Ken WhiteSo you do this for the MBA students. You teach this? What are some of the ideas and some of the lessons that you're trying to get across to these leaders in training? Phil WagnerWe do this for our full-time MBAs, part-time MBAs, our executive MBAs, our Masters of Accounting students. We teach it to our undergrads. We really strive to have this be an iterative conversation. We don't want to just jump into D&I for D&I sake. Because we're doing what we say we shouldn't be doing, which is just that transaction this matters here do this, and you're good. Well, that's not really how it works. So we start with a very personal place. We work with our students to tell and sell their story well. We help them find their why and speak from it. And that's a really prime space to explore that inclusion element because once a student knows who they are and they've gotten into contact with that framework of empathy, that's required to hear and receive other people's stories and do something with it. Well, then they're primed to move into the D&I space. So we do give them what we think is a modern and helpful language or vocabulary of diversity and inclusion. What do those terms mean? How did they come to be? How has this come to be such a thing in the management enterprise? We give them a history, we give them a vocabulary, and then we give them space to test that out. So we talk about what it means to be an inclusive leader. And then, we talk about what it means to be an inclusive organization. The purpose of an organization is no longer to just generate profit. That original conception always had a clause, which was that holds true as long as the rules of the game are acknowledged. Well, the rules have changed. The rules now require that we have a vocabulary and a knowledge of this work. So we teach our students to go out and engage in that. So we talk about it through public relations. We talk about it through crisis management. In all of those different facets, students are getting an inclusion focus that can only help them in their career. And I think that's really the key point. Focusing on this can certainly help you, and it can't really hurt you. It's only going to make you better in the end, both as a leader and as an organization. So we spend time preparing our students to do just that. Ken WhiteBecause we know anybody who they're going to employ wants it and expects it moving forward. Phil WagnerExpects it, and we'll ask them what they can contribute to that enterprise, and we want them to be ready to say here are some action-oriented items that I'm bringing to your organization. I have a full understanding of what this is, what it involves. Here's how I'm going to roll up my sleeves and help. Ken WhiteSo you're going to share your expertise, your interest in diversity with a new podcast. It will be launched literally days from now is we're recording on the 3 September. Diversity Goes to Work. Tell us about it, that's exciting. Phil WagnerYeah, really exciting. This came to be after multiple conversations, and our goal is really simple. We want to have casual conversations with friends most of the time. That's really two strangers on the podcast and the process of becoming friends. And that plays out in a really nice way. We've got Alum, we've got experts from all across the nation and the world, and Diversity Goes to Work really tries to push past the noise of diversity and inclusion efforts. And we're not talking diversity strategy necessarily. We're not talking a list of things to do or don't do. What we're doing is really simple. We're cutting right to the heart of the issue, and we're taking a human-oriented lens and using it to examine this work. So really, it's a storytelling podcast. We're bringing people who have lived this experience either as a diversity consultant, somebody with a diverse background, somebody who's experienced this in the real world and is coming back to offer their insights on our podcast. And so we're going to kick things off with an alum of the College, Amandeep Sidhu is coming to speak on what it's like now 20 years post 911. Amandeep is of the Sikh faith, a turban-wearing professional who has had a very successful legal career. And he's got a great story on that first episode of on 911 working in DC, just minutes after the plane hit the towers, experiencing that same sense of collective grief that we all felt as Americans. Yet just minutes after that, being run off the road by a truck because he had Brown skin. And so that duality of identity. We really center that here throughout the podcast will be bringing in consultants, professionals, everyday laypeople, blue-collar, white-collar, C-suite executives, everyday people really with the focus of centering that human element that I think is so often devoid of our D&I work. Ken WhiteSo we'll hear a lot of stories from a lot of interesting people. Phil WagnerLots of stories from a lot of interesting people with the focus on strategy in the end. Now that we know this, now that we're aware that there's so many different perspectives that we have to grapple with as leaders, what do we take that? And how do we move it forward to actually implement successful D&I work that has real value, in the end, isn't just cheap frivolity. Ken WhiteYeah. What are you hoping listeners get from this? Phil WagnerEngagement number one in a low-stakes way, if you pull up a diversity podcast, you never know what you're going to get with us. It's pretty clear. You're going to get to hear real stories, real ideas that come from people who have experienced the discrimination that we talked about, the disenfranchisement that we talk about. But you'll hear it in an accessible way, and it's really an opportunity for learning, me included. So I'm not there as an expert. I'm there to learn from these stories as well. And that's what I love. I have emerged from every single one of those podcast recordings with my mind blown of new perspectives that I have not yet been able to fully understand because I've never walked in those shoes. So, that's really our goal. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Phil Wagner, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Phil Wagner, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Christopher Lee](images/christopher-lee-159-thumb.jpg)
![Performance Conversations](images/christopher-lee-159-thumb.jpg)
Christopher Lee
Episode 159: August 20, 2021
Performance Conversations
The annual employee review. The performance evaluation. The employee appraisal. Whatever you call it, in many organizations, the process of evaluating employee performance is often ineffective. In many instances, the evaluations do little to help the employee, the supervisor, or the organization. Among other things, employees are rarely satisfied with the score they receive, and they find it challenging to write a self-evaluation when they know it may be tied to their future compensation. And while evaluations and appraisals have not evolved significantly over the years, working professionals have. They seek feedback, coaching, and support. And many professionals want to perform better and feel better about their work. Knowing that, the old evaluation system is changing. Christopher Lee is a long-time Human Resources professional and leader. He's the Chief Human Resources Officer at William & Mary, and the author of "Performance Conversations." He joins us today to explain how conversations and questions can be used to coach employees, improve productivity, and boost confidence all without appraisals.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. The annual Employee Review, The Performance Evaluation, the employee appraisal, whatever you call it. In many organizations, the process of evaluating employee performance is often ineffective. In many instances, the evaluations do little to help the employee, the supervisor, or the organization. Among other things, employees are rarely satisfied with the score they receive, and they find it challenging to write a self-evaluation when they know it may be tied to their future compensation. And while evaluations and appraisals have not evolved significantly over the years, working professionals have. They seek feedback, coaching, and support. And many professionals want to perform better and feel better about their work. Well, knowing that the old evaluation system is changing. Christopher Lee is a longtime human resources professional and leader. He's the chief human resources officer at William & Mary and the author of Performance Conversations. He joins us today to explain how conversations and questions can be used to coach employees, improve productivity, boost confidence, all without appraisals. Here's our conversation with Chris Lee. Ken WhiteChris, thanks very much for being with us today. It's great to have you here. Christopher LeeMy pleasure. Ken WhiteAnd face to face, too. Christopher LeeYes. Absolutely. Three dimensions. Ken WhiteYeah, which is really great. So one of the things you say is those employee appraisals that so many professionals grew up with Christopher LeeYup. Ken Whitejust never did work and never will work. Why not? What's wrong with them? Christopher LeeYeah. I think for me, it's the fundamental underpinnings of them really were never aligned with their supposed purposes. Right. So as an example, it's called performance management as an example. But you can't manage past performance. I mean, you can only reflect upon past performance. So we talked about managing performance. Truthfully, it was performance documentation, accountability, record keeping, and negative reinforcement because the assumption was that if I tell you you didn't do well, you'll do better. But we missed the part of well, why didn't I do well? What do you mean? How do I adjust from that? And the whole framework, the set up of the once-a-year, some people call it the bloodletting, wasn't the space to have that conversation because once people received negative feedback, they shut down because it was also contingent upon so many other things. That 1-hour meeting, that half-hour meeting, whatever it was, was going to determine whether you got the minivan or not. Right. So you come to that conversation with hopes of getting a promotional opportunity, a raise, or many other things, and you got some negative feedback. Right. And you knew that negative feedback meant okay. I don't get a 4..8. I get a 4.6. In my organization, that means I get less pay well; I'm a 4.2, and why? And then you want to say, let's talk about getting improving? Well, I'm in shock. Ken WhiteYeah, yeah. Christopher LeeSome people in tears, right, you know, and all kinds of research shows that it's just not the time and space and who gets excited about planned, constructive criticism. I mean, all the research shows people had tremendous anxiety and fear. It's like, okay. You know, Chris, I got some negative feedback for you. How about let's wait till Thursday, and we're going to talk about it. The whole setup was fundamentally flawed at the beginning. Ken WhiteIn both ways, for the supervisor and the employee. Right. Because the supervisor, it's pretty high-stress situation. Christopher LeeAbsolutely. Mcgregor said it best. Mcgregor is like 1954 quote, and he talked about why appraisals aren't good, and they shouldn't work. But we ignored that. He basically said that no supervisor, if they were informed, would want to sit as a judge of their subordinates because they wouldn't understand the impact. An the example would be a judge. If someone you don't know you don't have a relationship with, they are on their high horse. They are well trained, and they're actually protected by someone with a weapon. Right. And when they pass judgment on you, you never see them again. Now, we're asking a manager to pass judgment on someone and then have a relationship with them the next 15 minutes, 15 days, 15 years kind of idea. The relationship changes when you're giving negative feedback that is judgmental. And we're going to talk about feedback and appraisal and how they're fundamentally different. So the whole idea of the judge is what changes the dynamic. Because giving anyone negative feedback, whether it's your kids, your spouse, your friends, or whatever. It changes the relationship dynamic for a while. And people got to recover from that. Then they might be open to growth in movement from there after that recovery. Ken WhiteYeah, excellent, yeah. So in the book, you talk about the power of questions. Christopher LeeYes. Ken WhiteWell, what do you mean by that? Christopher LeeYeah. Questions are the Holy grail of management, if not humanity. I know it's a big statement, but if you think about it, kids learn. Everybody learns by questions. If you've been around any kind of five or six year old, they ask questions incessantly because they're trying to learn. They're trying to calibrate try to understand. Right. If you're a lawyer, you interrogate witnesses by questions. Police officers gather facts. Doctors. When you go to them, how do they know what's wrong with you? They ask you a series of questions. You're a professor, right. The whole scientific method is based upon questions. If you're a journalist, you just go through the whole process. Questions are amazing. And as a leader or manager, everybody knows that's your job as a leader to find out where there are gaps to diagnose situations and do things. And you're asking questions. And then, most importantly, when we hire people, what do we do? We set up this whole elaborate thing called an interview, which is a series of questions, but we don't do the same to evaluate that same performance. Ken WhiteThat's great. You talk about performance conversations, and we've experienced those here at William & Mary. But for those, obviously, who haven't. What is that? Christopher LeeWell, it's really just a series, a brief, structured conversations about the things that matter most. Right. So a series. It's a planned series of conversations because you can't get everything done in one conversation. When I'm dealing with personnel matters, I've often over my career advise leaders about performance challenges or personnel problems to say, is this a one conversation conversation, a two conversation conversation, or three conversation conversation. Meaning that if you're delivering bad news, you're going to discipline someone or put them on a performance improvement plan. You can't get it all done in one conversation sometimes because people are shocked, don't understand they're coming back, etcetera. So there's a series and then its structure. It's not just a conversation; it's a structured conversation. There's a plan for this conversation. There's a framework around it. And I call it semi-formal. It's formal in that it's structured and planned. And then it's informal in that it's conversational. So it's kind of semi-formal, right. And then it's about the things that matter most. Right. And the question is what matters most that changes. And it's the timing of the year, who you're dealing with, how the work is going, et cetera. So it's a series of brief, structured conversations about the things that matter most. And the conversation is very important because it's giving and receiving information. It's feedback, adjustment, and calibration. And I think the calibration is a really big part of it. What do you mean by good? What do you mean by great? What do you mean by I need to adjust this? Can we talk about that? And if it's non-evaluative, then people are more likely to be forthright and honest when they're sucking win. Right. Because if I'm being evaluated people, they aren't totally truthful because it's just self-preservation. So it kind of goes like this. I never understood the self-evaluation things. I always say it's kind of a mini IQ test. So we set up that. Okay, Chris, we going to have your evaluation next week. How about you do the self-evaluation come to the thing or whatever? And at that meeting, we're going to determine whether you're going to get a promotion. We don't say that, but that's kind of what it is all designed for. And so it says, okay, tell me how you did on these things, and you give yourself an assessment. Okay. Let me think this right. So if I say I did anything other than excellent, you're gonna use this information against me to determine whether I get a promotion. Ken WhiteRight. Christopher LeeThe research shows that superstars, man, they're hard on themselves because they know that feedback and improvement is the Holy grail to getting better. The people who just don't have a clue, they think they're a plus. All the research shows it, and then you spend all your time talking them off the ledge. So the self-evaluation is really kind of a crazy idea. Ken WhiteAnd think of the manager. The further away they are from their feet on the ground, the less they know about what's going on. So what a great way to get information from the team, because you're not quite on the team anymore, right? Christopher LeeYes, absolutely. Ken WhiteAnd you're out of loop fast. Christopher LeeYes. In the first Performance Conversations book, which I did in 2006, I basically reviewed the literature of the past 50, 60 years and had these 15 fallacies of appraisal. And one of those is that the leaders initiate. I know what I'm saying, that the leader sees and knows all this going on. And that's just I don't know how we ever assume that that was accurate. Right. You know what I'm saying, right? Ken WhiteRight. Christopher LeeBecause you don't. And if you have good employees, hopefully, they're doing things that you've given the right direction in charge, and they're on the plan, and they're just knocking things out. And so you never really know 100% of what they do. And if you do, you must be a minor deity to be able to understand and know everything all of your subordinates do. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Chris Lee, author of Performance Conversations, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Our post COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. Well, those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Chris Lee. Ken WhiteYou talk about performance questions in the book? What are they? What's the point? Christopher LeeSo the performance question is kind of like the 2.0 from the first book, really of refining things. There's seven questions, and the idea of those seven questions are they're aligned with the major purposes of performance management systems? And the goal is if you ask these seven questions, then you've really kind of taking care of all the major concerns and opportunities and things that you would want to do when you're managing performance. Right. And each of them is kind of a chart that kind of shows how these questions are aligned to the various purposes and how they're kind of designed. So there's two kind of questions that I propose. One is I call it the kind of Magic three, which is the original three. And then there's a four additional ones. So I kind of call it the Magnificent seven. Right. So it's kind of 2.0, but it's elegantly simple, and for me, simple is best. Right. It's that kind of Da Vinci's kind of quote about simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. And so the first one is what's going well, and how can we replicate it? Ken WhiteYeah. Christopher LeeThe second question is, what's not going well? How might we adjust? And then the third question is, what else is going on in your work life that we need to be aware of? And there, your troubleshooting for potential problems and just seizing opportunities. Right. And if you're just asking those three kind of open-ended questions, you'll be amazed where the conversation goes. Ken WhiteI experienced it. There's no question. Evaluation went out the window. That's not what it was about. It became about strategy. It became about the future. And are we supporting you as best as possible, or are we creating our own roadblocks? It was amazing. Yeah. Christopher LeeAbsolutely. Ken WhiteYeah. Just that conversation. Wow. And then you have your checklist, and that's in the book that helps people sort of get through that part of it. Christopher LeeYeah. So we're talking with one of your colleagues earlier. He's a retired army officer, and it just reminds me of one of the examples in the book. I talk about being a Marine officer Lieutenant called the Basic School, the entry-level training. They always gave us this little checklist for anything we did. If you need to call for artillery, if you need to call for aircraft support, if you needed XYZ, they gave us all these checklists, and it's like go down his checklist or whatever. And at the end of training, they would always say, laminate it, take it to the field, meaning take it with you, because it may save your life one day. So imagine you're in a chaotic combat situation, and you need to precisely ask for help. In every little variable to include where they're going to place, this ordinance matters because if you're off a hundred yards, it might land on you versus the enemy. So it's a really a life or death situation. It's the same thing for pilots. So, pilots, they get on a plane. If you get on any commercial aircraft, you walk in. You see the pilots door open. There's two pilots sitting there, and they're going through a checklist. Ken WhiteYeah. Christopher LeeNow they've flown 10,000 hours. But missing a step on that checklist means whether you go up and come down the right way or not. Ken WhiteMmm-mmm. Christopher LeeSo it really really matters, right? There's a whole movement in the medical field, the same idea. Where surgeons incredible human beings, but you'd be amazed at how many times they miss things less than 1%, the experts say. But 1% is 5000 deaths a year. And there's one study. There's a book called The Checklist Manifesto that argues the point that if you're in ICU, there's something like 180 actions they need to take with you every day. And that's incredible number of opportunities for failure. Ken WhiteYeah. Christopher LeeSo with 1% error, there's still a lot of issues. So checklists are designed to keep people from making mistakes. So we borrow that idea and say, hey, you're going to have this dynamic conversation about performance. We give you a tool to help kind of be a toggle for your memory on things that you want to cover and keep track of over the series of conversations. Ken WhiteSo I was going to ask if you're the supervisor, the leader, you're maybe introverted. This isn't all that easy for you. The checklist sort of bails you out, doesn't it? That helps you in this conversation. Christopher LeeIt absolutely does. You're absolutely right. And the questions and checklists are designed for that purpose. And in the framework of the performance conversations method, you actually empower the employee to be prepared for the conversation as well. So you're not just totally driving the conversation. They're going to come with their own questions because they're going to say, Chris, here's what I need from you. One of the Magnificent Seven, the last one is, what can I do for you? And so we were talking about a superstar on your team earlier before we started, right? Man, performance conversations are great for superstars because that's what you should be asking them, which is how do I keep you on the team? Ken WhiteRight. Christopher LeeI mean, you're not really coming out saying, how do I keep you on a team? You're saying, oh, man, Jennifer or Paul, you're doing great, right? You're doing this whatever. What other opportunities do you want? What growth things can I hand off to you? What are you thinking about? Because if you're not keeping them fulfilled, they're going to go look for something else. Ken WhiteYeah. Christopher LeeRight. And so this is an opportunity for them. I can recall one lady; I'll give her a shout-out. Her name is Jennifer James, who's on my team at my previous shop, amazing professional. I think I managed two of our performance conversations. After that, she managed me, and it was a yes, ma'am because she would walk in. She was prepared all the prompts and ticklers or whatever, and she comes here's what this is going on. I'm concerned about that. I want to do this whatever. And I was like, yeah, okay. Got it. Check, check, check. Because I wanted to keep her on the team. Ken WhiteRight. Christopher LeeAnd so my job as a coach, you got Michael and Michelle Jordan on the team. You're trying to figure out how can I best utilize his or her talents? Ken WhiteRight. Christopher LeeAnd so it's really a great sort of approach because we've shifted the metaphor from boss, employee to coach and performer. Ken WhiteOr even teammate it felt like, to me a little bit, it didn't seem like there was one person was, quote, unquote, higher or lower than the other. Yeah. It seemed like it was a real collaborative kind of effort. So if I'm with an organization for years, we've done the scale of one to five, one to five. Everybody gets irritated if they're below a five. But that's how we determine our raises. How do we tie the money, the bonuses, and so forth to this kind of an evaluation on our system? Christopher LeeSo I would say two things. One is that if you work for an organization this is still 20th century oriented in its thinking, you might have to comply with their rules, policies, and procedures. And I would encourage you to use this framework inside of that because all existing or historical method said the same thing. Evaluations only work if you're doing regular, ongoing feedback. We're giving you a feedback system here. And so that kind of fulfills that need or whatever. I don't think you actually need the evaluation. And we can talk about that another day because there's a lot of information there. But on the issue of tying it to compensation. That is one of the biggest problems with evaluations because then we've shifted for the purpose. Are we trying to manage performance, or are we trying to rate performance? Two fundamentally different issues and the research shows that the tail wagged the dog because here's how it goes. I have a list of 23 reasons or criteria upon which we make compensation decisions in organizations, and evaluations are only one of them. So that's part of the challenge. So let me give you an example. I'm the HR guy happens here as anywhere else. A manager thinks that the salary scale is wrong or my person is not treated fairly. Or I'm really trying to keep Jennifer on the team, and I want to pay her more than the University or the company wants to allow because it matters to me to keep her on the team. So if that person's performance is a 4.8 or 4.2, doesn't matter what the number is. You want more. So you may give them a higher raise than they deserve because you're trying to keep that person on the team. That's an example when the tail wags the dog. And then all evaluation system, there's two different kinds, right? One is against a standard against another. If you're Scotty Pippin, life's tough because you're on the same team with the world's greatest right. And so, if you're on a team by yourself with Scotty Pippin, your chances of getting a higher raise is higher at organizations that use the relative to others. Ken WhiteRight. Christopher LeeAnd then the same thing with a great team in an average organization or a good team in a great organization so that calibration across units is always a problem as well. Again, there are 23 different variables. Many private organizations, as you might know, also give you increases according to where you are in the salary range because they want to move people towards the midpoint to keep their salaries competitive overall. So if you perform at the 90th percentile but you in the third quartile, they may slow your growth versus if you're in the first quarter. So again, there are so many variables there. And so when we tie to performance, then we bastardize the performance system. And again, that's just another one of the fallacies around appraisal. So I discourage that, I'm saying, but you have to use that. Information is valuable information. But let's be truthful about it. That's one of the reasons and ways. And the biggest and the easiest is last year. The vast majority of organizations did not give anyone an increase because of the economy turned, if you're in the middle of the year fiscal year in July, because if you're not profitable, you can't give people. So the whole idea that they call it expectancy theory and compensation, that if I do what you say, I expect that you will do what you say, which is give me a raise. And that's never been true because it's the profitability of the company or the division or whatever case may be. It's the largest factor that would drive what your pay will. So then it's kind of hard for you to promise is that if he does his part, you're going to do your part. So again, that's five of the 23 variables, and that's why it's really problematic to tie it together. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Chris Lee, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who can think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Chris Lee, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
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![NIL & The Changing Face of College Athletics](images/jeremy-martin-kevin-dwan-158-thumb.jpg)
Jeremy Martin & Kevin Dwan
Episode 158: August 5, 2021
NIL & The Changing Face of College Athletics
For years, student athletes competing at colleges and universities governed by the NCAA were considered to be "amateur athletes." That amateur status meant they were prohibited from making money using their name, image, and likeness. Well that changed recently thanks to the NCAA's Name Image and Likeness policy, known as the NIL Policy. Now, any person, business, or organization can pay a college athlete fair market value to endorse or represent them. For example, athletes can now be paid for personal appearances or for mentioning a business on their social media feeds. In the weeks since the new policy went into effect, stories of athletes signing deals have popped up all across the country. Two leaders in William & Mary's athletic department join us today to discuss the changes. Jeremy Martin spent the last 10 months as Interim Athletics Director. Kevin Dwan is Senior Associate Athletics Director for External Operations for Revenue Generation and Brand Management. They join us to discuss NIL, what it all means, and what lies ahead.
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TranscriptJeremy Martin & Kevin Dwan: NIL & The Changing Face of College Athletics TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF) Ken WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. For years, student-athletes competing at colleges and universities governed by the NCAA were considered to be amateur athletes. Well, that amateur status meant they were prohibited from making money using their name, image, and likeness. Well, that changed recently thanks to the NCAA's name, image, and likeness policy known as the NIL policy. Now, any person, business, or organization can pay a college athlete fair market value to endorse or represent them. For example, athletes can now be paid for personal appearances or for mentioning a business on their social media feeds. In the weeks since the new policy went into effect, stories of athletes signing deals have popped up all across the country. Two leaders in William & Mary's Athletic Department join us today to discuss the changes. Jeremy Martin spent the last ten months as Interim Athletics Director. Kevin Dwan is Senior Associate Athletics Director for External Operations for Revenue Generation and Brand Management. They join us to discuss NIL, what it all means, and what lies ahead. Here's our conversation with Jeremy Martin and Kevin Dwan. Ken WhiteKevin, Jeremy, thanks very much for being here. I appreciate it your expertise on a very interesting topic. Jeremy, to get us started, can you kind of take us back from the beginning? Where did all this come from, and where is it going? Jeremy MartinWell, there's certainly been a lot of conversation around college athletics for a number of years. And so I always like to sort of start with a broader financial reality of people assume, and there are billions of dollars annually spent on college athletics, and people say, okay, well, you've got a multibillion-dollar industry. How is this working, and how is this benefiting what often is called the labor in the student-athletes and those sorts of things. But to sort of frame financial reality. So, according to the NCAA's report in FY 19, you had 25 of the 350 plus universities that were NCAA Division One institutions had had an athletics department that generated a net profit. And so among those folks, the power five programs, which are the ones that you generally hear about, the sixty-five schools in the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, PAC 12, and Big 12, their median expenses exceeded median revenues by seven million dollars. And among the institutions outside the power five. So sometimes called the Group of five. The other conference, the median deficit was twenty-three million dollars. So to start with, you've got a range of institutions within the FBS Sixty-five. There's a high of a net profit of forty-four million a low of a net deficit of sixty-five million. But most institutions are not making money on athletics. Ken WhiteRight. Jeremy MartinNow there are sports and, by the way, no SES program, a football championship subdivision program like William & Mary. None of these departments generate a net profit. Now there are sports that generate profit at specific schools beyond those twenty-five. So you may have a school that has a football generating net revenue, but not other sports and not the department as a whole and those sorts of things. And so anyway, that's where is the background of the reality of like the institutions are not making that revenue on athletics in general. You have a few other things that are going on. NIL is obviously one of these. But the Austin case, which was just decided by the Supreme Court, basically upheld that the NCAA could not restrict education-related benefits to Division one basketball and FBS football student-athletes. Now, the specificity, I think, of who those athletes are will quickly go away. But that's the specifics of this decision. And it also establishes that the NCAA is not exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act, which had previously been the viewpoint, and that if there's an exemption granted like that, which is unlikely, it would have to come through Congress. And so what that's done is sort of set this broader environment with NCAA government or Mark Emmert and others are sort of saying, well, now the conferences and individual institutions have more sway over what they do in the market than the NCAA does as the constrainer or the definer of the entire market. So a conference could say no education-related benefits because it doesn't affect the other 30 plus conferences. But the NCAA can't say it for the entire market from the Austin case. So in the mix and at the same time, you have name, image, likeness, which is basically previously no student-athlete can monetize their name, image, likeness, NIL. You had state-by-state actions that were coming. You had some federal proposals. And basically, what happened was before July 1st, when some states policies were going into effect, the NCAA passed an interim policy, basically granting freedom for everyone in states that had not yet passed policy to do so, to allow the athletes to monetize their name, image, likeness. That, by the way, is where William & Mary fits. The Commonwealth of Virginia is expected to take action at some point but has not yet. And so we fall under that. Our policy falls under that. And so you also sort of have this uneven, a little bit differentiated landscape and that you have institutional policies in NIL. You have state legislation in NIL, and you don't have a fully consistent playing field. And then the last is sort of always plays in anything around college athletics is where Title nine and gender equity plays into this and really in regard to NIL. And it will ultimately play out in terms of educational benefits from the Austin case, how people apply that you put the institution, the notion of the role of facilitator; sorry, the role of educator in regard to educating student-athletes on what they can do with NIL, but not in the role of being the facilitator or the deal broker to say and we're bringing these NIL deals to you, because how you differentiate that between markets from men's sports and women's sports and those kind of things are really difficult. So really, you have the institutions almost stepping back as the third party saying, here's who can help you with your NIL. Here's what you need to know about your NIL, and you too will independently have to meet it won't be facilitated by us. Ken WhiteIf I'm an athlete and you say, here's who can help me. Who do you mean? Agencies? Jeremy MartinYou've looked at a lot of the products? Ken WhiteThis is your area, Kevin? Kevin DwanI mean, there are agencies. You know, you can secure an agent now as long as it's a talent agent and not for playing your sport. Ken WhiteGot it. Kevin DwanTax advisors, financial advisors, attorneys to review contracts, things like that. So those are all the types of things that we certainly recommend our student-athletes take advantage of and educate themselves on. But like Jeremy said, we can't specifically provide that service to them. Ken WhiteBut this was not something you've done in the past. So this is work. This is effort and a lot of it. Correct, because there are a million question marks. Kevin DwanYeah, this is all brand new and the amount of companies that have kind of come into being just in the last several months is unbelievable. I think both of our inboxes are probably filled with them on a daily basis with new solutions and new ideas and opportunities. So we've taken the time to learn as much as we possibly can about them all. In order to provide a service for our student-athletes as much as we're able to. But it's definitely hard to kind of weed through all the different. Jeremy MartinSo getting ready for this, Kevin, who deals with all the external revenue generation not affiliated with fundraising, and Paul Cox, he's our Assistant AD for Compliance, have been leading a working group throughout the university because we know that there are partnerships that we're going to need to help educate our student-athletes how to function that way. Ken WhiteYeah. Jeremy MartinBut it's the notion of compliance, marketing, and sponsorship like the differing expertise. But they have to come together to make this work for student-athletes. Ken WhiteSo compliance for the non the non-college sports fan, what is what does that mean? Kevin DwanSo our compliance department, in our case, Paul, is is the one who's making sure that we're all following all the NCA guidelines, that our student-athletes remain eligible, that our coaches are following the recruiting guidelines, that we're doing all the right thing. You know, the NCA rule book is sizable. Ken WhiteYeah. Jeremy MartinI believe it's four hundred seventy-five pages. Kevin DwanSo it's a big job, and it just got a little bit bigger, you know, adding this onto their plate as well. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. It's a huge job, and it sort of shifts everything, doesn't it? Kevin DwanYeah, it really does. It just adds a completely new component to what Paul and NCA compliance officers all around the country have to deal with it and have to think about. And like I mentioned, Paul's priority and our priority is making sure our student-athletes remain eligible. You know, typically rules that are broken, you know, the ones that make headlines are not the most common ones. Typically, it's inadvertent. Jeremy said 400 something pages. It's impossible for everyone to know everything that it says. So Paul's job is to make sure that he's a resource for our coaches and our student-athletes, so they don't get into in any trouble that they're not intending to get into, especially in this added a whole new area that's new to all of us. Ken WhiteJeremy, do you think there will be winners and losers in this? Big winners and big losers, is that possible? Jeremy MartinYes, I wouldn't necessarily use those terms. I think it'll be a differentiator. And so, again, feels fitting to talk about markets while you're in Miller Hall. So, really, the fascinating thing to me is there's an assumption of the size of the market that exists for student-athletes name, image, likeness. And where those things really are is around. Hey, if you are a college athletics superstar in whatever sport it is, you have all of this exposure, all these things. What can you do? And the reality is that's a very small piece of the student-athlete market, talent market, so to speak. So I think it's interesting to look at student-athletes, particularly the mid-major level that William & Mary and other places, and say this is actually going to be an indicator to say, here's what your value in the marketplace is. It may not be what you thought it was. The other piece for student-athletes, frankly, NIL monetizing it, will be a third job. So you have the first job of being a student at William & Mary. The second of you're spending a lot of your time at twenty hours a week as a student-athlete. And now we're saying, okay, how many hours do you want to spend trying to build a brand for yourself? So I actually think you will have some student-athletes who say it's good to know that we could. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Jeremy MartinI'm interested in being a student and an athlete, and I'm not going to have time for anything else. But also sort of as some student-athletes find that there is value, there is value to monetize in their name, image, likeness, and their personal brand. How that balance of okay I have commitments to the classroom. I have commitments to competition and now commitments to corporate sponsors and things like that. How do I balance those and what happens when potentially you see overreach and that that sponsorship area in which it suddenly becomes, okay, I'm not actually performing as well as I was because I don't have as much time for athletics or the academics that I once did. So there definitely will be differentiators. And the markets from an institutional respect markets individually markets from an institutional perspective. Kevin and I have talked a lot about this. It's fascinating to think of are the student-athletes winning? Are the departments winning, or is there some balance that's sort of a zero-sum game we're in? And we've talked a little bit about whether sponsors view themselves as sponsors, as in I'm getting a return on what I offer or whether they're boosters. And I know you've thought a little bit more about that, Kevin. Kevin DwanYeah, and I think that there's a variety of those. I don't think everyone fits into one box, you know, so the ones who view themselves more as boosters and they want to support a school because they're part of the community. I think those are the ones that you've got to be careful as an athletic department. They're going to be very interested in working with directly with the student-athletes. Ken WhiteRight. Kevin DwanBut the majority of the businesses that we work with want to see a return. And I think they're going to have to make a decision, a business decision, whether they see more of a return working directly with student-athletes or with the department as a whole. And I don't think there's one answer. I think it's going to be unique to each partner. Jeremy MartinIt's also fascinating sort of in the interplay because most of the policies that you see have specific stipulations around use of institutional logos and things like that. Ken WhiteYes. Jeremy MartinSo, for instance, can you appear in a green t-shirt? That's fine. Can you appear in a logo t-shirt? Well, you now are actually someone looking to do a licensing. Ken WhiteYes. Jeremy MartinAs an independent NIL, you're a person you're looking to do a licensing to be able to use the logo. And that's that sort of changes the nature of the relationship as well in some ways, so we're just going to keep track of and watch as it develops. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Jeremy Martin and Kevin Dwan in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Our post-COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. Well, those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats in the MBA, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Jeremy Martin and Kevin Dwan. Ken WhiteAnd Kevin, I think it was University of Texas, their bookstore has made some agreement with student-athletes in terms of so those are the kind of things someone like in your position be dealing with. Kevin DwanYeah, those would come across my desk as well as Paul's. And, you know, like Jeremy said, it's complicated when you write your own policy. You know, the state of Virginia hasn't issued guidance yet. So we had to make a decision how restrictive or how permissive our policy was going to be. Ken WhiteRight. Kevin DwanAnd, you know, we tried to make it as permissive as possible. You know, we don't want to limit our student-athletes opportunities at all, but we do have to protect our business interests. So if we work with one car dealership and a student-athlete has a partnership with another, we don't necessarily want that William & Mary logo on their chest when they're in a commercial, you know, with a competing car dealership? So those are the sort of things that we try to spell out in here and give a pathway to be as permissive as possible while still protecting our interests. Ken WhiteOne athlete in Alabama who's not been a starter yet has not, as a starting quarterback, taken a snap. We're looking at almost a million dollars in endorsements. How does that happen? Kevin DwanI think people are making a bet on, you know, looking at the history of Alabama starting quarterbacks. Ken WhiteYeah. Kevin DwanThat's probably a pretty safe bet, to be honest with you. So, you know, there's some speculation there for sure. And I think at the outset, you know, we're so early in this. I think a lot of people are testing it, and they want to see how well it's going to work. You know, I do think things will come back down to earth a little bit in the next couple of months, maybe a couple of years. But there's no question people are out there pushing the limits and trying to find the loopholes and see everything that they can do. And some student-athletes are going to benefit from that in a big way. Jeremy MartinWell, the Alabama quarterback is a great example. So from, again, valuing this NIL, you're looking at the projected starting quarterback and saying, we think that you're going to be on national TV Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Jeremy Martinten Saturdays this fall. Ken WhiteYeah. Jeremy MartinYou know, all those sorts of things. And then it sort, again, other stuff that hasn't just been settled out. At the end of every Super Bowl, it used to be that they, you know, put a Disney camera in your face and say, oh, no, are you going to see student-athletes pulling cell phones out on the sidelines after wins. Like all of this stuff, just in terms of relation of, okay, when are you in your athletic capacity versus when are you in your individual capacity, all those sorts of things. We're going to have to go through a few cycles of these to figure some of this stuff out. Ken WhiteNo question. Will we see athletic departments have new positions, associate director for NIL? I mean, for example, I mean, just to handle all of this. Jeremy MartinYou already are. Most of the new positions I'm familiar with, Ken, are actually on the compliance side. Ken WhiteOh okay. Jeremy MartinAnd also, a number of folks are outsourcing sort of, again, that third-party educator to say we want you to provide the educational component. And in the marketplace, there are few. I think it's it's actually just a handful that have we provide the education component. And we also have a marketplace in which student-athletes can meet with potential sponsors and things like that. So, yes, there will be yes. It adds work. There will be additional staff hired at a number of places. I don't know that at our level. We haven't seen the floodgates open at William & Mary. And so that our student-athletes, I actually think, are more likely to benefit from their creativity and entrepreneurship beyond their capacity as student-athletes. But the classic is we have student-athlete who was an avid fisherman and had had a podcast or had had a video blog related to that like he could now monetize that and be sponsored by fishing companies and things like that. That's unrelated to his ability as a student-athlete. Kevin DwanYeah, and I think the areas where in addition to the compliance positions that you're going to see, we're starting to see creative positions in college athletics. So even though we can create content for someone to use for their name, image, and likeness activities for a student-athlete to use. We can talk to them about how we'll grow their brand and, you know, help them to grow their social media following. And, you know, athletic departments were already creating content, not branded content that the student-athlete monetize, but they were creating content for student-athletes to share on their own social media, you know, videos, graphics, things like that. And that's a big part of recruiting now. Student-athletes want to know how you can help me grow my individual brand so that I can then go out and monetize it. So those creative positions, I think there's really going to be a run on that one as well. Jeremy MartinIf you think about the classic recruiting day photos where it's like, well, how did they get that recruit in the jersey? You know, I think things like, well, they did a photoshoot when they're on their visit. Ken WhiteRight. There you go. Jeremy MartinThere, you know, they were ready and creating graphics Ken WhiteYeah. Jeremy Martinfor that individual. Kevin DwanYeah. Ken WhiteWhat does this do for the NCAA and its future? I mean, this was one powerful organization for decades. Does this strengthen it? Weaken it? Nothing. Jeremy MartinSorry, my pause is weaken is a fascinating thing. The NCAA has always been made up of its membership Ken WhiteRight. Jeremy Martinand Mark Emmert would say that regularly. Ken WhiteHe's the executive director Jeremy Martinof the NCAA. What's really fascinating is, again, this is where the Austin case comes in, and you start to see, okay, the NCAA is effectively setting the entire market for college athletics. Likely has lost clout in terms of its ability to set that market. The institutions and the so governance wise, whereas you had the institutions of the conference, is looking to the NCAA saying, what could we do? You now likely find yourself in a scenario where the NCAA is saying we have some risk averseness of what we can do at the national level. What are you as a conference, what are you as an institution going to do? Which is really just a sort of a governance. It's a reframing of the governance relationship. And it remains to be seen. I mean, there's obviously some right now as we're filming this, you know, there's speculation about where Texas and Oklahoma ultimately will land. Ken WhiteRight. Jeremy MartinSome of these developments may make more likely that differentiated on market institutions are affiliating themselves differently in the future. Ken WhiteInteresting. I was talking to a former student-athlete recently who a female said, I think women are really going to jump in this. I think there's some really cool opportunities because some of the female student-athletes in some college towns have incredible followings. Right. Kevin, have you seen some of these who are just absolutely. They're the leaders of their communities. They're such stars. Kevin DwanAbsolutely. I mean, I know there's a specific instance of twin basketball players, twin sisters, out at Fresno State University who came in with massive followings and now going to be able to to take advantage of that, which I think is wonderful because, you know, previously they were going to have to make a decision. You know, they stand to make a lot of money, but they couldn't do that and play college basketball. Ken WhiteYeah. Kevin DwanAnd now they don't have to make that decision. They can stay at Fresno State and hopefully have great careers. And so it's a huge opportunity for people like that. Jeremy MartinOne article not that long ago, more than half of the top ten Instagram followings among college athletes were actually women's athletes Ken WhiteRight. Jeremy Martinin various sports. But if you think about someone like Paige Bueckers at UConn, she may actually have a larger platform. Ken WhiteYeah. Jeremy MartinAs the star player at UConn, then turning pro, which was never the case before. And if you want to make any money, you would have to change. So it is fascinating to see on my YouTube feed right after the William & Mary recruit's, you know, that always search us, and it is interesting to see, okay, the twins from Fresno State appear on my feed. Paige Bueckers might be in that kind of thing and how that works out and all of those things, by the way, whether or not you can advantage yourself in YouTube algorithms or things like it. Ken WhiteWow. Jeremy MartinFor all these student-athletes. Ken WhiteAny Jeremy, any advice to parents because they're going to play a role in this. This is affecting them. They get involved in the recruiting aspect of it. Any advice to them as their son or daughter comes through the pipeline? Jeremy MartinParenting is hard. Ken WhiteYeah. Jeremy MartinI would I don't think the role of momager or dad managers is a great one. You know, I think you love and support your children, and you let them follow their interest. I think that I think that sometimes you run into parents who believe that, like there's naturally a scholarship for my child in the sport, whatever it is. And, you know, there's a lot of coverage to sort of recognize. Oh, well, like the percentage you actually get scholarships is really small with travel teams and all sorts of things. Now, like you find huge investments in parents from a very, very, very young age. So my advice to any parent would be and what I try hopefully doing, but that failing and Kevin I know you got love your kids, encourage them as they pursue their interests, but it's going to be a very, very slim few that are going to have, you know, multimillion-dollar value in NIL by the time they reach college or even during college. And so enjoy your kids. Love them. Ken WhiteKevin, this might be unfair but looking through your crystal ball. What do you think is coming? What should we be watching out for in terms of NIL? What are some of the bigger issues? Kevin DwanYeah, you know, I think NIL in conjunction with the transfer portal and, you know, removing restrictions, I think is, you know, creates some risk for student-athletes just in the sense, like we had talked about previously. Student-athletes chasing things, you know, trying to get to bigger markets, bigger teams, because they think that's going to be a benefit. And there are only so many opportunities in Division one. You know, you already hear horror stories about thousands of student-athletes being in the transfer portal, and they're just not being that many scholarships available. You know, so there are kids who are no doubt being left without opportunities. And I think name, image, and likeness, you know, there's some risk that that makes that a little bit worse. It gives another incentive to look to other opportunities to look to change things. But in general, I do think it's positive. You know, I think there are student-athletes who've had to make difficult decisions, you know, whether they have to go pursue a career, whether that's professional sports or other opportunities, or stay in college and be a student-athlete. And, you know, NIL kind of helps to solve that problem, you know, now, hopefully, more kids can complete their degrees, and maybe you see student-athletes sticking around longer. Playing three or four years instead of one or two because they don't have to make those difficult decisions. So, you know, there's a lot to learn, and there's a lot we don't know yet. But in general, I think if we stay on top of it and just keep the best interest of the student-athletes in mind, it's largely positive. Jeremy MartinI think the Duke example, again, not that everything has to revolve around the Blue Devils, but if you think about. All right. In the classic days when players stayed for three or four years in that program, what was Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Grant Hills? What were their initials worth having literally having built a following while they're in college versus the one-and-done player who comes in with a huge reputation, to begin with, but doesn't necessarily have the loyalty of a fan base immediately? And hopefully, actually, my personal opinion, I love to see it play out the way you just mentioned there, where it's like, hey, you could stay in college two or three or even four years because you're not penalized for being here in that regard. But that's my hope, at least. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jeremy Martin and Kevin Dwan, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guests Jeremy Martin and Kevin Dwan. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Ram Ganeshan](images/ram-ganeshan-157-thumb.jpg)
![Supply Chain & The Pandemic](images/ram-ganeshan-157-thumb.jpg)
Ram Ganeshan
Episode 157: July 16, 2021
Supply Chain & The Pandemic
If you’ve tried to purchase new furniture recently, or chlorine for a pool, or even certain makes and models of new cars, you may have been told you’ll have to wait several weeks - possibly several months before the product is back in stock. Items from lumber to clothing to electronics have been difficult to find in recent months. The reason is often tied to the supply chain, which has been adversely affected throughout the pandemic, forcing consumers to wait until their new purchases arrive. Ram Ganeshan is a Professor of Operations and Information Systems Management at William & Mary School of Business. He teaches supply chain management and digital strategies courses. His research and consulting interests include supply chain management and logistics strategy. Professor Ganeshan says the shortages we see now are the results of decades-long developments in supply chains, and the pandemic simply tipped it over the edge. He joins us today to discuss supply chains, their complexity, and why the shortages are happening.
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Ram Ganeshan: Supply Chain & The Pandemic TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, if you've tried to purchase new furniture recently or chlorine for a pool or even certain makes and models of new cars. You may have been told you'll have to wait several weeks, possibly several months, before the product is back in stock. Items from lumber to clothing to electronics have been difficult to find in recent months. Well, the reason is often tied to the supply chain, which has been adversely affected throughout the pandemic—forcing consumers to wait until their new purchases arrive. Ram Ganeshan is a professor of operations and information systems management at William & Mary's School of Business. He teaches supply chain management and digital strategies courses. His research and consulting interests include supply chain management and logistics strategy. Professor Ganesan says the shortages we see now are the results of decades-long developments in supply chains, and the pandemic simply tipped it over the edge. He joins us today to discuss supply chains, their complexity, and why the shortages are happening. Here's our conversation with Professor Ram Ganeshan. Ken WhiteWell, Ram, thanks for joining us. Great to see you. I appreciate you sharing your time and expertise with us today. Ram GaneshanSame here. Ken WhiteSo supply chain, it's one of those things. I think people know the term, but they don't. Many people don't understand really what this is. What is supply chain? You've used the term division of labor. Can you explain what supply chain is? Ram GaneshanThe easiest way to think about it as supply chain is the series of activities that source the components, and something is made out of it, assembled, produced, manufactured, and then it slowly makes its way to the end customer via our distribution centers and ports and rail and truck and so on and gets to your local store or stuff like that. So it's a series of events that gets makes the product and gets it to you. And then the second part of the supply chain is once the product is used, how it's disassembled and reused and recycled, and so on. So that's the reverse supply chain. So that, in a sense, is what I would consider a supply chain. Ken WhiteAnd in our world today, we need to rely on that because some products are pretty complicated, aren't they? Ram GaneshanYes, most products are. You know, your iPhone, for example, is it has at last count more than 60 or 70 metals from the periodic table. Ken WhiteWow. Ram GaneshanThose of you have it hanging on your bedroom wall would know that. Not only that but it's designed in, of course, California. And all the components are made in Taiwan and Korea, and Japan. And it's actually assembled in China, and it's shipped to the United States. Where most of the demand is for the iPhone. So supply chains have not only are complex, but they've also become very global. Ken WhiteWe're seeing some shortages right now in various products. This didn't happen overnight, did it? Ram GaneshanNo, it didn't. And part of the reason we are actually seeing it now is of how supply chains have evolved over time. It used to be that 30 years ago, the common reason why large multinational companies outsource, especially this may be obvious in apparel to the Far East, is because of labor costs. So they were able to save on labor and then show a quarterly increase in profits and so on. But the way it's evolved now is supply chains have what I would call become not only global, but they've also become very specialized and very concentrated. The semiconductor was a case in point, actually. If you look at the semiconductor supply chain if you look at the demand for chips. China and the U.S. account for half the world's demand of semiconductors. Twenty-five percent each. But if you think about how the semiconductors are actually made, the U.S. spends the value added by the United States is largely in the design and the core I.P. Folks like Intel design the chips. And what has happened over the last twenty-five years is we don't have any fabrication at least of any sufficient capacity in the United States. And most of the fabrication of those chips happened really in three countries, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. So they do most of what they call wafer fabrications. And you've seen pictures of people in white suits going in cleaned rooms. And so that's where that happens. It's a very expensive thing to do. And the industrial policy in those countries and the particular companies have decided that this is the way they want to go. So most of wafer production happens in the Far East, and then China has taken the more of the assembly and the testing of the semiconductor. So the United States still, if you look at the in totality, the United States still, if you look at value-added, has 40 percent of the value chain of some of the largest in the world still. But they only make certain things. They only do certain parts of it. And we can call it division of labor, if you may. So Taiwan is the only country in the world that does the less than 10 nanometer, which is the faster, more advanced logic chips. So that's how they've sort of become not just global but concentrated and highly specialized, which is leading into some of these shortages. Ken WhiteYes. So what happened then, for example, the semiconductor. Ram GaneshanSo the first signs of the pandemic was in February. That's when things in China and Taiwan, and Japan started shutting down. Ken WhiteYes. Ram GaneshanSo we lost some capacity there. And then in March and April, when we shut down. The demand for let's talk about the auto industry because that's where we're seeing it. Ken WhiteRight. Ram GaneshanThe demand for new cars and rental cars just plummeted. Ken WhiteSure did. Ram GaneshanAnd if you look at the auto industry, they have long been operating on what is called the Just-In-Time system. So they hold just enough inventory, and they become extremely good at cutting costs and cutting costs and keeping it running a tight ship. So as soon as they saw the demand go down, they just cut their orders for parts and supplies of semiconductors from the Far East because that's also spread globally. Interestingly enough, as we were shutting down demand for certain products and we have all heard of the pelotons, right. Ken WhiteSure. Ram GaneshanThat started increasing your webcams and your computers and iPads and so on and so forth. So what was happening is the semiconductor capacity started being reallocated from auto to all these different products where there was an increase in demand. So the change in consumer patterns caught the auto industry in a bind. But then there are other issues. They were geopolitical issues, obviously. President Trump, for example, banned Huawei and GTE. And what they started doing was they started holding the 5G chips because they saw this coming. Ken WhiteRight. Ram GaneshanAnd they started holding the chips at a time. And then certain semiconductor companies in China got blacklisted, some of the big fabs, for example, and they lost that we lost that capacity there. The issue then we had some small hiccups like fires and fabrication plants and Taiwan and Japan that sort of jammed up the system. That clearly put a lot of pressure on semiconductors. So and because it's a very capital investment intensive industry, you need big machines and clean rooms and so on. A small fire can mess things up quite a bit. Ken WhiteYeah. Ram GaneshanSo it's not a matter of, you know, cleaning it normally. Ken WhiteRight. Ram GaneshanIt's a special thing. So, yeah. So it's not easy to change capacity. Ken WhiteRight. Ram GaneshanIt takes about nine to 12 months. So what we are anticipating is maybe the semi shortage might ease up by the end of this year. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Ram Ganeshan in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Our post COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. Well, those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to lead and succeed in our new world. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Professor Ram Ganeshan. Ram GaneshanI don't know if you want to talk about the logistics of getting those things to the U.S. Ken WhiteYeah, I think that's we see it in the press, right? Ram GaneshanYeah. Ken WhiteWe see the cargo ships sitting, you know, outside of Norfolk or Los Angeles. Ram GaneshanYeah, so I talked about the increased demand. Part of the issue of the increased demand is you had all these containers full of stuff. I mean, this could be board games or whatever else. Ken WhiteSure. Ram GaneshanIt's filled with that people were ordering. And part of the reason is the demand shifted from services to products. So we no longer going out to eat and we not going to cinemas or concerts or getting massages or whatever. So disposable income was being spent on these different things. Ken WhiteRight. Ram GaneshanAnd they were all a significant portion of it was coming from outside the United States and the supply. So you saw even a small increase, you know, 10 to 30 percent increase in some products. The suppliers were working overtime, and these containers full of stuff were coming towards usually they come towards the California ports because those are the closest to China. And clearly, that created a huge logjam. And I read a statistic somewhere that an average of 40 ships were waiting, an average of anchored for seven days to actually get into the port. Ken WhiteWow. Ram GaneshanSo think about this big not only that, the folks who are working in the ports were at lowered capacity simply because COVID restrictions. Ports couldn't go in 100 percent capacity. So those two contributed to the port congestion. But an interesting another statistic was the Port of L.A., for the first time last year, handled more than what they call one million TEUs. TEUs the easy way to think about it is a 20-foot container would be one TEU. So typical 40 foot would be set to. This is simplifying things, but more than a million the first time ever. Ken WhiteWow. Ram GaneshanSo they're working, and it's not like they're doing significant business. There's a problem that's associated with that, which is the trade imbalance. I mean, you heard you heard of politicians talk about it all the time. So we're getting the containers full of stuff, but then we're not shipping them full of stuff. Now, second issue that has come up in port operations is container availability. So we have these full containers that take several days to empty out. And the reason it's taking several days to empty out simply because the warehouses are full. So they don't have room to put these containers anywhere. Ken WhiteWow. Ram GaneshanSo it's sort of backed up that way. And now, when you have an empty container now, it has to go back to get it fulled. So so you have to load it up onto a ship which takes significant amount of time. Ken WhiteSure. Ram GaneshanShip it to wherever it needs to go. So this has created a sort of a global maritime problem of port congestion. Of course, we could talk about the ship getting stuck on the Suez Canal. Ken WhiteRight. Ram GaneshanWow. Ken WhiteYeah. I mean, it makes sense. It makes sense that when you think about it, when organizations, when it comes to supply chain companies, Fortune 500 companies, manufacturers, they'll practice crisis communication. Right. They'll practice for something that could happen in a public relations manner that could affect them. Do they do that with supply chain? I guess my question is, did no one see this coming, basically? Ram GaneshanThey saw it coming. I think there are multiple reasons why we find ourselves here. You know, Don Rumsfeld, who was our defense secretary, once said, you know, he did a four by two by two grid. The known knowns and the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. The pandemic was definitely unknown, known. And so we just didn't know when it was going to hit. But we know it was going to hit. I mean, firms do take a lot of spend a lot of time and energy managing risk in the supply chain and disruptions in the supply chain. But most of it involve, for example, you hold a little bit more inventory than before to buffer against it, or you find some capacity somewhere, or you diversify your supply base. So if some something goes down, you can. So there are several examples that do exist. But the pandemic was unique because, for several products, the demand went down to zero. So did the supply. If you take recreational vehicles, for example, the demand was shooting through the roof, and you didn't have enough supply to make it. So it was on both sides. I mean, so I think many planners need to grapple with should we plan for a state of being in a pandemic all the time, which can be a very expensive supply chain. So you have to take your you have to balance your risks. Ken WhiteYeah. Ram GaneshanSo you go with the smaller risks, you cover them, the larger risks, you have a larger, bigger plan so. Ken WhiteLong-term, how is important? How is the relationship between the U.S. and China affecting supply chain long term? Ram GaneshanWell, we about when China joined the WTO 20 odd years ago, we really joined hands with them saying we're going to work with you. I mean, if you look at the Fortune 500 companies, it'd be hard to find a company that does not do business in China or actually get its revenues from China. So it goes both ways. So we buy stuff and sell stuff to them, too. So the real solution is, do you know what I would call broker a détente between China and the U.S.? I think we need to figure out a way to work together. I think that's the real solution. Trying to posture sort of adversarial posturing is not going to help. Ken WhiteWere there winners or losers? I assume a lot of losers throughout the pandemic in terms of products and sales. Were there any winners in all of this? Ram GaneshanI think it's a sort of a scale. Right. How much did you win and lose? And unfortunately, I think the biggest losers let me start there are small businesses that didn't have the scale. You know, I am, for example, big coffee drinker. And I also love craft beer. And unfortunately, because demand simply disappeared and they didn't have the sort of the skill to do digital delivery and have like a touchless thing. Many of the small businesses, unfortunately, didn't fare really well. The Cares Act did help, but not enough. I think some of the large multinationals are doing really well. I mean, I mean, just look at some of the quarterly announcements for profits, right. It was a blockbuster quarter last year, and it's going to be a blockbuster quarter this year for some of the big guys in the Fortune 500. So they were winners, I think, in many ways. So, yeah, it's unfortunate. And I think we do need some sort of an industrial policy. The U.S., I think, has been hesitant to have a policy, but I think we do need something to protect this knowledge. And because small businesses are the majority of what we have here. Ken WhiteAnd for the consumer, if you're waiting, you just hang in there. It's coming right. Whatever it is you're waiting on is coming eventually. Ram GaneshanI mean, yeah, if you have to buy a house, you don't have a choice, you pay more. I mean, that is the nature of things. But we've heard about the lumber shortage, but it's coming slowly back to normal. Of course, toilet paper is also somewhat back to normal. Ken WhiteYeah. Ram GaneshanThere has been some adjustments, but some of these inflationary pressures are sort of easing, at least from a supply chain perspective. I think the economy is going to do really well, at least the next quarter, from what I can tell. Yeah, I think I think hopefully, as more of the world gets vaccinated and things slowly begin, normalcy begins to appear. I think in the U.S., it's still somewhat feel to normal now, since about, oh, close to 70 percent of us are vaccinated. But you still can't travel around the world. It is still not normal for most of the rest of the world. So I think once that eases, I think we'll see things slowly getting back to where they were. At least, let's hope so. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Ram Ganeshan. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats, the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Ram Ganeshan and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Mike Seiler](images/mike-seiler-156-thumb.jpg)
![The U.S. Housing Market](images/mike-seiler-156-thumb.jpg)
Mike Seiler
Episode 156: July 1, 2021
The U.S. Housing Market
Of the many sectors and industries affected by the pandemic, one in particular has caught the attention of consumers, buyers, sellers, and investors: The US housing market. Mortgage rates, prices, labor, supply, demand - they’ve all changed over the past few months, making the housing market one of the most interesting to follow. Saying the market is “hot” in some areas is a major understatement. Houses are selling quickly in many regions, often for well above the listing price. In some cases, buyers are doing whatever it takes to secure the property, like foregoing home inspections and making all-cash offers. But while we hear about the hot markets in many parts of the country, that’s not the case in every region and city. Mike Seiler is a Professor of Real Estate and Finance at William & Mary School of Business. He joins us today to talk about the US housing market, how it differs from region to region and where things might end up in the months ahead.
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Mike Seiler: The U.S. Housing Market TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Of the many sectors and industries affected by the pandemic, one, in particular, has caught the attention of consumers, buyers, sellers, and investors. The U.S. housing market. Mortgage rates, prices, labor supply, demand, they've all changed over the past few months, making the housing market one of the most interesting to follow. Saying the market is hot in some areas is a major understatement. Houses are selling quickly in many regions, often for well above the listing price. In some cases, buyers are doing whatever it takes to secure the property, like forgoing home inspections and making all-cash offers. But while we hear about the hot markets in many parts of the country, that's not the case in every region and city. Mike Seiler is a professor of real estate and finance at William & Mary's School of Business. He joins us today to talk about the U.S. housing market, how it differs from region to region, and where things might end up in the months ahead. Here's our conversation with Professor Mike Seiler. Ken WhiteWell, Mike, thanks very much for joining us. It's nice to see you. Hope you had a good, good Memorial Day weekend. Mike SeilerYeah, we sure did. Enjoying the recovery of the weather. It's really good to see you. I can't wait to see you in person. Ken WhiteYeah, how about it? How about it? You know, I thought of you immediately when I keep hearing about the real estate market now, it seems to be exciting and interesting. And right now, when you look at the residential real estate market in the U.S., what are you seeing? I mean, how do you describe it? Mike SeilerWell, as you know, it's super hot, right? I mean, we have the fewest number of homes on record that are out there on the market. So you just can't find anything. And I haven't heard a stat they said that there are fewer homes out there available, that you have agents represent them. So any time you have more agents in a market than you do homes, you know, you have a restrictive supply. So that's just pushing home prices way, way high. Ken WhiteWow. Well, you know, one of the downsides is people think, yes, I'll sell, I'll make money. But you need another place to live. If you buy, that'll be expensive. Mike SeilerYeah. In fact, it might be the other way around. Let's say that you live in a home, and you just want to be there for a super long period of time. Well, in most states, that's just going to cause your taxes to go up. Your property taxes are going up because your home value went up. So if you're in a state like Virginia where they just say, well, every year your taxes are going to be based on market value, then that's not good for you. You actually want home prices to go down for all of the years that you're going to live there and then go right back up again, and then you sell. That's what you want. So, yes, this means higher property taxes for us owners who are more thinking in terms of staying in place. Ken WhiteYeah, great point. When you look at today's market, does it remind you of any other period of time in the last generation or so? Mike SeilerWell, the home appreciation aspect of it reminds me of two thousand four. But thankfully, we are not in a two thousand four environment. You know, two thousand four. We had home prices going up and then this fear of missing out to where you think, oh, well, if I don't buy now, I'm never going to be able to afford to buy. And then you go to your lender, and your lender says, oh, sure, we'll do these ninja loans. No job, no income, no assets. Sure, that's fine. We'll lend to you for no reason at all. People also pulled their money out in the form of treating their house like an ATM. And so a lot of problems back then. But while I see home prices going up, I think it's a lot of it is pandemic related. So it's not really as big a risk of a crash as it was in two thousand four. I say that now. Please don't replay this podcast in five years if I'm wrong. But, you know, the warning signs are not there now. That said, don't forget the Kahrizak brought about this mortgage forbearance, but we have a lot more equity in our home right now. So I understand that the market can pull back, and I think it will do that. But I don't see us with a massive void of equity. Back then, we had home prices dropping, and every time they went up, people followed that loan to value ratio by getting a second lien, pulling money out of the home. And we're not really seeing people do that now. And thank goodness, because that just sets you up for failure when that loan balance just trails the price of your home. So when the price of your home comes down, your loan balances high, and now you're underwater. We're not seeing that this time. So I am much less fearful of a crash. Ken WhiteWhat are you seeing from the pandemic? What is it doing to the home prices in the market right now? Mike SeilerWell, the home prices, of course, they continue to go up. And let me say this right off the bat. Real estate is local. So if I tell you one thing, if you're in a part of the country and you say, well, I don't know if that feels as true here, someone else in a different city might say, well, he's understating how this works. Have a super hot market, and the prices have gotten so high that I don't think I'll ever be able to buy a house. So real estate is very, very local. I think a lot of what we're experiencing is pandemic-driven. So, for example, you might wonder why are home prices are going up, what's happening here. And some of the reasons are what they were before low-interest rates. But interest rates have been low for a while. So that's not really a sufficient or complete reason why home prices are going up. And we talked about restricted supply. And you might ask, why is supply restricted? Well, think about the pandemic. When it first rolled out, we had an immediate shutdown. You were afraid to physically be in proximity to other people. You certainly don't want those other people walking through your house. So we just don't see that supply of homes on the market. And spring is coming. The pandemic, we hope, knock on wood is ending or at least nearing an end. And so I think you'll see that supply of homes come back onto the market and maybe that equilibrium price will be reached. Ken WhiteBidding wars, we read a lot in certain markets. It's amazing what buyers are offering, not just the listed price, but even more foregoing inspections and so forth. Are these bidding wars good for for for real estate? Mike SeilerWell, they're good for sellers of real estate, right? They're not great for buyers. A bidding war that's in the eye of the beholder. So let's go back to your home inspection. The home inspection is typically done just to find anything that's hidden in the house because a buyer may maybe you're a surgeon and you're a genius and so forth, but you don't necessarily know how to crawl under a house, and you don't know what to look for. So you hire a home inspector, maybe you pay five hundred dollars. They will go through all the nooks and crannies of the place. But the point of the home inspection is not necessarily to kill the deal. The point of the home inspection is to find out what might be wrong with the house so that you can negotiate a more accurate price. But if you have a market that is super hot and you've got a line wrapped around the corner, a potential buyer, a seller does not want to hear what the problems are. The seller might think, well, if you don't like the house because you perceive there to be a problem, then just jump out of line. I'll talk to the person right behind you who is either not going to take the time to require a home inspection or might just kind of look past it and think, I'll just do that work myself in my downtime, whatever. So, yeah, home inspections right now, always a good idea. But in this market, if you're looking to buy, be really careful. That might cause you to get bumped out of line. Ken WhiteWow, and that's a tough spot. That's a tough spot for buyers to be in. What about new home construction? What's happening there in terms of how is it affecting the price of existing homes at this point? Mike SeilerSo, of course, when you're out there to buy a house, you can buy existing or new. And so they are competing goods. One of the factors I hear often is, yeah, but if I want a new home, it's not like there's a new home everywhere. So maybe a historic neighborhood, you only have existing homes. That's all true. But still, these two compete with each other. Now let's talk about the cost of a new home. There's a great meme going around on the Internet, and it's about a lady who's very well dressed. And she says to her husband, she says, take me somewhere expensive. And then, the next part of the meme shows that they are in the lumber aisle at Home Depot at a table waiting for them. But it's not just lumber. A lumber prices have gone crazy high, but it's everything that you put into construction. And I'm not even just talking about the building materials. I mean, remember, it wasn't that long ago that ships were parked out in the Pacific Ocean waiting to come to port because there was just no room they couldn't unload. Their 20-foot containers and 40-foot containers has been resolved for the most part. We still saw crates being shipped back to Asia empty. So imagine you're a taxi driver, right? You take someone to the airport. And logically, what you would do is you would think, well, I'm at the airport, I'm just going to get in the taxi line. But now that things two miles long, you're like, forget it. I'm going back in the city taking someone else to the airport. That's what was happening, taking goods from Asia to North America. They got here. They had to wait. They finally unloaded them. They would send them back empty. Those are signs when you're willing to traverse the largest ocean on that globe with an empty amount of freight that is telling you something is very much wrong. So logistical issues are causing prices of actual materials to go up. You also see in your homes that are being built where the people cannot get appliances for there. So you might have the home completed, but your kitchen doesn't have a refrigerator and a stove and a dishwasher that's not ready to go. It's not turnkey at that point. All kinds of problems there. And then let's talk about labor real quick. You're only as good as the people who put their hands on that home. So if you're trying to hire skilled labor and these folks are during the PPP money, you would have, let's say, five people on a construction team, maybe a construction team. They knew the work had to be cut back originally. And so they thought, well, what I'm going to do is I can either have all five of my workers have fewer hours, which is not really going to work for anybody, or I can pick three of them, the same amount of money they were earning and put two of them on unemployment. And that's what a lot of people were doing. So as we're coming back into the workforce, you're trying to get people to do work on your home, or your builders are trying to get new people to construct the home. And the skilled labor that they need is not always there. And so, again, your construction quality is a lot harder to do it with new people. I just had a company I won't name, but they were doing some foundation work in my house. I was not at all pleased with it. And they said, oh, we're just training a whole bunch of new people. And so even that name recognition, you think all of this going to a reputable company with a great name and sound history of work, that's not even enough these days. So this is really tough as a developer to do what they had been doing in the past because of a labor shortage as well. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Mike Seiler in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Our post-COVID World will require new skills and new approaches. And those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty, the William & Mary MBA, will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Professor Mike Seiler. Ken WhiteThe Wall Street Journal recently reported about one-fifth of all homes are sold that are sold are purchased by investors. How does that affect the market? Mike SeilerWell, what's so interesting about that is we should think about that number being very different. So in some places, you're going to have a lot more investors that are institutional. In other places, not so much. And I'll just give an example. We've got a really interesting paper on ibuyers, and these ibuyers are going in, and they're making a cash offer for your home. Now, initially, you might think, well, how are they going to do that? And the process is they have something called the AVM or automated valuation model. So they use machine learning and deep learning techniques to figure out how much people's homes are worth over a very, very large area. It's like a mass appraisal concept but done on a much greater scale. And then they'll make a cash offer too, let's say, five hundred thousand dollars. And you say, well, my home is worth five-sixty and say, well, Ken, the reason why I'm offering you a little bit below market value is because there's going to be no sales commission paid. Right? You're not going to pay that to me, certainly. I'm going to buy it directly. I'm going to write you a check, and then I'm going to take that home, and I'm going to make some very simple improvements. And then I'm going to turn around and sell maybe within three to four months. And that's where I'll make my money on kind of that low-hanging fruit. Let's do those high ROI projects, if you will. To a person, you might say, well, why would I be willing to accept less money? Okay, fine. There's going to be no or less commission. I get that. But what about the rest of the money? And I ask you. We have a tremendous MBA program. Let's say someone graduates, and they get a job in Seattle, but they own a home in Williamsburg, and they're concerned about that delay. I don't want to afford a mortgage in Williamsburg and then go to Seattle and pay another mortgage or rent in Seattle. I can't afford to do that. So these ibuyers are more of a kind of a grease in the system. They're providing liquidity to a market to allow labor mobility to go to its highest and best use. So in a way, they make the market more efficient. But just in terms of price, what we found in our study is that they will cause the prices of markets to go up by about two point eight percent. And it's because they're demanding these homes. So there's greater demand. Basic Econ 101 push up the price. The interesting thing is they're not just pushing up the price in that local market. It's happened what we call spillover effects in the neighboring communities. So it makes not just that community a little bit more expensive, but it makes affordability go down in the neighborhoods that are right. Sharing those borders. Ken WhiteWow. Interesting. And I got the peek at the abstract of the paper. It looks so interesting when you're discussing ibuyers'. You also talk about another segment, buy to rent. What's that all about? Mike SeilerSure. So the ibuyers are companies, and they get institutional money. They could be hedge fund, private equity. And the same is true for these buy to rent. The difference is that the buy to rent are not just providing a liquidity mechanism. They are typically going after these distressed properties, which means they can buy them for a much lower price in real estate. They say you make money on the buy, so they're following that that and they say, well, we're going to go in, we're going to buy these homes that are distressed. Then we're going to hold them for a longer period of time, so we're not as worried about market fluctuations in a way. We're going to be a property manager. We're going to buy them now at a cheap rate because of the maybe it's in foreclosure. We're going to own them for many, many years and rent them out. And then when the market goes even higher price than we could sell it for a profit. So we'll make money on both the cash flow and ideally, of course, in a cap or game situation. Ken WhiteYeah, no, no question. Yeah. You mentioned something that I thought before we started to record that that really just sounded so interesting. 3D printed homes. Tell us about that. Mike Seiler3D printed homes is what I consider to be one of the next hot things. It's a it's a proptech. So you've heard of fintech financial technology proptech just for property. And this proptech idea is something that has been really burgeoning. I know there have been some of these type homes in the past, but now we're talking about the ability to get a blueprint and really have a house built. And I'm talking about the frame of it all. Of course, you have to have someone go in and do all the appliances, the wiring separately. But as far as pouring the actual concrete of the house, imagine a very large 3D printer. So you have these rails on the perimeter of the house and then a large machine over above. It looks like maybe a cake decorator and it just kind of gently pours out concrete into whatever shape you want. The interesting thing about this is you're not just talking about a box design. So that's what you think of as a home. But you start putting two by fours next to each other in the air escapes to the vent. And so people in construction, they know about how inefficient some of these homes are. But with a 3D printing, there's no reason why you have to have right angles all the time. You know, imagine decorating a cake, you don't have to make right angles with your arm. Your arm can move freely in any way that you want it to. So think of very different designs that might be very appealing from an architectural standpoint to your eye. But also think of energy efficiency. Think of these homes as being produced much, much faster. So your wood is not being exposed to the elements for months on end during rainstorms and all that kind of stuff. And think also about the strength of it. So there are people who use ICF these hurricane-proof walls, and they form 11 inches thick and so forth. They're very nice because they can withstand very strong weather conditions. So imagine you're using kind of a commercial real estate grade material in a residential house that is going to withstand the weather. You would hope that that would translate to better efficiency because people want to escape through those thicker walls but also lower insurance rates. So don't just think of when I buy a house, what is my mortgage? It's not just principal and interest. It's also taxes and insurance. Right. And it's also repairing that house. You would imagine that the house would last a lot longer. So when you're thinking about putting money aside for roof repairs and anything with wall repair and so forth, that fund should be a little bit smaller. If you have a, you know, kind of the three wolves kind of thing, you know, the big bad wolf mentality. So a stronger home should be cheaper in the long run as well, not just more energy efficient. So those are some of the exciting things that are happening in the world of construction. Ken WhiteSo we'll put you on the spot. If you had your crystal ball a year from now, where do you think the market, the residential home market, might look like? Mike SeilerI imagine that here's my opinion on COVID. I think we obviously are winning the battle. If I imagine COVID being a really bad person. We have our boot on the throat of COVID, but we need to finish it off. And I don't know that COVID is going to be a thing may be where we have it, and then we don't. It's not like we're never going to see an outbreak again. For that reason. I don't think that we just snap our fingers, and we're done with COVID. So I don't see its effect on real estate is going away immediately. But I also, in my mind, to have this visualization of a snake that had swallowed a big pig, we need to get that pig digested, and then probably smaller animals will be consumed after that by the python. But I can see home prices continuing to go up, but far more gently. I don't think there's going to be a crash. I don't even know that they'll be necessarily a soft landing. But I definitely think that the escalated home prices cannot last forever. I mean, think about Newton's law. What goes up must come down. You don't want home prices going up too fast because then they have to come back down. It's the same type of stability that you look at in any part of the economy, of the economy. You don't want the economy to grow super fast because then it's going to end up contracting. What you want is a nice, predictable, steady stream of growth. Right now, we're in kind of a hyper normal growth in real estate. And I would like to see and think we're going to see it come down somewhat. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Mike Seiler, then that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Mike Seiler, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Anna Milholland](images/anna-milholland-155-thumb.jpg)
![Good Books for Summer Vacation](images/anna-milholland-155-thumb.jpg)
Anna Milholland
Episode 155: June 15, 2021
Good Books for Summer Vacation
The masks are coming off, we're gathering with family and friends, and many people are making plans for a much needed and well-deserved summer vacation. Whether you're heading to the beach, the mountains, or the in-laws, if you're looking for the right book to take along we have the right person who has several recommendations in terms of good reads for your summer getaway. Anna Milholland is the business librarian at the McLeod Library at William & Mary's School of Business. She oversees the Library, its databases, books and publications, and works closely with students and faculty. We invited her to join us today to share the titles of six books she thinks you'll want to consider for your summer vacation. Some on the list are new, some not so new, some are fairly easy reads while others may be challenging. But each book on the list is relevant, interesting, and thought provoking.
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Anna Milholland: Good Books for Summer Vacation TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, the masks are coming off. We're gathering with family and friends, and many people are making plans for a much-needed and well-deserved summer vacation. Whether you're heading to the beach, the mountains, or the in-laws, if you're looking for the right book to take along, we have the right person who has several recommendations in terms of good reads for your summer getaway. Anna Milholland is the business librarian at the McLeod Library at William & Mary School of Business. She oversees the library, its databases, books, and publications and works closely with students and faculty. We invited her to join us today to share the titles of six books she thinks you'll want to consider for your summer vacation. Some on the list are new, some not so new, some are fairly easy reads, while others may be challenging. But each book on the list is relevant, interesting, and thought-provoking. Here's our conversation with the business librarian at William & Mary School of Business, Anna Milholland. Ken WhiteAnna, thanks very much for sharing your time. We should say it should be quiet today. Graduation just occurred as we're recording. So it's the day after the big storm. What a great weekend it was. Right. It's so nice to see all those grads get their diplomas. And now it's nice and quiet again. Anna MilhollandAbsolutely. Ken WhiteYeah. Anna MilhollandYes. We have this giant celebration and then a day of recovery. Ken WhiteAnd you work closely with faculty and students. So, you know, you get to know everybody. So it's a big day for you as well. Anna MilhollandI do. Yes. Graduation is always a campus-wide celebration, and the library certainly takes part in that. We really relish in our student's successes. We recognize how hard it is to graduate from William & Mary, and certainly, we celebrate with our faculty as well. Ken WhiteYeah, it was a big weekend. It's nice to have you here. So now for a lot of folks heading off to vacation. Right. And it's always nice to take a good book or two with you. And so thanks very much for bringing a few suggestions with us. In terms of your list. Why don't you share it with us? What do you have? What are you recommending? Anna MilhollandAbsolutely. So my first is a classic business text, Leading Change by John Kotter. Dr. Kotter is the leading change management expert. He's on faculty at Harvard Business School. In this particular book, which was initially published in the mid-90s, is considered by many to be sort of the defining change management text. Ken WhiteYeah. Anna MilhollandThere was this recent commentary from the Canadian Medical Education Journal, which discussed how a hospital emergency room employee, Dr. Kotter's eight-step process for change management during COVID, which is really inspiring. I think this is one that can be used and is used across industries. Ken WhiteYeah, what has not changed. Anna MilhollandRight. Ken WhiteEspecially the last couple of years, right? Anna MilhollandYes. Ken WhiteInteresting. Anna MilhollandAnd we use this text in libraries, too, and I think it's really helpful, and it resonates just across the board as we all kind of consider how to create a sense of urgency around a change, how to build that guiding coalition, forming that strategic vision and initiatives, enlisting volunteers, removing barriers and enabling action when we do that, generating short term wins, which are just critical for any success to continue in sustaining that acceleration and then instituting the change. Ken WhiteIt could be an interesting read, especially because we all just went through a considerable amount of change. Anna MilhollandYes, yes. Ken WhiteSo you're looking back and forward. Anna MilhollandYes, absolutely. Ken WhiteExcellent. Anna MilhollandI think we will continue to see monumental change. So, yes, it's a great piece for reflection, but it's also a great piece for propelling us. Ken WhiteWonderful. So the first one is leading change. How about your second recommendation? Anna MilhollandSo this I would classify as my all-around must-read for summer. It's called Algorithms of Oppression How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble. It's published by NYU Press. And Dr. Noble is a professor at the University of Southern California. And she came to academia with an extensive background in working in advertising and marketing for Fortune 100 accounts. Ken WhiteWhat do you like about it? Anna MilhollandYeah, so this particular book was published after years of study about search engines, particularly Google, though Dr. Nobel does include examples from others and how Google queries for black and Latino girls and women reveal and reflect systematic racism, which is it's really interesting. It's incredibly relevant, as it always has been. And it's not an easy beach read, but I think it is a book that requires attention and focus and personal interrogation about biases, and it's 100 percent worth it. Ken WhiteAnd relevant again. Anna MilhollandAbsolutely. Ken WhiteRight. But the first two seem extremely relevant. We can tie it right to what's happening today. Anna MilhollandAbsolutely. Ken WhiteInteresting. Now your third recommendation. Anna MilhollandSure. This one is for motivation, motivating your team. I think, again, this year has been challenging for many of us. And as we are returning to the workplace in many places, we're kind of redefining who our teams are again because we've existed in this virtual environment, and now we're face to face. So a book that I have loved since I was in grad school is called Fish A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results. And it's by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen. And I first read it, as I mentioned, as part of a library management course. But the philosophies and attitudes, I think, just really continue to resonate. I particularly love the concepts of choosing your attitude. I think that's so critical for coming to work each day and for framing your workday, but also play because it's so important for creating a workplace where people want to be and where they can be their best creative selves. Ken WhiteYeah, again, relevant. Wow. This is what's happening today. Right. And work is changing so much. So fantastic. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Anna Milholland in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Post COVID World will require new skills and new approaches. And those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty, the William & Mary MBA, will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Anna Milholland on Good reads for your summer vacation. Ken WhiteHow about your fourth? Anna MilhollandYes, this is what I would call the twenty twenty-one-themed read, and I want to preface it with this. So amidst Jim Crow, segregation, and racial violence against African-Americans, Tulsa's Greenwood District, a center of African-American commerce which was also known as Black Wall Street, thrived. In light of the one 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. I want to highlight a book that I haven't read, but I want to read. And it's called The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre A Photographic History by Karlos K. Hill. Dr. Hill's research expertise and scholarship centers on racial violence. And he is a professor at the University of Oklahoma. And is it okay if I read the description from the OU press? Ken WhiteYeah, please. That's great. Anna MilhollandOkay, here's an excerpt. Historian and Black Studies Professor Karlos K. Hill presents a range of photographs taken before, during, and after the massacre, mostly by white photographers. Some of the images are published here for the first time. Comparing these photographs to those taken elsewhere in the United States of lynchings. The author makes a powerful case for terming the 1921 outbreak not a riot but a massacre. White civilians, in many cases assisted or condoned by local and state law enforcement, perpetuated a systematic and coordinated attack on black Tulsans and their property. Despite all the violence and devastation, Black Tulsan's rebuilt the Greenwood district brick by brick, by brick, by brick. By the mid 20th century, Greenwood had reached a new zenith with nearly 250 black-owned and black-operated businesses. Today, the citizens of Greenwood, with support from the broader community, continue to work diligently to revive the neighborhood once known as Black Wall Street. As a result, Hill asserts, the most important legacy of the Tulsa race massacre is the grit and resilience of the black survivors of racist violence. Ken WhiteNo doubt a light read this sounds powerful. Anna MilhollandIt really does. It sounds like an incredible read, especially considering the anniversary of the race massacre is May 31st through June 1st of 2021. Ken WhiteAnd your fifth recommendation? Anna MilhollandMy fifth is Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I want to say that I did not read this book. I listened to it, and I don't listen to audiobooks very often. But this one was amazing. So I was really on pins and needles waiting for this book to come out last year because I followed Doyle for a long time from when she was a blogger, and she authored a blog called Momastery. And this memoir was really a story of her living into her values and living into her authentic self. And I think after a year at home, a year of change, and a year of chaos, for many of us, it might have also been an opportunity for us to figure out what our values are and maybe do a deeper dive into who we are authentically and who we want to be. So I highly recommend this, and I recommend it as an audiobook because Glennon Doyle narrates it. Ken WhiteYeah, excellent. I'm going to put you on the spot. If you were going to leave for the beach today, what would you take with you? Something on this list or maybe something else? Anna MilhollandOh gosh. I would take Brene Brown's dare to lead brave work, tough conversations, whole hearts. I listen to one of her audiobooks actually about parenting. And it really, again, it really struck me. And I was able to apply many of the principles that she mentioned in my own life. And so I've long wanted to read this. I think it would be what I would take. Ken WhiteFantastic six excellent recommendations. And while we have you here, let's shift gears a little bit. You know, on our podcast, it seems almost on every episode we're talking with somebody in an industry and in a sector that is that's been disrupted. It's evolving. It's transforming. Your space I think if someone has not been to their alma mater and their business school library, they're not ready for what they're going to see. There aren't stacks of books anymore. If someone were to ask you what's the library look like in the business school, could you give them a, you know, sort of an explanation? Anna MilhollandI would say we are a place where disruptive change happens. And it's funny. When we all went when we when the world shut down, and many of us left and began working from home, I think there were there were concerns across the board about how we would all adapt to doing our work from home. Ken WhiteYeah. Anna MilhollandLibrarians, because we are so closely tied with IT, library, and information science, we had already pivoted. So we offer so many resources virtually, including our databases but also our research consultations. And I think that we were really adept and prepared for what that shift from physical to virtual would look like. Ken WhiteYeah. How do you spend a typical day with students and faculty? What do you do? Anna MilhollandSo I still work with books, but academic libraries, I think, are really centered on the research and curricular needs of our faculty and students. So this might involve engaging with work like Bibliometrics, which involves benchmarking faculty scholarship against our own brand, as well as other institutions. Thinking about how much our faculty are producing, how many citations those works are garnering, and so forth. But it also includes teaching students and teaching faculty about the resources that we have. So we I work with students in one on one and group research consultations via Zoom right now on finding appropriate resources that would meet their research question. But it also goes beyond just the discovery of the content. So we work with students on how they might analyze and use some of this information to create new knowledge. With faculty, we also can help with and do help with research as well. So it really runs the gamut. We license materials. We're copyright experts. We field questions about open education resources and open access, and where faculty and students can publish their content. So it I would say, like the scholarly communication side of the libraries, is really it's really grown in the last 15 to 20 years. And the publishing side, and we're all part of that. Ken WhiteThe typical, say, undergraduate student who uses the library, what do they tend to be coming for? Is there something they use more than other items? Anna MilhollandSure. I would say that many of them are looking for our undergrads are really smart. I should just say our undergraduate students are brilliant. So I'm not sure William & Mary, typical undergrad, is is analogous to another school's typical undergrad. But our students are looking for data. They're looking for a primary source market research about an industry or about a consumer. They are looking for scholarly articles, many of them. I work very closely with our marketing research undergraduate course. And so, they are looking for a primary source scholarship about marketing research methodologies that they could potentially apply to survey methods and so on. Ken WhiteSo some printed materials, some traditional kind of research, but also the database. Anna MilhollandAbsolutely. Ken WhiteDatabases seem to be huge. Anna MilhollandThey're massively huge. So we have about 50 databases that are I would consider to be business-centric. We also license a lot of data through a variety of providers. And, yeah, our students, they long for it. I mean, they desperately need data to make good decisions and to make their research fuller. So we work with them. Yeah. To on a lot of those things. Ken WhiteBut part of your job is to determine which data are important. Anna MilhollandAbsolutely. Ken WhiteTo give them access. Anna MilhollandAnd that's all part of the research question. So we do a research interview, rather. We do what's called a research interview with students whenever they come in for a consultation, or they come to the desk, and we ask a lot of probing questions to figure out exactly what they're working on and exactly what data they need to be able to complete their assignment. Ken WhiteAnd this can be costly. Anna MilhollandOh, data are expensive. Ken WhiteRight. Anna MilhollandYes. Our subscriptions, I mean, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ken WhiteRight. Anna MilhollandAnd that's just for the business school. That's not considering all of the other databases and information that students at William & Mary, students, faculty, and staff at William & Mary have access to through William & Mary Libraries. Ken WhiteWhat do you see in the year ahead as we and I put the word normal in quotes? How do you see the year ahead? Any major changes in terms of the library and the services and how it's used? Anna MilhollandYou know, I think that we're still all trying to figure out what back to work will look like. Ken WhiteYeah. Anna MilhollandI think across the board, though, I would say that the library services will remain consistent. We are still offering course reserves. We still offer students and faculty in our community the opportunity to come to the library and browse for books. We still will offer research consultations. How we do, that might be a little bit different, but our same core services will be the same. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Anna Milholland once again. Her six recommendations for summer reading include Leading Change by John Kotter, Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble; Fish A Proven Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results by Lundin, Paul, and Christiensen; The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, A Photographic History by Karlos Hill; Untamed by Glennon Doyle; and finally Dare to Lead Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts by Brene Brown. Well, that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Anna Milholland, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Micah West](images/micah-west-154-thumb.jpg)
![The Class of 2021](images/micah-west-154-thumb.jpg)
Micah West
Episode 154: May 17, 2021
The Class of 2021
It's graduation season, and if there's a class that deserves to be celebrated, it's the class of 2021. This group experienced higher education like no one before them. Most of these new grads began school before the pandemic when college campuses operated mostly in a face-to-face environment. Then the pandemic forced schools to quickly shift to virtual learning, and eventually for some schools a mix of virtual and in-person instruction. Things were different on campuses, and for many students things were challenging. The class of 2021 was forced to be flexible and resilient. Micah West is a member of the MBA class of 2021 at William & Mary. A BYU graduate, he entered the MBA program after working in digital marketing and e-commerce for organizations like eBay, overstock.com, the Dress Barn. In addition to being a full time grad student, he's a husband and father of four school-age daughters. He joins us today to talk about the class of 2021, their experiences, and the lessons they'll take away from attending school during a pandemic.
Podcast (audio)
Micah West: The Class of 2021 TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's graduation season. And if there's a class that deserves to be celebrated, it's the class of 2021. This group experienced higher education like no one before them. Most of these new grads began school before the pandemic when college campuses operated mostly in a face-to-face environment. Then the pandemic forced schools to quickly shift to virtual learning and, eventually, for some schools, a mix of virtual and in-person instruction. Things were different on campuses, and for many students, things were challenging. The class of 20 21 was forced to be flexible and resilient. Micah West is a member of the MBA class of 2021 at William & Mary. A BYU graduate, he entered the MBA program after working in digital marketing and e-commerce for organizations like eBay, Overstock.com, and Dress Barn. In addition to being a full-time grad student, he's a husband and father of four school-aged daughters. He joins us today to talk about the class of 2021, its experiences, and the lessons it'll take away from attending school during a pandemic. Here's our conversation with Micah West. Ken WhiteWell, Micah, thanks very much for sharing your time. First of all, are you done? Are you officially done now? Micah WestToday is the last day I've got one more final. Ken WhiteSo I can't congratulate you just quite yet. Micah WestYeah, yeah. Ken WhiteWell, I will. I will say congratulations. That's really exciting. Graduation's coming up. Will you participate. Micah WestYeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Ken WhiteWonderful. Wonderful. So you came to business school after a good, good career. You had some great jobs, and back in August of nineteen, you decided to pursue your MBA. What were you thinking it would be like because it wasn't exactly what you thought it would be, but what were you hoping to experience? Micah WestYeah, I was really hoping to come in and network with incredible individuals and, you know, come out the other side with a bit of a career change, honestly. And, you know, to the, for the most part, that's what's happened. I mean, there's been some really amazing people in the program that I've met, and I'm looking forward to continuing those relationships postgraduation. Ken WhiteA lot of people in your who were pursuing MBAs, undergraduates not right now, are saying, I didn't sign up for this. You know, this was really different. What were some of the unexpected things that that you experienced? Micah WestWell, COVID was huge, right? I think for everyone, you know, you come into a full-time in-person MBA program, and then COVID hits and, you know, everybody's trying to adjust and well, you know, we went to this complete remote schooling for a while and then we kind of switched to hybrid. But I mean, you just come in and roll with the punches, really. But I mean, the class the professors were incredible. They adjusted well, you know, and you still felt like you got the learnings out of the program, which is, you know, what you came here for in the first place. Ken WhiteThat transition was pretty quick. I mean, for all of us, of course, all industries. And one day, we're all together. The next day we're not, and here we had a little bit of a break because of spring break. And then suddenly, you were in Zoom world. What was it like to learn that way? Micah WestYou know, it was interesting. I think, to start with, you're fine, right? I mean, you jump in, and it's the same concentration levels if you were in class. I think the things that you miss ultimately are just the small conversations that you get to have before class and after class, the conversations, you know, the small talk that you'd have with the professors. So it's more of a formal situation, at least it was in the beginning. And then I think we all learned to relax a little bit and, you know, take it in stride and have fun. But, yeah, it was challenging, I think, in the beginning, but still good. Ken WhiteThen after a set period of time, William & Mary's MBA program was able to go hybrid, as we call it. You could go to class in person, or you could stay on Zoom. You elected to stay on Zoom. Micah WestI did. Ken WhiteYeah. Why did you make that choice? Micah WestYou know, I was by that time I had acclimated to online, and I thought to myself, you know, I don't have to come and pay for parking, and you know, I can still get the same education, you know, online as I can kind of in person. I've built decent relationships already, kind of having that in-person experience at the beginning of class. And, you know, I figured out a way by that time to, you know, still not work. And so I was like, hey, we're golden. You know, we can. I can do this from home and still get all the benefits, which was great. Ken WhiteWhat were classroom discussions like? Micah WestIt's always interesting on Zoom because you've got, you know, just the reality of it. You've got people that are really engaged and some that are not. And so, you know, it's the people that are engaged make the experience worth it, you know, and, you know, you try to be one of those people so that the that experience for everyone is really good. But I mean, we had amazing discussions. Ron Hess, I remember, you know, joking with us and just really diving into subjects and doing learnings that you didn't think you were going to be able to have that first semester during, you know, during the Zoom calls. And man, it was just it was great. Kudos to the professors for making that shift so quickly. Ken WhiteAnd Ron Hess is a marketing professor here at William & Mary. So you're listening to your professor. But I've seen in a number of calls. Students will start talking to each other on the chat function. Micah WestAbsolutely. Ken WhiteHow do you manage both of those? Micah WestYeah, no, I think it's great. I mean, there's always the in student to student banter going on behind the scenes. Ken WhiteRight. Micah WestSo I've got one of my buddies, Dan Kelly. He you know, we're that's kind of the whole class. We're listening to Professor, and we're making comments. Ken WhiteRight. Micah WestYou know, in the back row, as it were. Ken WhiteAnd what was interesting is a lot of faculty initially were very worried about that. I remember all of us getting together. Do we turn chat off? Do we leave it on and found leaving it on was great. I mean, students really enjoyed this. And it wasn't like they were talking about what's on ESPN.com. Micah WestExactly. Ken WhiteThese were really good conversations. Micah WestYeah. Ken WhiteYeah. Micah WestYeah, you're having these conversations, I think, about the topics in class and, you know, there's some other joking stuff Ken WhiteSure. Micah Westgoing on, of course. But, you know, it just made the environment fun, and it kept it real still. Which was nice. Ken WhiteWhat about team assignments? Because an MBA is so much teamwork. How is that in a remote setting? Micah WestIt was it was great. I mean, given Google Docs and given, you know, one drive, Microsoft one drive, I mean, you were able to go in. You know, the nice thing, I think one of the learnings for me coming out of this is just remote team management. Right. And you get in, and it's like, okay, I've done this enough times now where I know that we've got to on this document that we're working on this for this assignment. We've got to make sure that all everybody's clear on, like, what their part is when things are due. And so it's like you almost write this mini agenda for workplan almost on the top of your document. Right. Ken WhiteYeah. Micah WestSo that everybody's clear on what and then everybody can go back to that because you have these conversations on Zoom and you forget things, obviously, because you've got so much going on. Sure. So anyway, it's just been great. I mean, the I think that aspect has been good, especially going into the workforce. I'm going to GSK. Ken WhiteRight. Micah WestWe're all remote still. So, I mean, you still have this remote work environment that we've been prepped for, which has been great. Yeah. Ken WhiteSo do you think the work world and the education world will embrace some of the remote functions that we experienced this year when things are, quote, back to normal? Micah WestYeah, I mean, you've got Google, you've got Facebook. I mean, there's a bunch of different companies, even some of the management consulting firms or, you know, a lot of them are remote or going to this hybrid workforce. GSK was a part-time remote. They were a 3-2 before. And so the switch to full remote wasn't that big of a deal. And I'm assuming they'll get back to kind of a three-two. But yeah, I mean, it's I can totally see that shifting. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Micah West of the class of 2021 in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The post COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. Those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats in the MBA, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA program at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Micah West from the class of 2021. Ken WhiteAnd the job is a huge aspect of the MBA, and normally you meet with recruiters face to face, there are career fairs, people come here. That was all turned upside down. Where did you intern? Micah WestGSK. Ken WhiteAnd then how did you get the internship? How did you manage that in this in this different way? Micah WestYeah. So luckily we I went to National Black before COVID. Ken WhiteThe National Black MBA Career Fair, which is this huge career fair for MBA students all across the country. Micah WestCorrect. Ken WhiteYeah. Micah WestAnd it was the last. It's a two-day fair for those who don't know. Ken WhiteYeah. Micah WestAnd I, you know, I went in talking to kind of my core, wanting to talk to all the core people that I was interested in interning with. And I'm walking out at four o'clock. The conference ends at four o'clock. I'm walking out at like four o five the last day. Ken WhiteWow. Micah WestAnd GSK is like I'm walking past their booth. And they just happened to catch my eye. And I'm like, you know, I haven't talked with them, and I don't really know who they are. Ken WhiteYeah. Micah WestAnd so I went and spoke with them, and I was like, this is exactly what I've been looking for. And they loved my resumé. And so it was like this match made in heaven. But I it was just happenstance on the very last day, the final hour, which was just, you know, you just go and go and go for two days. And Ken WhiteYeah. Micah Westit was great. I did go to National Black remotely the second time. Ken WhiteRight. Micah WestAnd I'll tell you, the experience was not good. Ken WhiteRight, it couldn't be the same. I mean, that is such a phenomenal event where we take all of our full-time MBA students every year. Chicago, I think it is next year. And there are hundreds and hundreds of fantastic companies. They're looking for MBAs. It is just the quintessential speed dating. Micah WestIt is. It's fantastic. Yeah. So I mean for people that I would suggest if you're a full-time MBA student, like go Ken WhiteOh yeah. Micah Westgo in person. Like, the opportunities are incredible there. Ken WhiteSo what was your internship? Was it mostly remote? Micah WestIt was mostly remote. Yeah, it was all remote. In fact, they before COVID, they flew us up for a weekend, and we were able to kind of meet the teams and meet our fellow interns. And then everything switched because of COVID, and we were remote for the summer, and it was still great, you know, it was still fantastic. Ken WhiteWhat will you be doing? Micah WestBrand management. Ken WhiteGreat. Micah WestSo I just got my brand assignment yesterday, actually. Ken WhiteYeah. Excellent. Excellent. So you, like many MBA students, have a family? Micah WestI do. Ken WhiteAnd you have children who are in school. What was that like managing? I can't imagine our children are grown, and we were even talking about it recently as one graduated from college. What would it have been like that when, wow, what was that like? Micah WestThe first month was fascinating. So I four daughters, a set of twins that are in first grade. I've got a second-grader and a fourth-grader. So all in all, in elementary school, luckily, three of the girls are extremely studious. And I've got one that, you know, needs a little bit of handholding—our sports girl. But yeah, it was interesting. They you know, they were my wife was working, and so they were doing remote school on Zoom, and I was on remote school. And so I literally had to go back and forth between their classes and my classes for a good couple of weeks, month. And it was pretty stressful for the first month. But, you know, after that, my wife was able to transition a little bit, and she took over the day-to-day, and it got better, which was great. But yeah, it was a little hairy there for about a month. Ken WhiteYeah, I'm sure one of the things that I think was unexpected or at least people didn't think about, but many experienced was simply the bandwidth at home. Everybody needed Internet. Did you have any problems? Micah WestYeah, all five of us were on computers. So, you know, it's, and we had a we ran into a couple of challenges, but luckily there was enough. The girls had like set times, and we had set times. And so we were able to mitigate that, you know, for the most part. But yeah, there were definitely some bandwidth challenges. Ken WhiteYou know you seemed to have weathered the storm, so to speak, quite well. You know, there are a lot of people in school, whether undergrad, MBA, Ph.D. programs had a rough, rough time. It was just very difficult. What would you do? Did any classmates come your way and say, I'm struggling here? And if so, what kind of advice were you able to share with them? Micah WestYou know, you could just tell that people were, you know, we're having some challenges and, you know, especially with internships and other things. And, you know, we had a lot of internship, I wouldn't say a lot, but they're a fair percentage of internships that dropped out. People had internships, and then, you know, companies had to pull back because of COVID. And, you know, I just remember reaching out to everyone on my LinkedIn network that I possibly could to say, hey, what is your company doing? I spent hours, like, just trying to do. Because you like you feel so bad like you've got these just really incredible people in your program, and you want to help them, and it turned out great. I mean, it ended up working out for everybody that I know of. Ken WhiteYeah. Micah WestBut, you know, it's just. Yeah, I mean, you band together as part of that network and, you know, try to help each other and, you know, try to have each other's backs as much as possible. Ken WhiteI mean, this has to be the most resilient class ever in the history of education. I mean, you guys have really been through it. So there have been some definitely some highs and lows and some challenges. Does it bring teams together at the end? For the most part, we are helping each other and those instances. Micah WestYeah, I think you have to. I mean, you know, you've always got the people that just give their 120 percent. And then, you know, every once in a while, you get somebody who doesn't, and the rest of the team bands together. And that's what I mean. You get it done. It's like what you have to do. It's like, you know, if you're in a job and, you know, you work with those teammates that are just stellar, and you get it done. Ken WhiteAre there lessons that you and your classmates will take away from your experience? Because it was rather unique. Micah WestI think some of the biggest lessons for me were just around the remote work managing teams remotely. And I think just taking a step back and recognizing that you know, everybody's kind of going through something different, and you have to give people a little bit of space to be able to kind of work through things on their own. And just, you know, you'd be a you just support people as much as you can and meet them where they are. You know, I think those are some of the bigger takeaways for me. Ken WhiteWhich is good advice in any environment, whether you're in school or at work, too. Yeah. So graduation's in a couple of weeks you'll be there. I'm sure it'll be a great day for you. Micah WestIt will be, yeah. Hopefully have the family there, and we're waiting on one ticket, but we'll get there. Ken WhiteYeah. And we're praying for 70 degrees and sunny skies. Micah WestThat's right, exactly. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Micah West, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals to lead in our post COVID world. Professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Micah West, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. And to the class of 2021 in high schools, colleges, and universities all over the world, a heartfelt congratulations. |
![Henry Broaddus](images/henry-broaddus-153-thumb.jpg)
![College Admissions & the Pandemic](images/henry-broaddus-153-thumb.jpg)
Henry Broaddus
Episode 153: May 1, 2021
College Admissions & the Pandemic
College Admissions. Like many other sectors, it has seen significant disruption this past year. Admissions offices across the United States are in the midst of a cycle the likes of which they'd never seen. First, COVID-19 hit which kept college-bound high school students from visiting campuses. Then, some high schools moved from letter grades to pass/fail grades. Then, many colleges and universities waived the required SAT and ACT. Those events and others have changed the admissions landscape considerably this year. As a result, some schools like William & Mary have seen significant increases in applications while others experienced dramatic drops. Henry Broaddus is Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Public Affairs at William & Mary. He spent over a decade in the admissions profession at Dartmouth and William & Mary. Now admissions and financial aid are a part of his leadership portfolio. He joins us today to talk about the pandemic's effect on high school students, their families, and college admissions here at William & Mary and across the country.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. College admissions. Like many other sectors, it has seen significant disruption this past year. Admissions offices across the United States are in the midst of a cycle the likes of which they've never seen. First COVID-19 hit, which kept college-bound high school students from visiting campuses. Then some high schools moved from letter grades to pass-fail grades. Then many colleges and universities waived the required SAT and ACT. Well, those events and others have changed the admissions landscape considerably this year. As a result, some schools like William & Mary have seen significant increases in applications, while others experienced dramatic drops. Henry Broaddus is Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Public Affairs at William & Mary. He spent over a decade in the admissions profession at Dartmouth and William & Mary. Now admissions and financial aid are a part of his leadership portfolio. He joins us today to talk about the pandemic's effect on high school students, their families, and college admissions here at William & Mary and across the country. Here's our conversation with Henry Broaddus. Ken WhiteWell, Henry, thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule. Seems like everybody's so busy today in our Zoom world. So, thanks very much. I'm sure your schedule is just as packed as it's ever been. Henry BroaddusWell, it's delightful to be with you, Ken. And what's fun about this Zoom is this is a little bit more like one of those hall conversations that one would have when going between meetings. So this is the life. Ken WhiteExactly. Yeah. Thank you. So much written about college admissions this year in the media, it seems like that's the big topic. What's going on? We hear a lot about test-optional, what's happening with admissions, and what we're seeing is many top-tier universities are seeing an influx of applications. Other universities, not so much. What's happening? What's causing that? Henry BroaddusSure. Well, it's a great question to start with. And we are seeing a very interesting set of dynamics in these applicant pools. The Common Application saw an increase of applications submitted this year that was at about 11 percent. But the increase in applicants was less than three percent. And as you point out, there was clustering of where you were seeing this kind of growth. So here at William & Mary, we had a twenty-three percent increase in our applicant pool, which was substantial. That puts, as you would expect, strain on process. But elsewhere, it's been uneven. And I think it's fair to say that the most selective places, flagship universities, flagship, both in terms of size and stature and also urban campuses prior to the pandemic were where a lot of the action was you know there's going to be some interesting disruption, and we're going to still see where things fall out. But that's been where the growth occurs. And one other thing I'd point out, Ken, is that the decision to go test-optional has been one of the things that has stoked the growth in these pools because it's really removing a barrier. So more students are electing to take a shot at a pool in that way. And then another factor that I think you have to take into consideration is the inability to have visited campuses in the same way and pare down college lists. So I think many students are taking more of a broad net approach just because they've not had that ability to evaluate which ones are really the best fit. Ken WhiteYeah, wow. Didn't think of the fact people can't get to campus, but William & Mary, along with some other schools, did some pretty clever came up with some pretty clever ideas so prospective students could see campus and get a bit of a feel, right. Henry BroaddusWell absolutely. I think every college and university has been going through reinvention of what outreach and recruitment looks like in these new minutes, not unlike what you and your colleagues in the business school are doing with classes that are hybrid and remote. So actually, it's interesting as I speak to you. Although we are not yet running in-person campus tours through our undergraduate admissions offices, we are, in fact, offering four varieties of tours. So there is a video tour, there is a virtual tour with even richer media. There is a self-guided tour that's available to a visiting family that wants to walk around on its own. And we do have tours for which one signs up that are guided by a student, but they're more like a slide show and with a student presenting via Zoom. Ken WhiteYeah, interesting time for families to look at schools. You briefly mentioned the Common App. I think a lot of people know what that is, but many people might not. Can you give us a definition on what that is and how that sort of changed things? Henry BroaddusAbsolutely. And you're right to point out that it's still going to be new. I expect a lot of your listeners really only about a generation old. So so the Common App started in the mid-70s, but it really took off late later than that and became the ubiquitous tool to use to apply to colleges and universities. And the benevolent function of the Common App is that it reduces the strain of what it takes to submit individual applications. But there is a downside to that. The University of Chicago, for example, was one of the later adopters of the Common App and for a time really prided itself on saying, look, when you apply to us, we don't want you to be applying to college generally, we want you to be applying to the University of Chicago specifically because you've done the research and you see it as a match. So there are pros and cons. I think overall, most in the profession would say that the Common App has done a great job of creating more access, enabling students to grow lists in responsible ways. But others would say it has led to a kind of shotgun approach, that means you're going to see declines in yield, more volatility within the system, and many students that will just misuse the instrument thinking kind of a fallacy that if I just apply to enough of these highly selective places, at least one of them is going to take me. These aren't random trials or rolls of the die. So that's just not how it works. Ken WhiteYeah, we look at the test-optional, so many schools have embraced, how does the admissions profession and universities in general, how do they view the test? Why is the SAT the ACT? Why are those important today? Henry BroaddusYeah, excellent question. And even prior to the pandemic, this was a conversation we were having internally at William & Mary? And the only thing that the SAT is intended to measure is not even to measure, to predict is freshman year GPA. Now, what we know and what the College Board itself shows through its own research is that high school GPA by itself is more predictive of first-year college GPA than the standardized test. But having both is more predictive than either in isolation. And actually, at William & Mary, we had a ten-year study of research looking at a single school system in Virginia with more than twenty-seven hundred data points in this study. Where we were looking at how predictive is the GPA from high school, how predictive is the SAT for a William & Mary first-year GPA? And what we concluded was that, yes, having both adds predictive value, but having one or the other, but not both is pretty close. And so the debate we were having is, is it worth it in terms of all the other things that a standardized testing requirement imposes on families to get that modest additional predictive value? And what we also know is it's more predictive for some groups than others. So we know, for example, low- income students tend to outperform what their test score predicts. Many students of color, same thing. This is okay in the context of our process as long as there is keen awareness of that limitation of the measure. And so one of the things that I would say is there is great acknowledgment of the flaws of the test, but that doesn't mean it's useless as long as that awareness is being brought to bear. So we were again in the midst of this debate when then the pandemic created, I think, what was a clear and compelling reason for at least one year to be test-optional because students did not and did not have access and could not get access to a test administration. We went further than that, as did several others and said, if we're going to do that, let's really embrace this as an opportunity to see if we can conduct a test-optional process, not the same thing, by the way, of saying we don't want standardized tests where there's no rule, but that we're not going to require it for all of our applicants. And we've committed to a three-year pilot. We just finished the first cycle of that with the class that will arrive here next fall. The reason to do three years is that we that will give us time to see their first-year GPA, evaluate any unforeseen consequences of this ship, and then make a longer-term decision about what the right role for testing is in our process. Ken WhiteInteresting. You know what? I think people who are unfamiliar with admissions find fascinating is in that world, there are formulas that the admissions professionals use to determine. Okay, we have a number of apps over here. This is how many we need to accept and so forth. Is that, I assume, sort of turned a little upside down this year because of all the changes. Henry BroaddusIt's turned a lot upside down. And I think maybe you'd say there used to be formulas that one could apply here. So the year under pandemic. So going back to last spring when we recognized that we were going to have a really crazy year ahead of us, even then, I don't think we saw just how volatile it was going to become. So give you again an example in the context of William & Mary; usually, our admission team will see what you refer to as summer melt on the magnitude of about one hundred students. So we're enrolling a class of 15 20. You would get you'd want to get north of that by about one hundred so that you're buffered against waitlist activity elsewhere. Students who decide to take a gap year. Other reasons that students are going to fall out between that May one deposit deadline and convocation. In the cycle that that ended when students arrived in the fall of 20, we had lost more than two hundred and fifty students to summer melt. So really shot holes in the predictive value of that formula. And I think the great question is whether the cycle we're in now, where we're in the month of April, the cruelest month, as T.S. Elliot would say, but the one that puts admission officers on the edge of their chairs because they're waiting to see what choices students will make. The question is, will we see a rebound or a rebound to kind of the old yield, or is last year the indicator of the new normal? Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Henry Broaddus in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Post COVID World will require new skills and new approaches. And those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full- time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty, the William & Mary MBA, will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Henry Broaddus. Ken WhiteI don't think the average person has any idea how tough the admissions world is. Wow, it's brutal, and it's a profession, you know, it takes a lot of education and an experience to do this the right way, doesn't it? Henry BroaddusYeah, absolutely. And I think the reality of it is Ken that at some point, the craft of building statistical models gives way to the instincts of something like a gambler. And you're really trying to read what the signals are based on a variety of many of them highly qualitative indicators. Tim Wolfe, our dean of admission, is a master at that. But you are right. It is a is an art as well as a science. Ken WhiteYeah. Now I know you and I, you were talking to some of our business school faculty and staff recently, and you were talking about some of the efforts William & Mary has put into place to ensure that those incoming students include a diverse population as well. Tell us about some of the things that the school is doing. It's pretty cool stuff. Henry BroaddusYeah, absolutely. Well, obviously, we take very seriously the obligation to enroll a diverse class. We know that that's going to create the best learning environment for all of our students. A great letter Emmerson writes, where he says, I pay the schoolmaster, but it's the school mates to educate my son. And I think what we all know about a great undergraduate residential college experience is that it's those late-night dorm conversations. It's getting challenged by somebody who approaches a problem from a very different perspective or background that leads to the best, the best outcome. So it is critically important, and it's critically important for us as a public university. So we've been looking at a variety of ways to help do even better on that measure, one that I'll just give you as an example because we're in our first year of it. And it's something that that I'm just enormously excited about is our partnership with the Posse Foundation. And the Posse Foundation has a concept that quite literally, Debbie Bial, their founder, received a MacArthur Genius Award because it is just a genius idea, which is that one of the ways to improve success for students who are often first-generation is to not expect them to be solo operators but to enroll a group of them and have that group start working together late spring into summer. So that then when this posse of 10 students arrives together, they have that peer-to-peer support that's going to contribute to successful outcomes. So what Posse does is they work with partner universities. We became a Posse partner university, and we'll be the first university in the country to enroll a posse of Virginians. And one of the neat things is that heretofore posse has tended to operate in a single metro area. So if a partner university wanted to enroll a posse from Washington, D.C., that could be done from New York City, that could be done. The posse that will arrive at William & Mary is actually coming from across the Commonwealth of Virginia. That's another thing that was possible because of the broken constraint of needing to get people together in person. Posse had to learn to do that work remotely, and now we're going to capitalize on that. So we will enroll a posse of 11 students. We couldn't get it all the way down to 10 because they were just that strong. That were identified based on a nominating process at the school level. More than four hundred students across Virginia were nominated for it. Posse conducted group interviews. They use their dynamic assessment process, which is a lot like the way we would want to interview somebody for a job. And it also includes things like problems that are approached by groups in evaluating students in that way. They get to 20 finalists are Dean of Admission Tim Wolfe and I and our Associate Dean Tish Canady spent six hours with those 20 finalists, and we picked our posse of 11. It's a really exciting process. A lot of students of color, a lot of first-generation college students in that group. And we are committed to providing full scholarships for them in order to ensure the access and affordability. Ken WhiteFantastic. Yeah, how great to come to school and people have your back, right? I mean Henry BroaddusYeah, in fact, that's the name Posse came from a college dropout who said if I had been there with my posse, we would have made it. And former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said, you don't send a person to the moon, you send a team. So, again, that idea, I think, is a beautiful idea. And it's going to extend our reach. Not just for the 11, by the way, but the fact that William & Mary is now a leader working with this foundation and working within school environments where you have a lot of under-represented students. We hope that's going to raise our institutional profile overall and that will attract even more underrepresented students through that initiative. Ken WhiteI think it depends which publication, website, or media outlet you read. It seems one day there's a survey saying people are not interested in sending their children to college, and the next day there's an uptick in people who want to do send their children to college. I'll put you on the spot a little bit. What do you think we'll see in the next couple of years in this strange environment? Where how do you think it all? Where will it all land? Henry BroaddusI think we're going to see an acceleration of changes that were already in progress. Certainly, again, you don't have to get to the pandemic to see that disruption was at work already. My friend Bill Conley at Bucknell had had a piece it ran in the Chronicle of Higher Education in the fall in 19 called the Great Enrollment Crash. And it was looking at especially you go through two thousand eight. The economic downturn there, and I think the thinking and the value proposition about education was something that was already very much in flux. And I think what we're going to have to see is a faster evolution. And I think that's in play already. And I think it's also going to mean, Ken, that we need to look at different ways of accessing higher education that may not be the traditional ones we know now. One that we're rolling out. This will be our second year doing this, by the way, is revisiting the notion that fall is the only real point of entry for a first-year student. The reality is that education has been artificially constrained, some say, to an agrarian cycle. There's some evidence that's actually more like mid-19th-century affluent family vacation cycles to have summers off. But we now have another partnership I'm really excited about with a company that enables a gap semester experience abroad. And we're turning to our waitlisted students, who are a really strong set of students. And we're saying, hey, many of you want to be at William & Mary next spring. And it excites you to do something like a Costa Rica field experience through our partner Verto education. We would guarantee your admission as a second-semester freshman at William & Mary if you do that. In the spring, we have more capacity than we do in the fall. We have a lot of students who study abroad. In fact, you know well, we have the highest participation in study abroad among all public universities in the country. We also have students who finish early and so those seniors who finish in the fall. So I mean to be able to optimize by growing the enrollment through a new entry point in spring. I think we're going to see more of that. And then summer would be the other important frontier. And are we going to figure out new ways to use that time? Ken WhiteExciting times. Henry BroaddusIt's exciting, fraught, and a little stressful would be another way to put it. But yes, I think the great thing from my standpoint, I think what keeps me really energized right now is that every spring that we've endured, and we've had a tremendously successful academic year, as you know well, despite having to operate so differently, I think all of this is revealing new opportunities and new ways to do things. So it's an exciting time to work in this space. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Henry Broaddus, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals to lead in our post COVID world. Professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and suggestions with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Henry Broaddus, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Tim Murray](images/tim-murray-152-thumb.jpg)
![Leading in a Post COVID World](images/tim-murray-152-thumb.jpg)
Tim Murray
Episode 152: April 15, 2021
Leading in a Post-COVID World
Since last March, businesses, organizations and professionals worldwide have made continuous changes in order to compete in the environment caused by COVID-19. Many important elements of business and leadership were put on the back burner this past year in some organizations. Training and professional development, performance evaluations, coaching and other programs were among those often pushed aside as organizations dealt with new hurdles and opportunities. As we get closer to what will hopefully be the end of this chapter, it's time to think about the post-pandemic world and what it means for your organization, and for you as a leader. Tim Murray has some thoughts on the subject. After a successful tenure as CEO of Aluminium Bahrain, also known as Alba, Murray's been focused on leadership after the pandemic. He says some aspects will be different in the post-COVID world, and some will remain the same. Whatever happens, he says it's important to think about it now.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, since last March, businesses, organizations, and professionals worldwide have made continuous changes in order to compete in the environment caused by COVID-19. Well, many important elements of business and leadership were put on the back burner this past year in some organizations. Training and professional development, performance evaluations, coaching, and other programs were among those often pushed aside as organizations dealt with new hurdles and opportunities. Well, as we get closer to what will hopefully be the end of this chapter, it's time to think about the post-pandemic world and what it means for your organization and for you as a leader. Tim Murray has some thoughts on the subject. After a successful tenure as CEO of Aluminium Bahrain, also known as Alba. Murray has been focused on leadership after the pandemic. He says some aspects will be different in the post-COVID world, and some will remain the same. Whatever happens, he says, it's important to think about it now. Here's our conversation with the former CEO of Aluminium Bahrain, Tim Murray. Ken WhiteWell, Tim, thanks for joining us. Nice to see you. Welcome back to William & Mary. Tim MurrayYeah, it's nice to be back after all this time, and we're in the virtual world. It was nice. You said would you be okay with coming down to Miller Hall to do it in person? And I said more than happy to come down and get out of my house and engaged. Ken WhiteAs long as we're socially distanced. Tim MurrayAs long as we're distanced and, yeah, safe. But yeah, it's great to be here. And actually, it felt good to walk in the building. It's been a while since I walked in here. Ken WhiteIt's nice to have you. Tim Murray10 minutes from here. Ken WhiteIt is so fun to see students in the halls again. Yeah, it's absolutely wonderful. You're in a unique position. You had such an interesting, wonderful position in Bahrain for a number of years. What was it like as you were finishing? What were some of the things say in the last year you were trying to kind of nail down? Tim MurrayYes. I mean, as you know, I mean, I was in Bahrain for 12 years, so I finished as the CEO of Aluminium Bahrain, which is the largest smelter in the world outside of China, to produce one point five million tons, roughly three billion dollars a year in annual turnover they're about 12 percent of the GDP of the country. It's a big, big, you know, you've been there. Ken WhiteI've been there. It's huge. Tim MurrayIt's like a little city. And, you know, so my contract, I ended up staying a few years longer. My wife and kids came back to the U.S. for high school. And then we had the big line six project. It was a three billion dollar CapEx project that took roughly four years. So I kind of stayed commuted, if you can believe, commuting back and forth from the Middle East for a few years. But, yeah, the last year it was tough. I mean, last year, it was bittersweet. When I left, I mean, is a great place to live: great people, many friends, family. We had great success in many things on safety. The line six, it was hard to leave. And when we finished basically, my contract finished lined up with the finish of the project. So we finished the project in July of 2019 August. I came home. I took a few months off, and then I set up this consulting company, which is we'll talk about this year in the book I wrote. But, you know, it was an interesting transition out because it was planned. And then my deputy CEO at the time he took over, he was, you know, trained. He was under me, you know, coached by me. He's actually one of the chapters in the book. He became the CEO that he's done very well. And I think we've actually had a very good transition, which is something that usually doesn't happen Ken WhiteYeah. Tim Murrayin the corporate world. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurraySo so, again, I think there's many lessons in terms of, you know, I ultimately wrote this book, which we'll talk about, but it was tough. It was a tough transition to kind of let it go. And when you live for 12 years outside the country, to reintegrate yourself back in is very different. You know, I was gone for twelve years and to come back and then, you know, you're at the neighborhood parties or doing this, and you start, you know, I don't know these people. And my wife knew people I didn't know. Ken WhiteYeah. Tim MurrayAnd so but it was, you know, I'm glad I came back. I am back for a little, you know, eighteen months now and, you know, reintegrated Ken WhiteRight. Tim Murrayand reenergized to get out of the house and do stuff once the world opens up. But it was a great, great experience. I have no regrets about it. Ken WhiteAnd so one of the things you did was you wrote a book, and you call it Words of Wisdom. And these are things that you've shared when you were at in Bahrain at Alba. But also, you're looking at it more as these are some lessons for the post COVID world. Tim MurrayThat's correct. So so the book I'm a big reader, as you know, Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurrayI've given you many books like people books, and many people ask me, when are you going to write your own book? And so with when I came back, actually it was on my list to do. The COVID actually greatly accelerated that because obviously, we were trapped in the house with not a whole lot to do. So I said, okay, well, I can take this one, let's work on this. So it took me probably about six, seven months. I started it in February of twenty twenty. Obviously, the COVID accelerated all that. I self-published it. I published it through a company called iUniverse. So I wrote the book. I had to get an editor. I worked with a graphic designer on the cover, but I'd say seven months it was actually in one respect. It was easier than I thought. Writing it was harder than I thought. But yeah, I wanted to share these words of wisdom. These Wows, as I call them, as you recall in Bahrain, my P.R. department created these little bookmarks, and they would take some of my sayings like you never get a second chance for first impression. The best communication is direct communication. Perception is reality. So what I did is I took I have twelve short stories. I have a wow. Then I have a story that's actually linked to it. And then the end of each chapter, there's three or four takeaways. So it's very practical advice. And I believe if you look at the stories and kind of the messages, they really do spin what's going on in one, surviving through COVID and then emerging from COVID. I talk a lot about communication. I talk a lot about preparation. I talk about what makes you successful at one level is not what makes you successful at the next. I have one that's called tomorrow be different than today. So we think about COVID. Let's go back a year ago when it started; nobody thought it could happen. Okay, now I think we have the reverse. We are going to emerge. And I think I actually I think the world is going to boom to much more of a degree than we're talking about now because we're in the negative zone on everything. So so, yeah, I think there's many lessons in there about coaching, training, feedback, all these things I think are even more critical now as we kind of you know, you think about it for a year, we haven't done a lot of things we would do. Think of performance review, think of giving feedback, think of training, you know, all that's been okay, maybe we're doing Zoom to a degree, but it's not the same. So so I think there's a lot of lessons in the post COVID world that can be applied. Ken WhiteLet's talk about some of them. One of your chapters, Chapter five tomorrow, will be different than today. You just mentioned that. What do you what's the point of that? What are you trying to what lesson are you trying to teach us? Tim MurrayWell, one, the lesson is how quickly things can change in the world and be flipped upside down. So, again, when you look at COVID last year, I remember I was traveling. It was the last time I was on a plane in February of 2020, and we had the China virus. And there was one case in the U.S., and nobody was worried about it, and the stock market was booming. And then okay, in two months after that, we shut the world down, and all that happened. So, you know, things can change on a dime to a very drastic degree. I recently gave a presentation actually to a university about leading through adversity. And I actually gave a slide about the last pandemic we had, which was in 1918. So it was the Spanish flu. And if we look back at that, 50 million people died. This was 1918. World War One had just ended. So the world was in bad, bad, bad shape. And so you think about that, and then you think, what happened after that? Then we had the roaring 20s. We had ten years of pretty good boom. Also, we had a bang at the end with the stock market. But so how things can shift. And I think where we are today; we have to get out of this negative mindset. And all that's happened and whatever has happened has happened. We got to focus on the reopening, be positive. The vaccines are here. They are going to roll out faster. I think I think we will get back to normal quicker than people are talking about today. You know, and I think I think everybody's ready. Everybody's got COVID fatigue, Zoom fatigue. We were talking about it before we started the show. We want to get out. I mean, I was happy to come down to Miller Hall and do this face to face versus a Zoom. So I think, you know, we as people, we okay, we've proven a lot. We can do a lot with this, you know, virtual Zoom reality, many good things. But we can't take away that personal element of communication and training and meeting people and relationships and networking. So so, again, you know, tomorrow will be different than today. So I'm optimistic. I think within two, three months we're going to see a very different world. I think we're going to see people on planes again, going traveling again, doing things again. And I think, you know, we will have a boom in terms of good things. And I think we have to be positive and embrace and get ready. Get ready to run. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Tim Murray, former CEO of Alba and author of Words of Wisdom, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary's School of Business. The post COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. Those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Tim Murray. Ken WhiteWhat I liked in the book is, is, yes, positive mindset, but you were right up front and said there were some issues you ran into like we all do in our careers that really knocked you out. I mean, you know, that messes you up mentally. Maybe you can't sleep. How do you how did you deal with those kinds of issues where? Wow. I can't even think straight. Tim MurrayYeah, I mean, I would my biggest when you say that; what pops to my mind is the safety issues. So Alba, when I took over as CEO, we were having bad safety performance. We were having fatalities in the plant. We had it. Was it five fatalities in less than three years? So I remember two months before I became CEO, we had another fatality. And this was actually one of the main reasons the former CEO was removed, and I was put in. And so you think about, you know, you go to bed at night, you put your phone down in your saying a prayer that you don't get a call in the middle of the night. I mean, it's a tough, tough thing. So but how do you be positive there? I mean, here you are, the leader. You know, things aren't going well. You have a fatality. You're trying to drive a message. You, as the leader, you have to be positive. And if you look at COVID, it's the same thing. As tough as it is and is probably worn out as you all are, you have to be positive. You're the leader. If you're positive, your people will be positive. And even when you're dealing with those tough issues or those negative issues, and you're stressed, you as the leader have to absorb it. You have to, I say, almost be like a shock absorber. You got to take that negative energy and spin it in a positive way. You got to get people thinking positive. And again, as we emerge from the COVID, I think that's one of the things we got to really focus on and not complain about or go look back. And I say, you know, in the book I talk about a story, don't cry over the spilled milk. What's done is done. And so you got to look forward and as tough as it is. You know, the leaders today, we've all had a tough time. You got to move forward and be positive for your people as hard as that is. Ken WhiteOne of your chapters is what makes you successful at one level is not necessarily what makes you successful at the next. How does that tie into where we're headed? Tim MurraySo this one this is one I learned early in my career. And in the book, I talk more about how you go from the role of a doer. So you're an individual contributor to a manager role. And we were talking about this earlier. When you get promoted, okay, normally we promote somebody for doing a good job in their existing job. We say he's a great engineer, he's a great accountant, he's a great technical person. And then we make him a manager or she a manager. And now you're a manager. And it's a totally different skill set. And, you know, engineers, I like to pick on engineers, but when you take an engineer, usually a good engineer is somebody who is very detailed, micromanages, follows up. Okay, as a manager, maybe that's not the best thing. So so that you have to think differently. So, you know, you as leaders, when you're promoting, people really look at the position and say, this is what I want for the position, not necessarily the person that's there. And I'm a big believer from promoting from within, don't get me wrong, but this is a big one. So if we look in the COVID situation, okay, what made us successful prior to COVID is not what's going to make us successful post COVID. Talk about Zoom, okay, as much as we're all probably sick about talking about Zoom. I think we can use Zoom in a lot of different ways. We talk about business travel and conferencing, and networking. We've proven a lot of what we did was probably wasted time and money. So and I think as we emerge from the COVID, you know, there was winners and losers during the COVID. There'll be winners and losers post COVID. So again, what made us successful and got us through all the COVID things is not necessarily what's going to make us successful after. So just think differently don't get stuck in that kind of fixed mindset of, you know, this is how I've always done it. I'm going to always be successful. And we look today in terms of technology and all the stuff that Google and Amazon and Zoom face, but all these things that have emerged as a result of the COVID. Use them, leverage them. But I think it'll be different than what you did previously. Ken WhiteWhen I saw the name of this chapter, I immediately just jumped off the page. Never hire or promote someone you're not willing to terminate later. Tim MurrayYeah, this is probably the harshest story in the book. It's a lesson I learned in my actually my first job. I was working for a small family-owned business. And the gentleman who ran it, he was the owner slash president, and his CFO was his sister-in-law. And it was very small family business. So so you can imagine the dynamics there. The gentleman who was the owner president, he was a very dynamic sales guy. Talker wants to close deals, wants to keep the customer happy. Of course, the CFO was very tough on the credit and payment terms, and so they were constantly clashing. So, you know, I finished my job. I was there two years. He was gracious enough to invite me into his office. Give me a kind of an exit interview. Hey, we appreciate what you did. And he said to me right at the end, he said, listen, he said, you know, when you become a boss, you know, never put somebody in there that you can't terminate. And he said, look at this mess I have with my CFO. It's my sister-in-law. I can't get rid of her family dynamics. I should I never put her in there. And so when you're hiring or promoting somebody, really think about that. You know, if you have to terminate them later, are you going be able to do it? Because in the business world and wherever we are, you know, it's friends, it's family there with you for many years. And in the book, I talk about a gentleman who was a former executive of mine. He was promoted up the ranks with me. He was my right-hand man that we started having some performance issues, some ego issues, and ultimately, you know, he left on an early retirement package, but it was one where it was not an easy thing to do. And he was close to me. And, you know, but business is business. And when people aren't performing, you have to deal with it, because if you don't deal with it, my view, it's like a cancer. You know, people see that you don't deal with a performance issue or a poor performer. They'll say, oh well, look, he gets a he's coming in late every day, or she did this, and they get away with this. It's a very hard thing. So you have to step up and make those decisions. But so when you're back to the, wow, you know, when you are going to promote somebody or hire somebody, and it's a friend or a relative or stuff like that. All right. Put yourself in the shoes that say, listen, if I have to get rid of them later, am I going to do it? Because if you're not, then don't put them in there because and it does happen, and it's a particularly family-owned businesses. It's a very, very, very common thing. Ken WhiteYeah, great. Great advice. You always liked coaching. That's an important piece of your leadership. And you talk, and you talk about coaching in the book. How do you see coaching now in the middle of COVID or hopefully toward the end of it, right? Tim MurrayYeah. Ken WhiteAnd then in the post-COVID world. Tim MurrayYeah. So I'm a big believer in coaching. So I grew up a sports guy. I played baseball all the way through university. I was always playing sports, and there was always a coach. And I say coaching is a gift that must be returned. So I think anybody who coaches you. One, you should thank them because they're not getting paid extra to do it. Usually, it's a lot more work. A lot of people don't want to do it. So if you're fortunate enough to have a coach, a mentor, it's a big, big thing in your career. So, so, yeah, I'm a big believer. So at Alba, I did a lot of coaching. The story I have in the book actually is about the current CEO of Alba. His name is Ali Al Baqali. So he was under me, and he was my deputy CEO, and as part of me leaving, there was a planned transition. Ali was a lifelong Alba guy, very smart guy, very clever guy. And so as we planned out the path of me finishing the project, leaving. You know, he was identified as my successor. He was deputy CEO for the last two years. And then he moved into that role. But we spent a lot of time coaching him because he was at that time, he was before the deputy, he was CFO. And so he transitioned into a few different roles there. Back to what makes you successful at one level is not what makes you successful at the next. You know, we had to groom him. We had to go over all these things and train these things. And so when you go from CFO to deputy CEO to CEO, they're all different roles. So I think so it's very important. But it was a proper transition. Ali is doing a great job today. Alba's running well. The safety is running well. The production is running well. And it's a nice story because today, in most corporations, you don't see plan transitions. Usually, it's bang the CEO's gone the next day he was terminated by the board. Stock price goes down twenty percent. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurrayUsually, it's a it's an ugly story. But but but to spin it on the COVID, you know, if we look over the time of the COVID, we've probably had a big lack of coaching or feedback. I mean, think of the basic things of a performance review or a quarterly review, and okay, maybe we're doing them via Zoom to some degree, but it's not the same. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurrayAnd you think about training sessions. Are we still doing training sessions? Okay, maybe to some level, but you know, you would think about pre COVID you're constantly training session. You're going here, you're flying here, you're doing this. So I think we've got a big, you know, pent-up demand probably for coaching, feedback, training. So so as you emerge as a leader, really look at that. Because training, my experience with training is really something that motivates people and coaching. If you read all the big surveys, there was a survey in The Wall Street Journal a few months ago, and it talked about what's the most important thing to people, you know, and it's not pay, it's not benefits, it's not bonuses. It's coaching and development. You know you look at pay, bonuses wherever you go. That's going to be generally within the market. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurrayIt's not going to be drastically different. But why people leave? They don't feel they're appreciated. They're not feeling that they're developed. They don't have opportunities to move up within the company. So they leave. And again, today, I think you're going to see that. I mean, this is you want to keep your good people because the good people can always go. I mean, and so I think spending that time on coaching, development, and training and it's a tough one because training it's an easy thing to cut. And my view is, once you cut it, then the next year when we roll up the budget and the bean counters say, well, we cut it last year, why do we need to put it back in this year and then it goes away forever? So my advice is, don't cut training. It's the worst thing. It sends a bad message to your people. They say, oh, look, they're cutting training. They don't care about us. And again, once you cut it, it's very hard to put it back in. So so as we emerge from the COVID pandemic and people are able to communicate and travel and do those things. Do stuff on the training, do some workshops, do some off-sites. I think people are dying for this. And this is a good way to motivate your team, you know, build that momentum back forward and get people moving in the right direction because everybody is COVID fatigued. So so to do training and development and workshops and feedback and coaching, I think people are really wanting it. I think so. I think it's a big, big thing that can differentiate you. Ken WhiteAnd learn all these lessons that we've been taught throughout this and apply them as we move forward, and maybe good things will happen. Tim MurrayAbsolutely. Absolutely. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with the former CEO of Alba, Tim Murray, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals who can lead in the post COVID world. Professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the William & Mary MBA programs to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Tim Murray and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Jim Roddy](images/jim-roddy-151-thumb.jpg)
![The Walk-On Method](images/jim-roddy-151-thumb.jpg)
Jim Roddy
Episode 151: April 1, 2021
The Walk-On Method
If you're familiar with college athletics, then you're familiar with the term "walk-on." Walk-ons are college athletes who, unlike many of their teammates, were not recruited by the coaching staff. They had to try out to make the team. And, unlike many of their teammates, walk-ons do not receive scholarships to be a part of the team. Yet virtually all college sports teams at all levels have walk-ons on their rosters. Most coaches will agree that walk-ons are a special breed. They work extremely hard, they're focused, they tend to persevere. Resilience is a part of their DNA, and the spotlight doesn't matter much to them. As a result, they not only make the team, but in many cases they make the team better. Our guest today says the pattern of behavior adopted by walk-ons in college athletics can also be adopted by professionals. And he has several examples from a variety of sectors to back up his claim. Jim Roddy is a former college basketball walk-on and author of "The Walk-On Method." He joins us today to discuss his blueprint for professional success.
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. If you're familiar with college athletics, then you're familiar with the term walk on. Walk-ons are college athletes who, unlike many of their teammates, were not recruited by the coaching staff. They had to try out to make the team. And unlike many of their teammates, walk-ons do not receive scholarships to be a part of the team. Yet virtually all college sports teams at all levels have walk-ons on their rosters. Most coaches will agree that walk-ons are a special breed. They work extremely hard. They're focused. They tend to persevere. Resilience is a part of their DNA, and the spotlight doesn't matter much to them. As a result, they not only make the team but, in many cases, they make the team better. Our guest today says the pattern of behavior adopted by walk-ons in college athletics can also be adopted by professionals. And he has several examples from a variety of sectors to back up his claim. Jim Roddy is a former college basketball Walk-On and author of The Walk On Method. He joins us today to discuss his blueprint for professional success. Here's our conversation with Jim Roddy. Ken WhiteWell, Jim, it's nice to see you. Thanks for taking time to join us on the podcast. Jim RoddyThanks for having me, Ken. Great to cross paths with you again. Ken WhiteYou know, in the introduction, when I was telling our listeners what a walk-on is, and certainly, some of them know that. But how do you define walk-on when you're talking to someone? Maybe, isn't too very well versed in college athletics. What's a walk-on? Jim RoddySure. A walk-on is someone who endeavors to be part of a college sports team. But that college sports team, most everybody else, is a scholarship athlete. And so it's a person who says, I would like to do exactly what they're doing, but for no scholarship money and for far less playing time. So there's certainly an element of servant leadership and sacrifice right off the bat, just the decision to try to be a walk-on. Ken WhiteWhat's the mindset of a walk-on? I'm assuming it's quite different from the teammate who was invited and has a scholarship. Jim RoddyGood question. For a lot of folks, it kind of runs the gamut. And that's part of what we had in our book. There are some folks who felt that they were overlooked and said, I think I can work my way into a scholarship. And many of them did. And not just a scholarship, but actually ended up as professional athletes. They kind of thought that they were overlooked. And then there were other folks who and that this is kind of the spot that I was in was, boy, what an amazing experience this would be. If there's anything that I can do to be part of this team, I would give anything in order to just to be along for the ride. But I think what everybody saw in the walk-ons that I talk with. At some point, it got to servant leadership that I was here for something bigger than myself, bigger than just my individual statistics. And so that was something that as I talk with these walk-ons, you know, I'd say after about ten interviews, I realized that servant leadership was really core to this whole walk-on process. Then I would start bringing it up to folks. They would say, you know what, I never thought of it that way, but it's so true. So that was one thing that was really revealing. And I think that is a common mindset among all walk-ons. Ken WhiteAnd so, in your book, you interview people who were walk-ons, who went on to successful careers. How did you even begin to find people? Jim RoddyGood question. Thank goodness for Google, and thank goodness for John Saracino, who is from Erie, Pennsylvania. He's also from Erie, and he wrote for USA Today for many years. And he just gave me a whole bunch of guidelines in terms of what search terms in order to use. So I ended up interviewing 30 people for the book, but I must have gone through more than one hundred people that I was researching, reaching out to trying to find contact information. But I can say of all the folks who I ended up connecting with. Nobody had a bad story. I always thought I'd run into somebody who's going to be like, oh, this is pretty boring or lame or the same old, same old. But boy, at some point during every interview, I was like, I can't believe the great story or multiples of stories that were behind it. So it was a lot of digging, sifting through dirt in order to get a lot of great gold nuggets. Ken WhiteYou realize there's some commonalities, and there's some lessons that a walk-on takes through life. When you reached out to these professionals, did they realize that, or did you have to plant that seed before they realized it? Jim RoddyFor many of them, I did have to plant the seed because so like the gist of the book says, ordinary people, even underdogs and maybe especially underdogs, but ordinary people will accomplish extraordinary feats when their energy is properly channeled. So the way that the walk on's were behaving in their professional life today was more second nature for them because they were forced to behave that way just to survive as a walk-on. So for many of them, it wasn't an intentional act that they were going through and saying, oh, I have to have this walk-on mentality. It was like them looking around and saying, how come other people don't behave this way? I don't get it. How come other people aren't driven like I am? How come other people aren't showing up early? How come other people aren't trying to really push themselves and educate themselves and drive to get better and drive to help other people? So for many of them, it was they thought it was in their blood, and maybe it is, but it was a lot that experience, at the very least, enhanced their skills in their mindset. Ken WhiteI was walking into work today with a colleague, and I mentioned that you and I were going to talk, and she's not a big sports fan. But she said, you know, I guess there are some commonalities between sports and business. Yeah, they sure are. But when you hear that, what do you think some of the obvious commonalities are? What are the lessons that that that kids and adults take away from being athletes, whether they're a wrestler and or a track and field athlete on their own, or baseball, football, soccer, lacrosse, a team sport? What are the lessons? Jim RoddyWell, first, I'll just take a step back. When I was planning on writing this book, I knew that sports fans would find it entertaining because sports people love reading about sports. But I test-marketed a handful of chapters on folks who couldn't care less about sports. But they're in the business world, and their reaction was, this is great, can I have some more? And that's what I really knew, that I had something because they were able to see the connections that were able to be made. So I think one is, you know, the correlation is team goals over personal goals. If you're playing on a sports team and you're putting your personal goals ahead of the team goals, you're not a good teammate. Your team's not going to be very good or be very successful, and no matter how talented you are, right, there's going to be all sorts of disharmony in that realm. And then there's also another thing that I see is from a correlation is by going through a sports team and this will sound terrible, but you have to tolerate people, right? You have people who were just thrust onto the team. You do not get to choose them. And you have a choice of quitting that team or tolerating that person. A lot of times with the coaches as well, like there's a coaching turnover. And so you're staying with the school, but the coach comes in. You have to learn how do I tolerate that person? Might be a cynical way of looking at it, but also, how can I adjust in order to make sure that things work with that person? And I was on a team with a guy from Sudan, from Croatia, a guy who graduated in three years, guys who struggled to go to class. You know, people from inner-city Detroit, people from Tippecanoe, Ohio. Right. And so you had all these different worlds that are kind of coming together, and you got to learn to deal with that or not. And the same in the workforce, the better that you can adapt to the culture and the better that you can fill in gaps for people and be a great teammate for them, no matter what their position, their perspective or background, that's going to be successful in business as well. Ken WhiteAny differences in that athlete who plays a team sport versus an individual sport in terms of the outlook at work and the lessons learned? Jim RoddyI would say yes. So there are things that you might not have to go through so much as a tennis player or as a track and field athlete than you would a basketball player who's, you know, forced to sit on the bench or forced to practice or determining playing time. So, yeah, I'd say the team aspect of it has, I'd say a little higher degree of difficulty. Not that it's easy for the other people in the individual sport, but there's certainly another dimension there from a team aspect that isn't from an individual aspect. Though the thing for the individual aspect is like, quite frankly, I was a walk-on for four years. People tolerated the fact that I wasn't very good. Right. But if I was in an individual sport, they'd be like, oh, this guy's not going to play like I don't want him on the team because he's not going to contribute at all whatsoever. Like, if you're a wrestler, you're getting pinned every match. That's not going to go very far. So there is definitely a give and take for both those opportunities. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Jim Roddy in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Post COVID World will require new skills and new approaches. Those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Jim Roddy, author of The Walk on Method. Ken WhiteIn a previous episode, we had William & Mary graduate, who is a successful entrepreneur, and he was a tennis player at William & Mary, you know, what he was saying is those individual sports, it's all, you. No excuses, right? You learn you either step up and perform, or you fail, and you can't point fingers. So I think there's some great lessons, of course, in the team sports and the individual sports. So the walk-on method, you have steps as you as you go through. Let's go through those for our listeners. Your first step is take a big shot. Tell us about that. Jim RoddyYes, so the subtitle for Take a Big Shot is that anybody can make a layup. And so one thing that we saw in common with these walk-ons in both their athletic career and their professional career is that they tried something that was really hard. They didn't look and say, boy, that would be great to do, but I'm only going to go halfway because that's probably more achievable, right. To say I'm going to walk on to the University of Florida football team, and I'm going to be a meaningful player is crazy if no one's offering you a scholarship whatsoever. But that was Chris Doering, and then later in his life for him to say, I'm going to make it as a mortgage broker. Right as the recession hit in 2008. That's crazy as well. But he's very successful with what he's done because he had that mindset about taking a big shot. Ken WhiteBoy, and that takes guts, doesn't it, to do that to walk on to a powerful program like that. Jim RoddyThere's a fine line between bravery and insanity. So the walk-ons tend to dance on that line. Ken WhiteYour step to make a passion statement? Jim RoddyYes, p passion, not f fashion. So it talks about preparing with passion, practicing with passion, and then playing with passion. So too many people wish that their dream is going to come true or they have a goal set in business, and they hope that it's going to come true. And they say, boy, when that moment comes. I'm really going to give it my all. But you can't wish. You can't wait. `We talk about you have to walk on to that dream. So what we saw very common is the folks who are successful. It wasn't just that they were gamers, but they did all sorts of preparation, and they practice, practice, practice, and improve their skills. They didn't say; I'm going to go with what I got. They really worked on themselves to improve themselves. They realized they had weaknesses in areas to improve and focus on those instead of making excuses. Ken WhiteIn passion also, does that mean passion for the sport and passion for the business that you're in as well? Jim RoddyCorrect, yes. You have to find something that you say; I really want to do this, not ugh I got to get out of bed and painful. And, you know, you roll your eyes when this thing comes around, you have to make sure you're aligning yourself with something that really makes you go, really charges your engine, and really make sure that you have the self-initiative behind it. Ken WhiteStep three, run uphill. Jim RoddyYeah. So run uphill. We say that it takes longer to run uphill, but it makes you stronger. So we're taught to avoid obstacles and seek the path of least resistance. Right. For these walk-ons have been way easier just to play intramurals and not to actually try out for Division one team. And so what we're told is when there's an obstacle, you should shrink; you should close your eyes. You should get apprehensive right when things get difficult. But walk-ons don't avoid those obstacles. They actually lean into the difficulties of the situation, and they embrace the obstacles because they know on the other end of the experience, they'll be battle-tested. Right, going through that fire. So when you encounter a career challenge or business challenge, you see everyone around you like wishing the moment will pass. This is way too difficult. Show courage, jump headlong into the problem, convert it into an opportunity or a potential victory for yourself. Don't shy away from those obstacles. Really embrace them. Ken WhiteAre people born with that ability, or do you learn that ability to take on tough challenges? Jim RoddyI'd say some people are naturally born with it, just like I would never jump out of an airplane. And I work with somebody who loved high altitude extreme, you know, jumping out of airplanes. Like, I could not do that. But there are things that can be taught. And that's what a lot of these walk-ons had as well, is it wasn't just natural for them that all of them are just these wired wound up. I'm going to go get them. Some of them needed to kind of kick themselves in the butt or throw themselves into a situation where they were under a lot of stress and had a lot of difficult coaching. And they practiced and learned that we had one person who the only reason who went to Cal State, Chico, is because it was a good party school. And the only reason he ran track is because he was bored. Right. And but the coach really pushed him. And now he's a very successful doctor and actually an instructor at a college in Tennessee. So these are not just born traits. These can all be developed. Ken WhiteStep four, no fuss all MUS. Jim RoddyYes, so no fuss means maintain emotional control and all MUS capital m capital u capital s. Maximize unique strengths. So it's very important that especially not just in the sports world, the business world, you control your emotion, especially the negative ones as you advance through your career. Right. If you get passed over for promotion that you thought you deserved, just shake your head for a moment in private and then resolve, I'm going to work harder. I'm going to get better and then maximize your unique strengths. A lot of these walk-ons in the book, almost all of them, they were shorter, skinnier, slower than the more gifted scholarship athletes. But they figured out what is my special ability or attitude that I could bring to the team in order to do that. A great example of that is Brandon Landry. He's actually the founder of the Walk On's restaurant, the sports bistro that's growing down in the southeast. And so he got cut from his high school team, and he said, I got to get better. He got cut from the LSU team. He said I got to get better. And sure enough, they had some injuries. They called him back, and he ended up working, and being a long-term walk-on on that team took so many experiences from it. Again, he spun off an entire business model that's called Walk On's, bistro, and restaurant. Ken WhiteThat that that attitude that I'm not going to lose attitude, it's so incredible to see, and especially college athletics, we see it over and over again. I just read about the point guard for UMBC. He's five feet two inches tall, and he plays like he's six feet two inches tall. You know what? That's all that's that step, isn't it? That's just going after it. Jim RoddyAnd it is a choice. You know, a lot of our walk-ons, Megan Lightfoot, she walked into UCLA rowing office, said, I'd like to try out, and they're like you can try out, but you're probably going to quit. This isn't for you. So she could have walked out with an excuse to say, okay, I guess this isn't for me. I guess it's fate. And she walked out and said, I will show you. We have that choice every day where we get rejected, or we have an obstacle. We have a choice to embrace it, learn from it, get better, maximize our unique strengths, or we have a choice to crawl under our desks and cry. Ken WhiteStep five, make them throw you out of the gym. Jim RoddyYeah, so one person misinterpreted this as your goal is to make them throw you out of the gym. I'm like, no, the emphasis is on them. Make them throw you out of the gym. And we say never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever quit. So what we saw with a lot of our walk-ons, both again from an athlete standpoint and a business standpoint, is they said, I'm going to take that big shot, and I'm going to keep trying until they throw me out. And once they throw me out, I'm still going to go back in. A lot of folks that we've seen from an athletic standpoint, a business standpoint, the reason they never achieve something great is because they quit before they even started. Right. They just assumed it wasn't for them. They just assumed a CEO job wasn't for them. They just assumed a growing company, a highly profitable company, wasn't for them. They just assumed entrepreneurship wasn't for them. But those who said, I'm going to keep trying, I'm going to try every angle until I get my goal. Those are the folks who actually end up succeeding. So, again, it's make them throw you out. We have a lot of examples of even when they throw you out. They keep going back and back and back until they get what they came for. Ken WhiteAnd you say all five steps are within your power. Can you explain that? Jim RoddyYeah, so none of these require some advanced degree, right. To take a big shot. It doesn't require some specialized skill. Right. And to prepare with passion. Right. It's the time that you put into it. You can develop preparation skills and things like that. But you don't need, again, those advanced degrees to control emotions or maximize unique strengths. So if you want to increase your knowledge, your skills, and your competence, and if you want to change the trajectory of your business or your career, you can start thinking and acting like a walk-on. There's nobody who stopping you from doing these things. And again, these are folks we profile. Ordinary people, right. Very few accolades among them. Everybody around them was bigger, faster, stronger, smarter oftentimes. But they figured out how am I going to get it done? And they just kept coming back for more and more until they got what they wanted. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jim Roddy, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals to lead in the post-COVID world. Professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Jim Roddy, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Rajiv Kohli](images/rajiv-kohli-150-thumb.jpg)
![Light at the End of the COVID Tunnel](images/rajiv-kohli-150-thumb.jpg)
Rajiv Kohli
Episode 150: March 15, 2021
Light at the End of the COVID Tunnel
After a year of social distancing, virtual meetings and homeschooling, people are ready to shed their masks and get back to life as we knew it before we were introduced to COVID-19. As the weather improves and we see family, friends, and colleagues receiving vaccinations, people are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. As we record this episode of the podcast, the CDC reports 11% of American adults have received both coronavirus vaccine doses. And two million doses a day are being administered. Rajiv Kohli is the John N. Dalton Professor of Business at William & Mary. He's a leading scholar in health information technology and a healthcare expert. For over 15 years, he's worked and consulted with several top healthcare organizations. Kohli says we're getting there, faster than many experts originally predicted. And as events continue to move in a positive direction, there are many things to think about before COVID-19 is in our rearview mirror.
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, after a year of social distancing, virtual meetings, and homeschooling, people are ready to shed their masks and get back to life as we knew it before we were introduced to COVID-19. As the weather improves and we see family, friends, and colleagues receiving vaccinations, people are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. As we record this episode of the podcast, the CDC reports 11 percent of American adults have received both coronavirus vaccine doses, and two million doses a day are being administered. Rajiv Kohli is the John and Dalton Professor of Business at William & Mary. He's a leading scholar in health information technology and a health care expert. For over 15 years, he's worked and consulted with several top health care organizations. Kohli says we're getting there faster than many experts originally predicted. And as events continue to move in a positive direction, there are many things to think about before COVID-19 is in our rearview mirror. Here's our conversation with Dr. Rajiv Kohli. Ken WhiteRajiv, it's great to see you. Thanks for sharing your time and expertise with us today on the podcast. Rajiv KohliThank you, Ken. It's a pleasure to be here. Ken WhiteSo you know, everywhere I seem to go, almost everyone I seem to talk with has the same sort of question on their mind. And that is, when do you think life will get back to quote-unquote normal? What do you think? Where where are we heading at this point? Rajiv KohliYeah, so that's a tricky question because normal means different things to different people. So I think we will go through stages of normality or normalcy. We think that a July 4th around that time frame, we'll begin to step outside. If we are fully vaccinated, we can hang out with our family members. And CDC has just issued some guidelines on that, that you can go mingle with people in small groups if you are fully vaccinated without risk of infecting others. And then I think come Thanksgiving, things will start to crawl to normal, and there will be a test period between Thanksgiving and Christmas where we will see how we fared after Thanksgiving, how things went, did the spread increase, and then that will determine that Christmas and New Year's. So to answer your question, barring any unforeseen circumstances, I think we might have a normal as close to normal Christmas as we can expect. Some of that is also dependent on how the virus mutates and also dependent on how we behave as individuals. Ken WhiteOh, and that's a big piece of it, isn't it? We're already seeing people who have been vaccinated who may not want to wear masks or people whose families have been vaccinated and don't want to wear masks. So, so much of this is behavior of human beings, isn't it? Rajiv KohliIt is. And it's very understandable that there is some fatigue setting in where we are tired, and we don't know what to do. And, you know, we've spent a good part of this year, almost a year now spent indoors. And so it's natural for us, for us to feel that way. That we don't want to wear masks. But I think we are in the homestretch. It's not surprising that if you look at some other context, a lot of the traffic accidents, more than 50 percent of the traffic accidents happen within five miles of a person's home, and they usually hit parked cars. And the reason is that we get complacent because we are almost there. But what I would say to anybody listening is this is not the time for us to be complacent. We are almost there. We stuck it out for a year. Let's wait another few months and will be home. Ken WhiteBut we really crave contact with one another, don't we, at this point. Rajiv KohliWe do, and that's part of why we are so frustrated with wearing masks and social distancing. We do crave human contact and seeing our loved ones as I know they feel the same about meeting us. So that's why it's very important for us to exercise restraint at this time. And just to wait a little longer. I like the phrase that was being used around last Christmas when they said, let's be restrained this Christmas so we can have the next Christmas and the following one. So, yes, it is very frustrating for people who been so patient for so long. Ken WhiteBut as you mentioned, maybe Christmas might be a good target. Would that mean at that time we would still wear masks? Like when would the mask possibly disappear? Rajiv KohliYeah, so that also is is somewhat unclear at this time and dependent on where we are going, how many people are we mingling with, and who are we mingling with. So I would say if you are meeting people who are at higher risk, either because of age or other underlying conditions, we may still want to wear masks. The other aspect of wearing masks, Ken, is that it is also a signaling mechanism where even when you are vaccinated, you may still want to wear a mask because by wearing a mask, you're saying this is what is acceptable behavior, this is what the norm is. And that I am looking out for you because you don't know who will in your surroundings is not vaccinated. So even though we may be vaccinated, we still want to wear masks because we are telling others that this is the norm that we are following right now. Ken WhiteYeah, I think we've grown a little bit over this past year, right? We are looking at others a little more, maybe than we did Pre-COVID as a society. Rajiv KohliYes, we are. And, you know, when we talk about herd immunity, for example, that is all dependent on how others are taking care of themselves and, in doing so, how they are keeping you safe. So in that regard, we are our brother's keeper. We are our sister's keepers, Ken WhiteYeah. Rajiv Kohlibecause what we do matters to not just us but to others around us. Ken WhiteWe're starting to see some stories in the media about people traveling already. It's spring break time. Although most colleges and universities did away with their spring break and took the days and made them nonsecutive on nonconsecutive days off. But still, we're hearing reports about students heading south to Florida and folks who've been vaccinated traveling. What's the travel situation right now? What would you advise people to do if they want to travel at this point? Rajiv KohliSo let me first address the spring break issue. And I've seen those pictures on T.V., people having a good time on beaches and so on. I worry about the young people because while they are less susceptible, they also think they're invincible. So while they may not see the same impact of COVID if they were to get infected as others would. They could be carriers, unwitting carriers, and bring them home. And if they're traveling from different parts of the country, they might bring it back to their communities, and we might see another spread. So in terms of travel, that is also this question about whether I should travel by air or by road. The air travel itself, the flying portion of the travel itself, is not that risky. In fact, it's relatively safe. It's what people do and where they mingle and who they come in contact with after the travel after they take their flight, and then they take the flight back. That is causing some concern. So the travel part is not that big a problem right now. So I would say that if you're traveling by road and you are going to a place where you are going to be by yourself with your family, perhaps on the beach and you rent a house, it's fairly safe. It's fairly safe. In fact, we did see during last fall, or even last summer, increased traffic going to beach areas where people were renting homes and not necessarily hotels. So to answer your question, travel right now within certain boundaries and constraints is relatively safe, or we can make it safe. It's just that when we travel, what we do post-travel is, is what causes some people concern. Ken WhiteSo three vaccines out there now. Are they different? Are they similar? Is there one that seems to be the favorite? What's up with all three? How do you approach those? Rajiv KohliYeah, so I'm also hearing about the effectiveness of different vaccines as far as the vaccines are concerned. They all do the job. They all do the job. And there are differences in the efficacy rates, but they are not really comparable because the trials were done at different times. And these numbers, this is 90 percent effective, and that is seventy-two percent effective. They all come from the trials. And again, remember, there were trials, which means they were controlled population experiments done at different times. So the Johnson & Johnson one, which is supposedly less efficacious than the other two, was done later, which means it was exposed to more variance. And so to the people listening, I would say take the first vaccine you can get because it will all make you safe and others around you safe. So I wouldn't worry about which one is more effective, which one is in numbers. It's almost like if you have a headache, and I give you a medication that's seventy-five percent effective versus sixty-nine percent effective. We don't know how it's going to act on our bodies. So just take it. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Rajiv Kohli of William & Mary in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The Post-COVID world will require new skills and new approaches, and those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with Professor Rajiv Kohli. Ken WhiteHow does the vaccine work? What is it actually doing to us? Rajiv KohliSo I guess without getting into the science of it, what the vaccine does, it learns from or the development of vaccine learns from how the virus is made up, what is the structure of the virus. And it passes on the harmless part of that instruction of how the virus behaves into the vaccine to the human body so that the human body sees how the virus behaves. And in doing so, it starts to develop these protections, self-protection, which is our immune system, so that when it actually sees the real virus, it knows what to do. So there are differences in the viruses or the vaccine that we have. One is a messenger RNA-based, and the other is a slightly different approach. That only means that how we deliver that vaccine into the human body, one has the instructions, only the other has the actual messenger automated. So that gets a little scientific. But the bottom line is it's preparing our bodies before it actually sees the virus as to what the virus looks like so that the body can prepare itself and the immune system is built up strong enough that when the actual virus hits, it knows how to neutralize it. Ken WhiteThat's pretty amazing when you really step back and think about it. It's amazing, isn't it? And it was developed in a relatively short period of time. Rajiv KohliVery short period, and so the mRNA approach is not new. It has been used for Ebola. It has been used for other viruses. So that technique has been around for about twenty-five, thirty years now. So it's not new. What is new is how we use that for dealing with the coronavirus, whereas the previous vaccines were generally taking the weaker version of the virus itself and injecting into the body. We are not doing that. So, in fact, that makes it much safer because, with the old approach of putting in a weak virus, there was actually some small probability that people will get sick because it's actual virus, even though it's weak. But in this case, we're not putting any virus in. We are just simply putting the code. Think of this as a computer program that tells the body that this is what the virus looks like. So if you see this, how are you going to attack it? And the body says, okay, I'll build these antibodies, and I will attack it, and those t-cells float around your blood. And if you do get exposed to the virus, it knows what to do, and it kills it before it comes in. Ken WhiteBut yet some people are saying they didn't feel well for a few hours or maybe a day when they received their second shot. But how is that happening? Rajiv KohliOh, actually, if they don't feel well, that's a good news because that means the vaccine is working. So the temperature that we see oftentimes as a side effect, people get fever and so on, is actually body's way of learning how to deal with that virus, because it is a new thing that it's seen. So while building immunity, what the body is doing is getting used to that. But it's in a controlled environment. So that temperature usually lasts for twenty-four or 36 hours, usually after the second shot. After the first shot, you might get some muscle ache, or you might feel a little bit feverish, although we haven't heard many people get high temperatures. So that's just the body's way of getting used to this new intruder if you will. But in a controlled environment. Ken WhiteIt's been interesting to watch various countries, the rest of the world, and how they're dealing with it and fighting back. For instance, earlier a few days ago, the prime minister of New Zealand made the announcement that she was choosing one particular vaccine, the Pfizer vaccine. Why would they do that versus what we're doing in the U.S. with multiple vaccines? Rajiv KohliSo my research indicates that there is no real reason why they chose Pfizer over others. And it's not to indicate that they think that's safer than the others. New Zealand operates on a national health system, which is very different from the U.S., where it's mostly private. So when New Zealand decides to adopt a drug or a vaccine, in this case, it usually makes a deal with a company on a national basis. So the contract for the whole nation. That way, they can get a good deal, they can get a good price because they get better-negotiating power, and it's standardized. Everybody gets the same. New Zealand is a small country of four million people who need vaccination, the population maybe a little higher. So they really need about eight million shots, two for each. And it's not a large number that they want to divide up among multiple providers, which is what U.S. did, also U.S. was trying to kind of balance the risk, if you will, that if one company cannot make it fast enough, we have another one that's making. New Zealand has small numbers, relatively speaking. Ken WhiteYou and I are surrounded by college students, undergraduate, and graduate students, and one of the things they ask me almost daily is when can we travel abroad? They want to study abroad. And we've been doing that, of course, in a virtual arena. But they'd love to travel. When do you think the world will return to that day when we can visit one another across borders? Rajiv KohliKen that also is a very complex question because a lot of that depends on other countries and their readiness to receive us when we go over there and their own policies about how they will reopen their countries. I suspect that we'll see Europe and European countries be more open and willing to admit U.S. students, travelers, whereas countries in Asia that are slower to immunize their population, either because of resources or because of large populations like China and India, that will take some time. They will be a little bit later. So a lot depends on how much they are ready and also what happens between now and say end of this year. How the virus itself mutates and how effective are the vaccines against those, and how we are living our lives and trying to prevent the spread. So if you become lax and it spreads more, and there are there's more community spread, it'll slow the whole process down, and it will slow down the reopening, whether it's within the U.S. or outside the U.S. Ken WhiteWe certainly don't want that—fear of missing out. I talk to people who haven't had their vaccine yet, but it seems like everyone in my family has had it. You know, some people say, what do you say to those who are waiting? They're just not going to get the vaccine for a little while. What kind of advice do you have for them to feel better? Rajiv KohliWell, the advice is that keep doing what you were doing until now. I go back to my earlier comment about we are in the homestretch. I know it's frustrating. I know you're looking at other people and saying so-and-so got an email to go get their first shot. How come I have not, or when will I get it? Just patience. So there's nothing different you have to do if you if you've done well this last year. Keep doing what you were doing. You know how to keep yourself safe and others safe. The vaccine rollout is actually moving faster than we had anticipated. And we are hearing now doctors' offices calling their patients and saying we can schedule a vaccine for you, which means that there is ample supply. So I know President Biden announced that there will be enough vaccines at the end of May. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody will have shots in their arm by the end of May. But the way things are going, we might see soon after May, everybody actually vaccinated, which is what gives me somewhat encouragement that July 4th may be the first time we'll hang out in and out outdoors with our friends and have a barbecue. We might still practice safe distancing and mask-wearing if we are too close or if we are with people outside our family group or bubble. So this thing is moving quite quickly and rapidly, and I'm encouraged by the speed at which we are moving along and giving vaccines to people. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Rajiv Kohli, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Companies, organizations, and businesses are seeking professionals to lead in the Post-COVID world professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive MBA. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Rajiv Kohli, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Cara Simpson & Vicki Harrington](images/simpson-harrington-149-thumb.jpg)
![Helping Others Through COVID](images/simpson-harrington-149-thumb.jpg)
Cara Simpson & Vicki Harrington
Episode 149: March 1, 2021
Helping Others Through COVID
When the pandemic first took over the United States last March, two William & Mary MBA students decided to use their talents to help others, Cara Simpson and Vicki Harrington quickly founded the CrimDell Small Business Network, named after a popular landmark on the William & Mary campus. They formed a partnership with the Hampton Roads Small Business Development Center, then began offering free strategic business advising to small businesses in the greater Williamsburg area affected by the pandemic. Over 60 classmates joined in to serve as business analysts. Professors and leadership coaches at William & Mary's business school stepped up. The school's Graduate Career Management Center got involved. In less than a year, the organization has spent over 1500 hours helping 50 small businesses navigate the pandemic. Most of the businesses are women-, veterans-, or disability-owned enterprises. Simpson and Harrington join us today to talk about the success of the CrimDell Small Business Network, the lessons they've learned, and how utilizing your strengths can help others.
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Cara Simpson & Vicki Harrington: Helping Others Through COVID TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. When the pandemic first took over the United States last March, two William & Mary MBA students decided to use their talents to help others. Cara Simpson and Vicki Harrington quickly founded the CrimDell Small Business Network, named after a popular landmark on the William & Mary campus. They formed a partnership with the Hampton Roads Small Business Development Center, then began offering free strategic business advising to small businesses in the greater Williamsburg area affected by the pandemic. Over 60 classmates joined in to serve as business analysts, professors, and leadership coaches at William & Mary's Business School stepped up. The school's Graduate Career Management Center got involved. In less than a year, the organization has spent over fifteen hundred hours helping 50 small businesses navigate the pandemic. Most of the businesses are women, veterans, or disability-owned enterprises. Simpson and Harrington join us today to talk about the success of the CrimDell Small Business Network, the lessons they've learned, and how utilizing your strengths can help others. Here's our conversation with Cara Simpson and Vicki Harrington. Ken WhiteVicki, Cara, thanks for sharing your time and your story with us. Welcome. It's nice to have you here. Cara SimpsonThank you, Dean White. Thanks for inviting us. Ken WhiteI'm trying to think full-time MBA students. How many have we had on the podcast series? Not many. So you're in an elite group, so. Yeah. So thanks for being here. I have to ask you this question because I've told so many people this story. I don't know if you remember. And that's my question. Do you remember when COVID first hit and we started to have meetings with the classes and we met with your class? And after a couple of basic questions, when do you think class will return to normal? You know, basic questions Vicki, you said what can we do as a class, as an MBA program, and as a business school to help others? Do you remember that? Vicki HarringtonI do. And what's funny is I think the behind-the-scenes is a lot funnier than you realize because Cara and I had already started talking about ways to help. And Cara is the one that prompted me to ask that question. Cara SimpsonI was driving. I was driving in my car, so I wasn't able to unmute. Vicki HarringtonSo it's funny. It's funny that you bring it up. You bring it up a lot. I'm glad you do it. I think it's it speaks to hopefully what a lot of us in the class were thinking. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. But it set the tone. Vicki HarringtonIt was Cara and I that did that from the beginning. Ken WhiteBut it set a tone. I think in the early days, early March, all of us humankind was saying, oh, no, what am I going to do? How is it going to affect me? I think that's a natural response. And so to hear that that early was really amazing. So how did you come up with the idea? Cara SimpsonWell, I think we just looked at what we could do, and we looked at where we were poised as business students. And I remember talking to Vicki over WhatsApp one night, and we were both talking about our internships. We were thinking about how does this affect us? But thinking about, okay, well, we know this is also affecting small businesses. And so I think that's what made CrimDell work so well was the idea that we had this mutually beneficial relationship and we saw that there was something there, I made this really rudimentary infographic in PowerPoint, that basically it was a picture and had William & Mary community on one side and it had greater Williamsburg community on the other. And I put a bunch of circles in the middle of like EPs, government, MBA students, and drew some arrows back and forth. And this was the basically the proposal document. We were like. We know that we have something here. We know that we have skills that other people could use. Ken WhiteYeah. And so then from there, where did you go? I mean, because it's a funded organization. It has really grown. Where did you go from the beginning and from that original document? Cara SimpsonThe first person we texted was Nancy Turner, the EP. Ken WhiteAn executive partner, which is the organization here at the business school of some active, some semi-retired, and retired executives who are absolutely fantastic. So you reached out to them. Cara SimpsonAnd Nancy has been a huge advocate for Vicki and I as well as other students since we've gotten here. And so she actually introduced us to a bigger group of people in the William & Mary community, including Rachel Frazier, Graham Henshaw, Julie Summ's. There is a bunch of people at this meeting, and it was a zoom called mostly designed around these MBA students have an idea. And we didn't know that we were being put sort of in the center of attention like this, but we were ready. So we basically Vicki HarringtonAnd it was interesting, too, because, you know, we had this idea in what we thought was a silo of saying we want to help. We don't know-how. Who can we go to? Someone, you know, executive partner. And she was like, oh, these conversations are already happening all over William & Mary. People are already trying to figure out how to help. Let me put you in touch with them. And so, you know, we had Cara's beautiful sketch of, hey, students need internships, businesses need help pivoting and reimagining. And really, we just kept knocking on virtual zoom doors until we didn't hear the word no. Cara SimpsonAnd people were really excited about it really quickly. I think Ken WhiteYeah. Cara Simpsonit was. I think it made easy sense to people, even though we didn't have a really clear vision of exactly how we were going to do what we wanted to do. And the more we pushed, the more conversations we had, the more barriers did come up in front of us. People were asking us, well, did you consider liability? Did you consider how you're going to get a hold of people? All of these things and our answers are basically, no, but we can now. Ken WhiteYeah. Vicki HarringtonThanks for bringing that to our attention. Ken WhiteNo kidding. Vicki HarringtonNow we will accomplish it now. Ken WhiteYeah. Vicki HarringtonNow we will do it. Ken WhiteSo how did you get other students on board quickly? Vicki HarringtonWe tried to get them involved pretty early on, really in the beginning. And to this day, we consider ourselves a very flat organization. We've had over our lifetime sixty students involved. Currently, we sit around thirty-five, and it's this idea that you know how you can help best. We want to bring a culture and a community together of show me what you've got, you know, and what can you bring to the table for CrimDell. Cara SimpsonAnd early on, before we were called, Crimdell. Students were texting us left and right. They're like we hear you've got something going. There's a buzz. We didn't even know we didn't intend for there to be a buzz right away. And it was really overwhelming because I remember having this feeling of I don't totally understand what this looks like yet. How can I bring in a team of people to help when I'm just Vicki HarringtonWe're still figuring it out. But then we realized we're only two people. Let's open a door and see what happens. And I think that's something that we've been. I would say, very successful with, is listening to others and bringing other people's ideas in. Ken WhiteIt sounds like you were sort of, you know, building the plane while you were flying it, so to speak. Right. Vicki HarringtonWe say that all the time, we're building the car as you drive it over the bridge. Ken WhiteYeah. So how did you come to the how did you come to everybody's hearts and minds were in the right place. Let's use our expertise to help others. How did you actually kind of focus in on what are we going to do and who are we going? Cara SimpsonWell, I think a bit of a chance introduction Rachel Fraizer from the from Launchpad. She introduced us to Jim Carroll at the Hampton Roads Small Business Development Center. And he in our first meeting, he told us that he's willing to meet with us every Friday, 1:00. And at first, we didn't really understand what it was he was looking to do, but he did counsel small businesses, and he saw what we were able to offer. And it was really key timing because this was right before the first round of PPP. The funding was released to the public. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Cara SimpsonOf course, the payroll protection funds as part of the Cares Act. So they knew at the SPDC that they were about to be overwhelmed with requests from the small business community. So he gave us an opportunity. He helped us find that first bit of funding that allowed us to pay students for this work. And we thought that was something really important and we really excited about. Ken WhiteSo, yes. So then, yeah, you had payroll, and you had some money in the bank. So the checks didn't bounce, so to speak. Right. And then what were you offering businesses at that time? Vicki HarringtonSo and it's similar to our model today. We act as SPDC counselors. So SPDC, like Cara mentioned, is the Small Business Development Center. It's an organization funded through the Small Business Administration as well as local entities in the community. And their whole mission is to provide free counseling to businesses. So what we do is we kind of do a little bit more in-depth than the usual business counseling that SPDC does. We take teams of two students and set them up with a business, and they have to define a project scope, something that's, you know, bite-size, something that they can chew on. And over the course of a roughly 20 hours or three weeks, depending on the project, they meet with local experts. They, you know, do a lot of fact-finding, get things from the business, and present actionable recommendations at the end. Cara SimpsonAnd this was inspired a lot by the corporate field consultancy class that is offered here at the School of Business. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Cara SimpsonAnd we actually had a conversation with Terry Shannon, who's in charge of the CFC class at the very beginning, because we recognize the parallels between what they offer as a seven-week course and what we wanted to be able to turn out at a faster rate, not for corporate clients, but for small businesses here in Williamsburg. Ken WhiteRight. Cara SimpsonSo we had his help in terms of design and guidance. We also reached out to Dawn Edmiston, and she helped us a lot with creating an organizational structure that allowed us to function more efficiently as a student organization. And that's where we went from. Vicki and Cara trying to figure this out to Vicki and Cara, co-founders and managing directors. Ken WhiteAnd Dawn Edmiston, one of our marketing professors here at the business school. Vicki HarringtonIt took a village of business school. Ken WhiteIt sure did. It was so interesting to see the documents and more names and more names and more expertise. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Cara Simpson and Vicki Harrington of the CrimDell Small Business Network in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. You know, the post COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. And those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different MBA formats, including the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed and lead in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary. Now back to our conversation with William & Mary MBA students Cara Simpson and Vicky Harrington, the founders of the Criminal Small Business Network. Ken WhiteOne thing comes to mind how do businesses react when you say we have a couple of fairly young MBAs who are going to help you in something you may have worked on for 40 years? What was the reaction? Vicki HarringtonIt's such a great question because it's something that I think we stress so much to our students. Our students have just as much to learn from the business as the business owner may be able to learn from the student. So our business owners, like you said, a lot of them have been in the field for 10, 20, 30, 50 years. Ken WhiteYeah. Vicki HarringtonAnd they are an expertise at whatever they do best, and no one has an expertise at everything. Right. And so, you know, business students, we're young, we're hungry. We're trying to prove ourselves, and we need practice. So it's this amazing opportunity to take what we're learning in the classroom and actually translate it into a hands-on experience that really, honestly helps the business owner just think a little bit differently. Right. It's that second eye. Cara SimpsonWe look at the counseling. We offer, as, you know, some form of catharsis for these people that are spending all of their time just totally in tunnel vision, looking at their problems really close up. And so we're offering this opportunity for a different perspective. And even and if we're able to make sure that students are coming at this, not as I'm going to tell you what to do and how to run your business, I'm going to instead share with you my skills and my background and see what would work to make your life better. Ken WhiteYeah. Vicki HarringtonAnd all of our first meetings, we have a little presentation. We have students run through, and on one side, huge, it's just as at CrimDell we work with you, and it's not for you. It's not beneath you. It's with you. Ken WhiteWhat are some of the success stories when you look back? Cara SimpsonOh, so I think one of the earlier clients, maybe, maybe halfway through, I think it was really interesting talking to the business analyst, the student. This is what we call the one they're working with the business, the business analyst. We were talking with them, and they were almost finishing a project with someone in early child care. And they were talking about how they were just so excited about how incredibly complicated working in this industry is and how she's explaining to us. Do you realize how they are on razor-thin margins, and now their capacity is cut in half, and they have to do this in their prices? And it is a complicated business problem. And it's something where, you know, to someone day to day, you don't think about these like strategic business challenges that people are facing. So that's a success in terms of our side feeling like we're opening up people in our organization, their eyes, to the business problems going around. Also, we've got some really great testimonials on the other side, and those are always really great to read. I don't think we've gotten one negative feedback yet. Vicki HarringtonYeah. And I mean, we are constantly trying to narrow our scope, but reality is we'll do any kind of project that's brought to us, and we like that. We consider ourselves generalists. We've done cash flow projections. We've done pricing strategies. We've done social media marketing plans. Gosh, we've done we do a lot of IT counseling. That was a big thing, especially in the beginning, businesses needing to get online. And so, you know, it's the site, it's two students being able to take that time and say, no, let's compare websites. You know, let's and not only let's compare websites because that's kind of functions in a vacuum. Let's put it on your cash flow statement. Let's see what it's going to cost you per month. Ken WhiteNice. Vicki HarringtonLet's see. You know what that looks like. Ken WhiteYeah. Before we started to record, you mentioned use your skillset. Vicki, tell me a little more about that. What did you mean when you say that. Vicki HarringtonYeah. So everyone has something to bring to the table, right. Everyone, you know, has innately what they think they're good at, what they want to do. And it's this idea that you know, especially in times of uncertainty and crisis, it's the best thing you can do is kind of look within and say, what can I offer? What can I do? So, you know, as business students can't go and administer vaccines, we can't give PPP to folks in need, but we can provide the skill set that we have to help in the crisis that's happening with small businesses. Cara SimpsonAnd that's, I think, how as a society we achieve maximum potential rate, everybody contributing what they are best suited to contribute. So I think that was the attitude we started with. And actually, during our orientation, you had an alumni from some year, and I don't remember his name, but I remember that he was talking about how success happens, where preparation meets opportunity. I don't know that student's name, but I remember listening that and thinking like that's a bit cliche, but it stuck in my head so well, and I think about it all the time to that, okay, this is really like what am I prepared for right now? And if I'm not totally prepared, and I have this opportunity. What can I do to get prepared as fast as possible? Vicki HarringtonYeah. Ken WhiteSo what's up moving forward? What are you hoping to do? You two will graduate not too far away. That's coming up pretty quickly here in May. Yeah. So what are you hoping takes place moving forward? Vicki HarringtonSo we just hired 14 new business analysts from our first-year class, so. Cara SimpsonAnd one undergrad. Vicki HarringtonAnd one undergrad. Ken WhiteNice. Vicki HarringtonWe do like to include some all-star undergrads in our cohort. Everything moving forward for Cara and I has been related to how do we continue to sustain this program. Cara SimpsonAnd these conversations they started in August when the school was coming back. We are recognizing this is our second year. Everything we need to do needs to be based around a succession plan. Vicki HarringtonBecause we think, you know, born out of crisis, but something that continually will contribute to the community. So we are currently looking for a replacement managing director. We're currently trying to get funding in line. You know, there's a lot of moving parts. Cara SimpsonOur board of directors already has to first-year students on it. And they've already given their word that they want to keep doing this into next year. So we know we've got at least a couple of leaders on board and ready to go. And we are still in communication regularly with Jim Carroll with our SPDC partners. We have a dedicated advisor, Tim Ryan. We've been forming more connections at the business school in terms of oversight to Professor Wagner, Phil Wagner. He's actually taken on a little bit more responsibility. Vicki HarringtonHe's our faculty advisor. Cara SimpsonYes. Yeah. So he's talking to us about what he can do to make sure this keeps going. Ken WhiteYeah. Cara SimpsonA lot of pieces. Vicki HarringtonWe try and weave ourselves in ways that make sure we stay around even when we're gone. Ken WhiteThe crisis or not. It sounds like your goal is to be there for small businesses in the region who could use some expertise they may not have. Vicki HarringtonYeah, and it's I think it's a model that really does work for both sides. You know, it's I I myself was doing applications and interviews last semester, and I had to continually remind myself to talk less about CrimDell because Ken WhiteOn your job interviews, you mean. Vicki HarringtonYeah, because I had so I was like, well, this one time, you know, planning this meeting. And I had so much expertise coming from working with small businesses. So, you know, it really, really helped students in the job market to say, no, let me tell you about the time. And I did this. Cara SimpsonAnd also, I mean, the idea didn't come out of nowhere even before COVID, Vicky, and I were planning an event as MBAA club leads, and we attended the Williamsburg Economic Development Luncheon to try to meet some small business owners to talk about potential for them to get more interaction with the business school. And we were meeting people from Williamsburg local government, and they were so excited to have William & Mary MBA students at the luncheon, they were telling us to come back again to invite friends. Yes, they'd love to do more. And so we saw that there was this desire from the community to increase interaction with us. And this desire won't go away Vicki HarringtonYeah. Cara Simpsononce COVID is over. Vicki HarringtonOr and once we're gone. Yeah. Ken WhiteAnd that's our conversation with Cara Simpson and Vicki Harrington, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Organizations and businesses are seeking professionals to lead in our post COVID world. Professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the part-time, the online, and the executive. Check out the William & Mary MBA program to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guests Cara Simpson and Vicki Harrington. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Trey Taylor](images/trey-taylor-148-thumb.jpg)
![A CEO Does Three Things](images/trey-taylor-148-thumb.jpg)
Trey Taylor
Episode 148: February 15, 2021
A CEO Does Three Things
For some CEOs and leaders, getting pulled in countless directions each day is par for the course. Many leaders feel they have to be involved in all aspects of their business. When that happens, they end up spending valuable time, effort, and focus on low priority items and low priority decisions. Before they know it, they're overworked and burned out. And they fail to move the organization forward. Trey Taylor says instead of doing everything, leaders should focus on the right things. Taylor's the Managing Director of trinity | blue, a consultancy that helps C-Suite leaders succeed. He's also the author of "A CEO Only Does Three Things: Finding your focus in the C-Suite." In the book, Taylor shares his three pillars of business: Culture, people, and numbers. He says when leaders embrace the three pillars, they create fulfilled and efficient professional lives. They end up focusing on the work they love, and they avoid CEO burnout.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. For some CEOs and leaders, getting pulled in countless directions each day is par for the course. Many leaders feel they have to be involved in all aspects of their business. Well, when that happens, they end up spending valuable time, effort, and focus on low priority items and low priority decisions. Before they know it, they're overworked and burned out, and they've failed to move the organization forward. Trey Taylor says instead of doing everything, leaders should focus on the right things. Taylor is the managing director of trinity | blue, a consultancy that helps C-suite leaders succeed. He's also the author of A CEO Only Does Three Things: Finding Your Focus in the C Suite. In the book, Taylor shares his three pillars of business culture, people, and numbers. He says when leaders embrace the three pillars, they create fulfilled and efficient professional lives. They end up focusing on the work they love, and they avoid CEO burnout. Here's our conversation with Trey Taylor, author of A CEO Only Does Three Things. Ken WhiteWell, Trey, thanks very much for taking your time and your willingness to share your expertise with us. Nice to see you. Trey TaylorKen, a real pleasure to be with you. Ken WhiteA first question, because we have so many listeners who, like you, have great expertise, are extremely busy, could write a terrific book, but just don't find the time. How in the world did you manage to write a book when you're working so much, and life is full? Trey TaylorIt's a great question Ken, the only way I ever made progress in writing a book, and it did take me probably two and a half years. Number one was to carve out time to do it. So I would take a week every quarter and go away somewhere from the family. So I'd go nice places to treat myself, but I would work on the book in those places. And number two, I had to hire people to help me with things that they knew how to do that I didn't. So I didn't hire a ghostwriter, but I had somebody come in and interview me sort of for 12 one-hour sessions, put those things on paper for me so that I could move them around a little bit and get some semblance of order into my thoughts. I'm a huge believer in the outsource economy anyway, and I outsourced as much of this as I could while still making it mine. Ken WhiteThat's that's great. Everybody seems to have their game plan. And yours is interesting because mostly what I hear is I try to write an hour a day or every other day. But yeah, that's interesting. And it worked. Obviously, the book is out. It's doing well. And you're helping people find their focus in the C suite. So why, in your experience, do so many leaders spend so much time on those low-priority items instead of the big items? Trey TaylorBecause leaders are good people and they're people-focused people and the people that work for them, they want to be successful. And if I just help this person with this task once or twice or three times, then they will learn it, take it over and do it for themselves. It's a complete myth that we tell ourselves over and over any executive that tells you that he is not guilty of that particular management sin is not then is then guilty of another management sin of lack of personal candor because we all do that. There's a famous HBR article about the monkey on my back, the most famous Harvard Business Review article. And we're all guilty of that. So the answer to the question is we do for others hoping they will do for themselves. And in reality, over time, we're teaching them that they don't have to do that. So we are the buck stops here. We're the final stop on the tour. And so we end up doing not only the job that we are hired to do but pieces of the job that we hire other people to do as well. Ken WhiteIn doing that, to a large extent, lead to ineffectiveness, lead to burnout. Trey TaylorAbsolutely. It absolutely leads to both of those things. I'm really glad you brought up the burnout piece because it's you are doing the work that you've hired other people to do, and you've invested a lot of confidence in people to come in and work for you. And you every manager gets super excited when they hire somebody because they say this person is going to do great. I'm going to do less of that kind of job and more of my own job. The organization as a whole is going to perform better, but in reality, we get into these bad habits of over helping, of overdoing for other people. And it's a little counterintuitive because I'm a full believer that we should really practice whole person management, but no part of whole-person management is doing someone's job for them. That's actually a very defeating thing to teach someone. Ken WhiteYou say leaders and CEOs should focus on three items, three pillars, culture, people, and numbers. Let's start with culture. How do you define that? What do you mean when you say that? Trey TaylorSo for me, culture is the ethical environment in which we live and work. Some people refer to it sort of as the fish tank. You don't know that the water is there until the water gets dirty until you get into this dysfunctional culture. And really what it is, is it's the sum of agreed values and behaviors that come from those values that we all agree that this is how we want to behave. This is how we want to react to certain challenges, and this is how we want to play up and down the field of business and life that come to us. What I notice about cultures, it's every organization has a culture. Whether you like the culture that you have or you don't care for it. It all you have one no matter what. And what I find is that people and we preach this very religiously, that CEOs should articulate the culture. Now, sometimes that means just announcing this is what we have in the culture that exists. And then sometimes there's some art to it to say, hey, we really don't like this part of the culture. So we're going to manage away from that with aspirational values and applied consistently over time. You really can remake the culture in the image that you really want to see. Ken WhiteSo it's more of repeating and communicating the agreed values. That's the role of the CEO in culture. Trey TaylorYeah, absolutely. So you articulate the values first, the ones that you really want to be true for the organization. They have to be grounded in some truth of what's already there, but they can be aspirational to some extent as well. Number two is that you're going to overcommunicate the culture. My team, when I started this in my own company, they were sick of the word culture by three months in because I overcommunicated it all the time. And then third, I'm going to pass that responsibility for communication over to other people in the organization so that it becomes a conversation and not just me preaching it all the time. It's not a sermon. And in doing that, we ritualize the culture. Ken WhiteBut that third piece is so tough to hand it over because most leaders want to do it right and be a part of it. Trey TaylorYeah, absolutely. So I don't cede it to anyone. I simply invite them into the conversation and say this is how I feel about this particular value that we have identified as something important. How do you feel about it, and where do you see it show up in our organization. And we do that in a ritualized format. We just do it by email on the Monday of every week. Someone takes one of our values. We have 13. We call them b attitudes. Someone takes it, and they say, here's the value. This is what I think it means to me. And this is where I've seen another person in the organization practice it well. And we've been doing that exercise for six to seven years now. Ken WhiteInteresting. William & Mary does the same every time we meet someone has the value, and they have a little personal story about what it means to them and how they've seen it sort of in action. But you have three elements, and you've chosen culture as one of the three. Trey TaylorAbsolutely. Ken WhiteSo obviously, you feel this is very critically important for leaders. Trey TaylorYeah, so the CEOs, the only position in the company doesn't come with a job description. Right. And so, my argument here is this is the job description for the CEO, and the CEO should do the things that no one else in the organization can do. And I don't mean by ability. I mean by perspective. Right. So is it okay to cede the culture formation and management to someone without the authority to build cultural rituals or necessarily the ability because of where they stand in the organization or the information necessary to do it? No, none of that is okay. So I think that that you have to trace that to the one position in the organization that has all three of those, and that happens to be the CEO. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Trey Taylor, author of A CEO Only Does Three Things, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary's School of Business. The post-covid world will require new skills and new approaches while those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats, including the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary today. Now back to our conversation with Trey Taylor, author of A CEO Only Does Three Things. Ken WhiteYour second pillar, which CEO should prioritize, is people. How do you define that? What do you mean by? Trey TaylorAbsolutely you won't have much of a culture if you don't have people participating in the culture. And it becomes a cultural exercise in the selecting of people who are going to go on the journey with you. And that really is what it's all about in people. So we give a little bit of a primer on here's how you understand people. And a lot of that work comes from the work of Ron Willingham, who you probably know, and then it becomes about how do we recruit? And we have a little bit of a different take on what recruiting has to be in this style age today when it is so very easy to get a gig economy job or something of that nature. So we have a little bit of a specific process that's different than what people have said. And it's very challenging process. So a lot of people look at it and say, well, I could never do that. And then, we show some examples of where that works. And then finally, it's about talent retention and the mindset around. You're not hiring a team member. You're not you're hiring talent the same way Hollywood hires talent. Who's the best person to play this role that we have scripted for them in this movie? Ken WhiteRecruiting, doing it right is is so time-consuming. And I think some organizations just aren't willing to put the time in, put an ad out, see who applies and let's go with it. That can certainly backfire. Can't it? Trey TaylorYeah, absolutely backfires all of the time. And what I hear from CEOs so many of so many times when we do consulting engagements, I don't have time to worry about my literal, most important thing that I could possibly do today, which is add someone to the team. And we've got some great examples. Larry Page, when he used to be the CEO of Google, which was a huge company then, even bigger now, you could not fill a job until he had at least put eyes on the resume. And this is when they had about eighteen thousand employees. Now, at some point, I think that bottlenecked, and they went a different way with it. But the whole point is, if Larry Page can do that for five years, my client, who's running a 40 life insurance company or something, definitely can take a little bit of time to do that and be engaged in the process in the conversation. Ken WhiteAlso, with people, you mentioned retention. What are some of the more effective ways you've seen and you liked to retain the high-quality players on the team? Trey TaylorRetention is all about letting your people know that the role that they are playing and the person that they are are important to the organization and to you personally. So CEOs really do have to reach out and say thank you for what you're doing in several different ways. And one of those ways sometimes is you're doing well, but you could do so much better. Let's invest in that together or something of that nature. But it's all about being personally involved in the life of the team member of the person who's on the journey with you. Ken WhiteIt's always nice to hear from the boss, isn't it? Trey TaylorAbsolutely. Ken WhiteYour third pillar is numbers. What do you mean by numbers? Trey TaylorSo numbers, this is the biggest pushback that we get in the book numbers. The CEO says, well, that's the CFOs job to do. And for me, it's like James Madison was the first guy at the Constitutional Convention. Why? Not because he thought he would hijack something or influence it. All he wanted to do was to set the agenda of what was debated. And so he got there, and he got on the agenda committee. They called it something else, I'm sure, but that's all he wanted to do. So the CEO's job is to set the agenda when it comes to numbers. Here are the numbers that we need to achieve for the organization to live up to the potential and us be able to achieve the goals that we want to achieve long term. Someone else can manage those numbers. Someone else can measure them and report them out and that sort of thing. If your CFO or finance director, whoever that happens to be, but the CEO has to set the agenda, and then common theme overcommunicate. These are the goals. These are the goals. These are the goals. This is where we are and that sort of thing and be remarkably transparent. This is one of the big pushes in the book is to really share numbers that you think may not be something of interest to people in the organization. But when you do, you empower them to help you achieve those numbers in really startling ways. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Any can you think of an example of someone who embraces the culture, people, numbers framework that you've created? Trey TaylorYeah, I've had several clients go through the whole process with us, and we had a an insurance company in Corpus Christi, Texas, and they were going through a management transition so that the number two was becoming the number one and the previous number one was still in the organization as the chairman and still had an enormous moral influence over this is how we do things, very cultural icon for the business. And so we wanted to articulate the new generation of culture and how those behaviors show up in our people on a daily basis. They had a numbers issue because the previous outgoing CEO was sort of old and set in his ways and hadn't modernized and adopted systems that would embrace the current environment. So we had a numbers issue there, and then some people were leaving some natural attrition, but some also because their boss was leaving, they were going to transition out as well. So we had a recruiting problem as well. So over the course of a couple of years, we had a lot of work to do and tweak. And because it was very much almost a vaccination of a lot of new principals coming into a host organization, we were worried about the possibility of rejection. And so we had to do a lot of very good internal one-on-one conversations. So the first three months we scheduled, she had eight hours of conversations scheduled every single day. One on one Ken WhiteWow. Trey Taylorwith about one hundred and forty people. Ken WhiteWow. Trey TaylorAnd we just banged it out. And she went in with an articulated strategy and said, here's where I'm going to take this organization over the next two years. Here's an invitation for you to come along with it. Ken WhiteWow, and obviously, if you're using it as an example, it worked. Trey TaylorIt worked beautifully for her. She had started in that organization, in the mailroom or secretarial support or something of that nature, and had risen to the top of the organization. No one knew it better than she did. But knowing it was not enough, she really had to lead the organization to the vision that she had and very successful in doing that over a two-year period, yeah. Ken WhiteFor a CEO who says, I don't know if I can do it, I don't know if I can focus on three things. I know how big the job is. What do you say? What advice do you have? Trey TaylorYeah, so I admit defeat on that point because we all get to that point. Here's what I ask CEOs to do. And I have a little pad on my own desk that I print out once a year. And it has the date on it, and it has culture, people, numbers, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And what I give myself permission to do is once I have satisfied something on those three things every single day, then I'm allowed to go do my to-do list for the day, because, of course, we have full-time jobs outside some of us, multiple jobs outside of just running the culture, people and numbers of this organization. All I'm really trying to do is to get C-suite executives to touch the long term on a daily basis. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Trey Taylor, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Businesses and organizations are seeking professionals to lead in the post-covid world professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive MBA. Check us out online to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Trey Taylor, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Fawn Germer](images/fawn-germer-147-thumb.jpg)
![Unemployed at 60](images/fawn-germer-147-thumb.jpg)
Fawn Germer
Episode 147: February 1, 2021
Unemployed at 60
There are few things in life more stressful than being out of work. Mid- to late-career professionals face an especially difficult challenge. The unemployment rate for older professionals is more than three times the national average. And as this group exits the workforce due to downsizing, COVID-19, or termination, it takes them twice as long as others to get hired, and often for less money than they had been making. The picture for unemployed workers over 50 is not pretty. But rather than blame the market or age discrimination, our guest today says "look in the mirror." Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of nine books, including her latest, "Coming Back: How to win the job you want when you've lost the job you need." She says many experienced professionals have not kept up with technology, the skills needed today, social media, and the overall pace of change. She says older workers want to come back, but they don't always know how. She shares her advice with us today.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. There are few things in life more stressful than being out of work. Mid to late-career professionals face an especially difficult challenge. The unemployment rate for older professionals is more than three times the national average. And as this group exits the workforce due to downsizing, COVID-19 or termination, it takes them twice as long as others to get hired and often for less money than they had been making. The picture for unemployed workers over 50 is not pretty. But rather than blame the market or age discrimination. Our guest today says, look in the mirror. Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of nine books, including her latest Coming Back How to Win the Job You Want When You've Lost the Job You Need. She says many experienced professionals have not kept up with technology. The skills needed today, social media, and the overall pace of change. She says older workers want to come back, but they don't always know-how. She shares her advice with us today. Here's our conversation with Fawn Germer, author of Coming Back How to Win the Job You Want When You Lost the Job You Need. Ken WhiteWell, Fawn, thanks very much for being with us. We appreciate your time and sharing your expertise with us. It's nice to see you. Fawn GermerIt's great to be with you. Ken WhiteFor the mid-career professional or someone even later than mid-career who just lost their job for whatever reason. That's a boy that's a life event that can really shake you with your experience and expertise. How would you advise somebody? What's the first thing maybe they should do when that happens? Fawn GermerWell, I think I'm supposed to say buy my book, but it's make up your mind. That you're going to get in the game, that the people who will win and believe me, if you make up your mind, you will win. But the people who win are the ones who say; I'm not gone. That you don't buy into this idea that it's going to be so hard and you're never going to breakthrough. You're going to breakthrough. It's going to be a challenge. It's going to be a test to see how tough you are. But if you make up your mind, you will get where you need to go. And then I'm going to give you one more thing. The next thing you do is you make a list. You make a list of every single thing you need to do so that when you start to lose momentum or when it gets discouraging, you always have one more thing to do because, you know, you work out, you know this when your feet are hurting, and you feel like you can't go any further if you just take the next step and the next step, you get where you need to go. So if you have a list, you just do the next thing on the list and the next thing on the list and with the certainty that you are going to do it. Ken WhiteExcellent. I think most people if they were to lose their job late in their careers, might think I better look in the field where I've spent the most time. Do you recommend they stay in the same profession or look elsewhere? Fawn GermerWell, that's hard to say because it depends on what the field is. You're looking at a former newspaper person, and if somebody lost their job in newspapers, I'd be like, you got to go look for another gig because that dance has about run its course. Ken WhiteRight. Fawn GermerBut what I would do is do some research on your industry, see if it's still viable. And then the first thing you ask yourself is, do I still like this? And if you still like it, can you get hired? And really, you want to eliminate the negative out of your mindset, saying I'll never get a job because that's going to make it hard for you to make a good decision. You have to be able to be realistic about it. Is that do you have opportunities that you can get? And if you still love it? Stay in it, but don't try to force the world to accept skills that are no longer being utilized. The world has changed. If it's still a viable profession and you love it, stay. If not, go. Ken WhiteHow about fit? How much does the job have to fit? And do I have to like it 100 percent, 80 percent, 50 percent at this stage in life? Fawn GermerWell, and sometimes it depends on how long you've been unemployed because sometimes you need to have a job in order to get a job. So you may take something that's not a good fit just to show that you're employable, but you want the right fit because you are entitled to have work that is meaningful, that makes you happy. Sometimes you have to, on a short term basis, take something that doesn't feel quite right. And you do it because you've got to take the next step to get where you need to go. Ken WhiteWhich might mean lower pay, for example. Fawn GermerSometimes that is common. I really tell people that from the beginning, keep your mindset that you're going to be able to get pay. That is going to take care of you. You have to be able to eat. But there are times when you will take something for less. And largely that's something I write a lot about, is that the world changed. So if you're the person in the office who has the highest paycheck, that automatically makes you more vulnerable because technologically younger people are coming out of school who will work for a third the cost and who likely can do more than you can. So they're going to take the cheaper work. So in those kinds of situations, if you can't justify the higher paycheck, you will be taking a pay cut. But you want to upskill and learn everything you possibly can. So you're not just seen as somebody with experience, but as somebody who can lead your company and your organization into the future so that you're not the best person for the job today. But in five years. Ken WhiteUpscaling is a great point. I'm not so sure some people even know where to begin. Is it determining maybe what you want to do and then getting the skills? How do you approach that? Fawn GermerWell, I say it's pretty easy if you regularly read The Wall Street Journal, Ink, Fast Company, and you don't have to read every article, scan the tables of contents, see what's going on, and then Google your industry. If my industry if I were in the news industry, I would Google trends in newspapers, and I would see what's going on with that if I'm in the insurance business trends in the insurance business and see what's coming. And everybody really needs to look at artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, big data, and machine learning and see how those things are going to impact their specific skill set. And then you just one by one take something, so you're at least familiar with those things. And that's the easiest thing in the world. There is so much learning out there that is free with these online courses. And you can say I've studied artificial intelligence from Harvard professors for free. You don't have to get an A in the class. You need the information. So always add something into your repertoire. And sometimes it's confusing. Blockchain that that's something I couldn't understand it. It took me forever. I did so many YouTube videos. I still didn't get it. And then I found a video on how to teach a, I think, six-year-old about watching. And then I watched that ten-minute video, and I understood blockchains like even if you take it to its easiest level and then start from there, you get the training you need. And let's admit it, we thought we were technologically up to date. We're not, and companies don't care about experience as much as they care about relevance. So if you've got time and you're not working, make yourself relevant. It's not hard, and the payoff is huge. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Fawn Germer, author of Coming Back How to Win the Job You Want When You've Lost the Job You Need in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The post COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. And those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats, including the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary today. Now back to our conversation with Fawn Germer. Ken WhiteWhat about networking? That's uncomfortable for a lot of people, but when you're out of work, that's a that's an important thing to do. What advice do you have for people in terms of networking? Fawn GermerWell, I am an introvert. If I go to a party, it's kind of, you know, unless I'm there as the speaker, I'm very engaged because people come up to me. But if I have to go up to them, it's hard. So you do want to get in the room, and it's very easy to network during COVID because you people are available, so you can do informational Zoom calls all the time and ask people who are your mentors to hook you up with their mentors and just do these little informal meetings, and you build this network, and it's useless if you don't ask your network for help. And I don't mean saying, hey, do you mind sending my resume out? I mean, you say, can you send my resume to Jim Davis tomorrow? It's about this job. And I would like to make an appointment to see him next week, blow some of your clout because it's no good to have clout if you don't use it. And so it's you got to go guerilla. Your network will help you again and again, but you have to specifically show it what you want. Ken WhiteAnd then in terms of personal branding, social media, you say that's a place that people have to have to look at. They've got to embrace it. How do you what do you do what you say when you talk about social media to folks later on in their career? So we're looking for new work? Fawn GermerRight. LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn. And I'm somebody who is not that crazy about all of those social media. I do like Facebook so I can post my kayaking pictures, but we have to do this, and it shows that you are a player. And if you have ten companies that you're targeting, start adding contacts in those companies because recruiters see that you have people in their company already. So that gives you points. And then if you start commenting on those people and what they post, that gives you more of a connection to be able to say, hey, I'm really interested in your company, what would you suggest I do? So social media automatically builds your network, and your ability to use it makes you a viable player in that network. It's just the way we do business now. Ken WhiteDo you recommend people write and publish on LinkedIn? Fawn GermerYeah, LinkedIn is the place. That is the place. And so you do that, you write your articles if you want, but be in the right groups, and people love it when others comment and say they did a good job with their posts. So just schmooze the right people, and they'll start noticing your name. Ken WhiteYou and I are talking on Zoom. I can't think of too many companies that do not use video interview, even pre-COVID. Is video and communicating on video something that this generation is adapting to, or they having struggles adapting to that. Fawn GermerWell, I think people like it. The older people are certainly figuring out how to use it so they can stay in touch with their children and grandchildren. So they just have to realize that this is the way that business is done then. Ken WhiteYeah. Fawn GermerAnd it's frustrating to me because I can't sneak off and look at Amazon while I'm having a business meeting. I have to pay attention fully. But it is the way business is being done. It is the way people are being interviewed constantly. And then, you know, companies don't think a thing of it. So when you're on that, you've got to really be sure that you've got good lighting, that you've got good sound, test out your camera and your sound before you do it. So you reboot your computer, and when you start, you say, hey, let me get a callback number in case something goes wrong here. Stick your dog in the other room, all of these things, because you want to create an impression that you've got it going on. And the other thing is get the garbage out of the back of your room. You want people to see that you have a professional set up, and sometimes it's you can make it interesting with whatever books you have or whatever things are out there. But what you don't want to do is look like you're a mess and that this was just some afterthought. And particularly for older people, your appearance is so important that you don't look like you're some frumpy old person. And believe me, I'm in the age group that I could qualify for that. But get your hair done. Get the right outfit, dress for your top and your bottom, because you may have to stand up, but you don't have to wear shoes, okay, and just make a good presentation. And you know, the other thing being that that connect, look into the camera, look at that person and validate them by just showing that you're seeing them, you're looking at them, you're taking them seriously. Ken WhiteWhat do you say if someone says there's no way I'm going to get hired? There's just so much age discrimination out there. Fawn GermerThen you're not going to get hired. I mean, come on. I learned that lesson when I was young, and I went to River Country. Disney used to have the first water park, and there was this T bar. And if I kept watching people and they would get on the T bar, and it would go down this line, and then they reached the end and then jump in the water. And I kept saying to myself; I'm never going to be able to do that. I'm never going to be able to do that. And then the minute I got on that thing and left the platform, I lost it, let go, fell in the water. But of course, I fell in the water because I thought I couldn't do it. The next time I said I can do this, they all did it. And then I went easily. So if you think that's the case, it's the case. Yes, there are definite age discrimination issues. We can't pretend that they're not. But usually, those issues are magnified because there is an assumption that we are not relevant. So if you can say what you are learning today, that you're taking a class on innovation at MIT, which incidentally, I did, and it was free and it was wonderful. Right. If you're, you can say what you're learning constantly. That's what they want. They want somebody who's an insatiable learner. And if a younger person is interviewing you, don't say, oh, I have a kid your age, or back when I was your age, I was doing whatever. We don't care about your experience anymore. I'm sorry. It's just the way it is. We want to know what you're going to be able to do in the future. And if you try to make it look like you know so much more than the person interviewing you, you're automatically setting yourself up as a threat. So that is how you make age an issue for yourself. Ken WhiteSo, yeah, great. So so be proactive about it. I do hear sometimes I'll hear someone older say things, wear things, and it screams I am older Fawn GermerRight. Ken Whiteand out of touch and just wow. Get it together, you know, get it together. And it's not the company's fault. It might be your fault, actually. Fawn GermerWell, you know, when and when I start writing that chapter, you know how to de-frump. I looked in the mirror, and I went, well, you're not looking so hot yourself. So we really have to give ourselves a good look in the mirror, not just physically, but that's important, but also in how we are presenting ourselves as professionals because we don't automatically get points for having been there and done that anymore. That can work against us. I think the most important quote in the book came from a millennial who said, if you have thirty years of irrelevant experience and a millennial has three years of relevant experience, the millennial is the expert. And that is the truth. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Fawn Germer, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Businesses and organizations are seeking professionals to lead in our post COVID world. Professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program. Offered in four formats the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive MBA. Check us out online to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Fawn Germer. Thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![David Jay](images/david-jay-146-thumb.jpg)
![The New Email](images/david-jay-146-thumb.jpg)
David Jay
Episode 146: January 15, 2021
The New Email
Imagine a world without email. While that's not likely anytime soon, the way email looks and the way we use it is changing. The days of video email have arrived. Everyone's familiar with the negative aspects of traditional email: It leads to overloaded inboxes, there's too much back-and-forth, writing and replying take up a great deal of our time. But beyond that, email and websites that rely on the written word are "low touch," and the intent is sometimes misinterpreted. David Jay is out to change that. He's the Founder and CEO of Warm Welcome, a company that helps professionals and organizations change the way they use email and the online written word and instead use video to form better relationships with customers and prospective customers - which has a positive effect on the bottom line. He joins us today to discuss the downside of using traditional text, and the upside of replacing it with video.
Podcast (audio)
David Jay: The New Email TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Imagine a world without email. Well, that's not likely anytime soon. The way email looks and the way we use it is changing. The days of video email have arrived. Everyone's familiar with the negative aspects of traditional email. It leads to overloaded inboxes. There's too much back and forth. Writing and replying take up a great deal of our time. But beyond that, email and websites that rely on the written word are low touch, and the intent is sometimes misinterpreted. Well, David Jay is out to change that. He's the founder and CEO of Warm Welcome, a company that helps professionals and organizations change the way they use email and the online written word and instead use video to form better relationships with customers and prospective customers, which has a positive effect on the bottom line. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss the downside of using traditional text and the upside of replacing it with video. Here's our conversation with David Jay, Founder, and CEO of Warm Welcome. Ken WhiteDavid, thanks very much for joining us. It's nice to see you. Thanks for sharing your time with us. David JayGreat to be here, Ken. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteAnd you're, of course, I'm in Williamsburg, Virginia, and you're totally on the other opposite end of the country in beautiful Oregon, right? David JayYeah, Bend, Oregon. So we're kind of this little island out in the middle of the desert. It's not as rainy as Portland, and yeah, we love it. Ken WhiteYeah, nice. Again, thanks for joining us. When when you explain warm welcome to people. How do you explain it? What do you tell them? David JayWell, the way that we talk about it is, and you know this, people have a really difficult time standing out in their business. You start a business, whether it's a service business or a software business. And the struggle is always like kind of getting recognized and standing out from everyone else, you know, that's in your market. And so, what we try and do is help businesses stand out by transitioning from the boring text that most businesses communicate into personal video. So, just like we're on video now, you know, it really helps businesses stand out, and it helps them build better relationships. And, of course, we all know relationships lead to revenue. So that's what we do, is we try to connect those dots and help people transition from kind of an old archaic way of communicating to a new, more modern way. Ken WhiteWhere did the idea for warm welcome originate? Do you remember? David JayYeah. Oh, I sure do. Actually, it was right in this little office. I had a friend come over. Eric Knopf is his name. He has a company called Webconnex. And I was showing him some other video technology that we were building. And he said I want to use that to send personal video emails to all of our customers and just thank them for being our customers. I was like, that is a really cool idea. I was like, I'm going to steal that, and I'm just going to make a whole business around it. And so he's like, do it. He's like, just make sure I get the first free account. And so he did, and he uses it in his business now. He has like five accounts now for all his different companies. But yeah, it's neat. People always kind of iterate and come up with better ideas than my ideas. So I try to listen to them and change what we're doing to fit what they want. Ken WhiteYeah. And it's obviously working. It's so interesting that the business it's part technology, it's part communication, it's part email, it's part relationships, part bottom line. How do you see it when you think about it? David JayYeah, it's a very holistic business, and that's the way that we wanted to approach it. You know, in a new sort of space like this, a lot of companies will tackle things tactically. Right? They'll take on a piece of the pie. So they'll do like video emails, and people will be like, oh, I want to send video emails, I'll go to this company or that company. And so that's where we started. But then we said, well, gosh, if video emails are effective, then wouldn't applying video to just about every point in the customer experience be effective. And so a video business card or a video bubble on your website or a video email signature or video embedded in your website that someone can engage with and send a video back. And so we thought, gosh, let's just connect all those dots and create a nice, consistent client experience through personal video rather than just kind of taking on one piece of the pie. And so that's what we've done. And it's been a really fun switch. We've been surprised how much we've enjoyed it because of the personal connection. And it's like, how many support tickets do you get or how many emails do you respond to every day? And after a while, they all start to feel the same. And it's easy to not see your customers as people anymore, but to just see them as another, you know, support chat or another email or another, you know, just words on a webpage. And when you change it to video, and you can see someone's face and hear their voice, you're like, wow, that's another human, another person on the other side of this that I get to engage with, and business gets to bring us together. And so it's really brought a lot of passion to our company. Ken WhiteIt is interesting just to look at your website. It's a very as a visitor; it's a very different experience from another website. I there was hardly any text on there. David JayYeah. Ken WhiteI was watching videos. Yeah. And of course, we like to watch videos as human beings anymore. It seems like it's the thing we do these days, you know. Yeah. What about results? What have you heard from people using it, your clients? What do they what's the reaction from them and those receiving videos from them? David JayOh, the response rate and the open rate on these is just, I mean, it's night and day. It's like 10x, you know, we used to send, you know, just mass marketing emails, and you get, you know, 20 percent open rate and then one percent, two percent click through rate on them. And now we're getting 90 plus percent open rate and almost a hundred percent response rate on them. And I think the reason one is it's very new, and not very many people are sending these videos out yet. But the other reason is because you recognize that it's a real person on the other end of the line if you will. And so it would be like if we met up on the street or we met up at a coffee shop and I, I engaged you. I said something to you. I said, hey, Ken, what do you think about this? Like, it would be very odd and awkward for you not to respond. Right. Ken WhiteYeah. David JayBut yet we feel completely okay not responding to a text email or not responding to some, you know, old form of communication, but a video, you know, where the person is engaging you saying, hey, Ken, I was thinking about you the other day. You know, I was wondering if this would be helpful for your business. So I wanted to send it along right. For you to not watch that video or not respond to that. It starts to feel a little bit odd. Right? So Ken WhiteAbsolutely. David Jayeveryone responds now because it's human to human communication again, rather than text to human. Ken WhiteRight. Interesting. Let's talk about some of the features. For example, a video signature. What is that? David JayYeah, so when we started with video email, one thing we found is the people who were very proactive, more sales types, marketing type people, they would go, and they would ground and pound on these things, and they were like having tons of success with them. But there's another type of person that isn't going to be as proactive with it but still wants to personalize all of their communication, all of their emails. So we said, well, when you get an email, you see a bunch of text, right. So it doesn't stand out. And so people just trash it or don't respond to it. Well, what if we could personalize every single email that somebody sent out without them having to do something every single time? And so we said, well, shoot, let's take it. You know, let's take the signature portion of the email, you know, the part that's just auto included in there. And personalize it. Let's add a smile and a wave to it just like that. And if you just do it one time, right, you record a little video. Hey, I'm David. This is my video email signature. Feel free to send me a video back or send me a text message back or email me back, whatever you want. But now every email I send has my smile, has my wave, and as humans, those are trust-building tools, right. And so if somebody sees me and they see me smiling at them, that communicates to them that I like them and that we're friends. And immediately, you start the conversation off. You start the relationship off on a better foot than just a big old page of words. Ken WhiteYeah. And yeah. And all those things we can't do in text we can do in video. Yeah. That's so interesting. David JayWe'll continue our discussion with David Jay, CEO of Warm Welcome, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The post-COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. And those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats, including the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive. All taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty, the William & Mary MBA, will prepare you to succeed in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary today. Now back to our conversation with David Jay, CEO of Warm Welcome. Ken WhiteI assume the video business card is quite similar. David JayYeah, very similar. You know, the video business card was another thing that we thought, you know, hey, everyone has business cards these days. But there's so many limitations to a paper business card. One is you just give it to one person, and that person usually throws it away. That's the downside of it. And so it doesn't scale at all. But two, you can only communicate as much as you can cram on this little business card. Right. And it can't be shared in a digital environment. There's like so many things wrong with it. And yet, people still do. You get a promotion? Guess what happens to all your old business cards? Trash. So a video business card. Now, when I share it with you, you can share it on with a thousand other people, and there's no extra cost to anybody. Right. So there's a scalability factor, a marketing factor to this business card. You can also communicate so much more in a video business card than a paper business card. The last one, which is really fun, is you can actually communicate through it. A paper business card like you still have to go and send the email or go and do something. A video business card, they can click and send a video right back. They can send an audio message back. They can send text back. And so it's a really nice like container and delivery mechanism for a person rather than a piece of paper. Ken WhiteWhat do you think about the future of email and the way we're communicating? Do you see video? What do you think about it? Yeah. Where do you see it going? David JayWell, I think we're on, you know, maybe a thousand-year shift, certainly a six hundred year shift in the way people communicate. You know, six hundred years ago is when the printing press came out, and the printing press was this revolutionary thing because it was one of the first things in the world that scaled. And so we all became obsessed, humans became obsessed with the written word because it was the first thing in the world that you could do one time and replicate a million times. And so, for the past six hundred years, almost all of our communication has been geared towards text or written communication. Right. And you've got Post-it notes. You've got text messages. You've got emails. You have spiral notebooks, leather-bound notebooks, bound books. We have so many ways to communicate with text-based communication. But the problem is the text-based communication is a terrible way for humans to communicate. I mean, look at Facebook, look at Twitter, like are these environments that people are leaving happier and better? No, they're terrible. Ken WhiteYeah. David JayAnd it's you know, you say something, you type something, I should say. And people read it in a negative slant. Right. Almost all written communication is read and judged in a negative state, whereas video is the opposite. And so, in the last 10 or 20 years, we've had the Internet and video come together and create the opportunity for a much better way for humans to communicate at scale than we've ever had in human history. And so it's a it's an exciting time, and there's going to be a million iterations of it. And so Ken WhiteRight. David Jaythat's why we're not a competitive company or Blue Ocean Company because there's going to be a million services just like cars. And that's great because it makes the world better. Like when people start communicating as humans again, the world a better place. That's, you know, sounds cliched, and I'm sorry for that. But it's true. Ken WhiteNo, and I get it. And as one who loves video and loves audio, this is exciting to me that hopefully, we're going this way. But one of the things I've learned when many executives reach out to me or many of our students and say, I don't like Zoom, I don't, I don't like teams, I don't want to see myself. I'm so uncomfortable on video. What do you say to the professional who feels that way but probably knows they should be embracing video? David JayYeah. So, again, it's kind of a tactical question, right? And they're thinking about the technique. They're thinking about the medium that they're communicating in. And it is a little bit different. And I think the video communication is young, right? It's in its teens. It's a teenager's awkward. It's uncomfortable. Right. But over time, it's going to mature. And some of the things that I think we're changing already is seeing our self on video, like the tendency when there's a video up on the screen is to look at our self. Ken WhiteRight. Absolutely. David JayRight. When we're talking to somebody at a coffee shop like we don't hold a mirror up and look in the mirror the whole time. Right. And so when we're communicating one, we should get ourselves off the screen, first of all, like, we don't need to see ourselves. But the second thing is the entire goal or the hope in a conversation is that we're adding some sort of value or contributing something to the other person. And when that's our focus, it gets off of our self. How do I look? How do I sound? Like all these self things that are terrible, like but that's not what we want to think about, as we're in a relationship with somebody, we want to be thinking about the other person. And so the technical, tactical things of get your own video off the screen, stop looking about yourself, stop thinking about yourself, start thinking about how to add value to the other person. And when you do that, you're able to get beyond some of those insecurities that we have. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with David Jay. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Businesses and organizations are seeking professionals to lead in the post-COVID world. Professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and much more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive MBA. Check us out online to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest David Jay, CEO of Warm Welcome, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Jen Lee](images/jen-lee-145-thumb.jpg)
![Managing Your Finances in 2021](images/jen-lee-145-thumb.jpg)
Jen Lee
Episode 145: January 1, 2021
Managing Your Finances in 2021
There's no doubt the pandemic has had a significant economic impact on the people of the United States, and the world. Since March, many individuals and families have experienced a reduction in employment, and a loss of income. People of all ages have been affected. The news isn't all bad, though. For example, in the second quarter of 2020 credit card balances in the U.S. declined considerably. The percentage of delinquent loans also declined in most consumer debt markets. And while you can't dictate what the financial picture will look like in the new year, you can be a good steward of your money by embracing quality personal finance principles. Jen Lee is an attorney who helps her clients with debt and credit strategy. She joins us today with tips for everyone - from the young professional, to the retiree, to everyone in-between. She'll fill us in on savings, 401(k)s, managing debt, and the elephant in the room.
Podcast (audio)
Jen Lee: Managing Your Finances in 2021 TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
Podcast (platforms)
iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Amazon Music/Audible | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Show Notes
|
TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, there's no doubt the pandemic has had a significant economic impact on the people of the United States and the world. Since March, many individuals and families have experienced a reduction in employment and a loss of income. People of all ages have been affected. The news isn't all bad, though. For example, in the second quarter of twenty-twenty, credit card balances in the U.S. declined considerably. The percentage of delinquent loans also declined in most consumer debt markets. And while you can't dictate what the financial picture will look like in the New Year, you can be a good steward of your money by embracing quality personal finance principles. Jen Lee is an attorney who helps her clients with debt and credit strategy. She joins us on the podcast today with tips for everyone from the young professional to the retiree to everyone in between. She'll fill us in on savings, 401k's, managing debt, and the elephant in the room. Here's our conversation with Jen Lee of Jen Lee Law. Ken WhiteJen, thanks so very much for joining us and sharing your time and your expertise with us. Nice to see you. Jen LeeNice to see you, too, Ken. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteDebt and credit strategy. How did you get into that? How did you choose this? Jen LeeSo debt and credit strategy came about because I started out in the legal world as a bankruptcy attorney. And as I was talking to people, I was realizing that people need help way before they get to bankruptcy. And there were so many people that I could help avoid bankruptcy if they understood how debt and credit actually works in the real world. So then I made up a totally new name for it. And we call it debt and credit strategy instead of bankruptcy, which sounds so much more soft and cuddly. Ken WhiteYeah, it does. It sounds quite human, doesn't it? Jen LeeYes. Ken WhiteYou know, we normally think I normally think when it comes to personal finance of younger people, and as we talk, we'll find out that's not the case. But why don't we start there? When you think of younger people, maybe they're in their first job. They're just sort of starting their new career. What kind of advice do you have for them regarding their money and savings? Jen LeeSo if I were going back to when I was twenty-two and my first job, what I would tell myself is if you have student loans, have a plan for them, whether you're on a forgiveness track or you are on some type of payment plan, have a plan for them, because so many people get 10, 15 years down the road and find out that they could have gotten portions forgiven or they could have done something. And now the balance has grown. So my first piece of advice is always have a plan for your student loans and try to pay them off if you can. Don't jump into the forgiveness if you don't have to. And the second piece of advice is start a 401k or a retirement the day that you start your first job. So they are always saving for retirement cause compound interest when you're that young, it makes great returns in the future. Ken WhiteI remember being that age and saying I can't afford to save for retirement. I'll do that later. That's the kiss of death, isn't it? Jen LeeYes. Ken WhiteHow do you convince somebody? How do you say it's so worth it to do this? Any amount, right? Jen LeeAny amount. It can be 50 dollars; it could be one hundred dollars at one percent. And if your employer matches, you should always contribute up to your employer match. But having a budget, and that's another go-to piece of advice too, is having a budget so that you can work out where that money can come from each month. It's really important to have a plan. So I think if you have the plan for the student loan and you have a plan for your budget and a plan for retirement, some of those I can't afford its become possible. So but even a small amount, as little as possible, but just put something into retirement so that it's always growing for you and don't take it out when you switch jobs, don't take it out. Ken WhiteIt is amazing. It is truly amazing how it grows as it's magic. 2020 has been rough, and many people, as we know, that seem to have their bills are larger than their paychecks. Many people facing that right now. What kind of advice do you have for them? Jen LeeSo when COVID first hit back in March, and all the shutdowns started, depending on where you're at in the country, it started earlier than others. I did daily webinars, and I told people you should write down all of your bills, all of your debts and see what your status is first and then make phone calls and communicate. So if you can't pay your credit cards because your paycheck has shrunk, your laid-off call and communicate with your lenders, with your creditors, because a lot of the CARES Act rules and things that they're allowed to do, they have to know that you're affected by COVID. And so my first step is for everyone write down what you have and what has to be paid to keep your four walls and your food going, necessary things, and then figure out from there what you can pay and what you can't pay. At some point, it becomes you have to do larger triage. But at the beginning, just make sure you write everything down so that you know what you have to pay and what you should pay versus what can wait and what you can negotiate on. Ken WhiteAnd when someone does contact, say, a credit card company, is there a way to possibly negotiate what's owed or the or the interest? Jen LeeThere are. So most of the time with COVID, it's they're just putting you into a forbearance. They may be freezing your interest. They may not be, but they're usually putting in a forbearance. You can often negotiate the interest rates down to zero or one percent or something very low, but they'll usually cut your credit line so that you won't have access to that credit line anymore. So you have to be a little careful with that. But yes, there are ways to negotiate and come up with payment plans so that they're not reporting you late on your credit or so that you're not getting sent to collection in the middle of this whole pandemic. Ken WhiteWhat about those in serious debt? I mean, it's looking bad, and the money's not coming in. What do you advise them to do? Jen LeeTalk to someone who could let you know what your options are there people who come to me for bankruptcy or come to you with serious debt? We're looking to see is there a way to budget out? Is there a way to consolidate? Is their debt settlement? Is that an option that we should look at? And then start looking at bankruptcy options. What I find with bankruptcy and this is the B I call it the B-word because. People are so scared of it. They think that the world's going to end. Is that almost every misconception people have about bankruptcy is what I hear as I can't do that. And so at least have someone explain to you what your future looks like and how to use legal options as tools versus thinking that it's the end of the world. Some of it's mindset. There's a lot of mindset issues. Ken WhiteYeah, well, it's funny when you say bankruptcy. It makes me think of what you call the elephant in the room, which is clever. Please share that with us. What is that? Jen LeeSure. So as I was starting out talking to people, we talked about debt and credit strategy. I found that the elephant in the room was that more than 70 percent of Americans have a debt or credit problem of some sort. And that was before COVID. And we all go on to Facebook, and we talk to our friends. And no one talks about this elephant in the room that we all have these debt and credit problems. So you think you're alone? It's very isolating, and it makes you think feel like you're almost an idiot because you can't figure these things out. When everyone around you is flopping around the same elephants that are around. And so I tell people all the time, it's very savvy for you to find out what your options are before it gets to the point of no return. And you'd be really surprised at the number of people around you who have the exact same debt issues that you do. Ken WhiteIt may explain all of the people, all of the mail landing in people's mailboxes right now, all this stuff for new mortgage rates, and so forth. You know, that's a lot to handle. How do you determine what's legitimate, what's not, what you should pursue, and what maybe you shouldn't? Jen LeeSo that's a really good question because I deal every day with the scams, and what things aren't always great options. Mortgage refinancing is huge right now because of the interest rates being so low. That's unprecedented how low they are. And if anyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s remember what interest rates were like, it's a very different world these days. Ken WhiteYeah. Jen LeeSo mortgage refinancing, most of those offers, generally you can reach out to the company and get things underwritten, find out what it looks like. I don't worry as much about mortgage refinancing offers unless they're offering something really shady like fifty thousand dollars and closing costs or something crazy. The scammy ones tend to be the debt consolidation, and debt settlement offers that you get. And those are the ones that come in the mail. And they'll say you can resolve all your debt for five hundred dollars a month for forty-eight months. Give us a call. And when you call into those places, usually you don't qualify for consolidation because, by the time you get to the point where you have enough debt, where you would need to consolidate, your credit score has suffered, and you don't qualify for consolidation loans. So they pass you on to their debt settlement company, and then they start talking you through this great program that they have that they can settle all your debts, four years of payments, and then you'll be debt-free. And it doesn't that sound great? Well, they don't tell you that your credit score does worse under debt settlement than it does under bankruptcy. First of all, it will destroy your credit. They don't tell you that you'll get sued in most states if you do debt settlement because the debts don't stop. They just try to sell them all, and they don't give you all the downsides of them. So I always tell people, if you're calling in for a free consultation and it's not a nonprofit consumer credit type organization, they're going to be selling you something, and likely you are the product at that point. So that's how I tell people to watch out for scams is. If you're calling in for a free consultation for something that sounds too good to be true, find out what the downsides are. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Jen Lee of Jen Lee Law in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The post COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. Those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats, including the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive. All taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty, the William & Mary MBA, will prepare you to succeed in our post COVID world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary today. Now back to our conversation with Jen Lee of Jen Lee Law Ken WhiteYou mentioned credit score a couple of times. How does how do people go on improving their credit score? Jen LeeSo credit scores are there difficult because you can have three hundred credit scores at any given time? Depends on who's running it, what bureau it's through, different types of scoring for mortgage or cars. So your credit score can be vastly different. Even the same day of the year, credit score, repair, or credit repair is a very scammy industry. I refer to it as credit rebuilding. So if you need to rebuild your credit, first of all, you should run your credit and find out what's on there because a lot of people are scared to run their credit and dispute things that are incorrect. Also, making sure that your balances are lower than about 30 percent of your limit is one of the biggest reasons people's credit scores are low. So if you have a card that's maxed out, that will significantly impact your credit score. So credit scores are one of those things that's a mystery out there. No one releases exactly what goes on, but your balances and making payments on time are the two top things that you can do to improve your score. Ken WhiteYou know, we hear a lot of especially 20 somethings moving back home with parents, can't afford rent, can't afford to buy what's a good percentage of income that you should be spending on housing? Is there a limit you like? Jen LeeSo this goes all over the place. I've seen recommendations. And if you do the mortgage underwriting, they'll sometimes go up to like 40 percent of your your your gross income to housing, which I think is a huge number that shouldn't be used. But I, I like about 20 percent of gross income for housing, and it depends on where you live too. I live in California. I have family in North Dakota. So I see a very big difference in cost of living. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Jen LeeAnd I do see people in especially the Bay Area of California, Los Angeles, where housing is more than that percentage. But that's just about a factor of the cost of living of the area. But I would say about 20 percent of gross income is what I feel comfortable at. Ken WhiteWhat do you tell people about life insurance in these times? More important than it was pre-COVID, less important? Jen LeeI think it's more important. I always think life insurance is important. My background before law school was in life insurance underwriting. And so I find that a lot of my clients that I get for bankruptcy would have benefited if the person that they loved who passed away had life insurance. So I think life insurance is very important. We also don't know what COVID is going to do to insurability if they're going to be long term effects if it's going to cost people to be uninsurable. So I think everyone should have some type of life insurance. The amount varies greatly depending on what you need to protect and what you have for family and that kind of thing. I think it's good for everyone. Ken WhiteWhat are you advising people of all ages in terms of their personal vehicles, rent, lease, buy, cash, payments? What do you think? Jen LeeI have a really good lawyer answer. It depends. Ken WhiteOf course. Jen LeeCash cars, if you can buy a cash car, that's usually the most economical thing that the first thing that personal finance people will tell you. I'm a little bit more flexible on that. I think if you get a good deal to buy something newer and is going to last for a while and have a low-interest rate, then buying as reasonable. Leasing, if you're a business owner, there are all kinds of things you can do with car leases. So I'm not opposed. I am not a you can never lease a car because it doesn't make sense to rent a vehicle, or you should always buy a cash car. But please watch the amount of money that you're spending each month on a car payment because I've seen some pretty ridiculous car payments that were more than rent. So I would tend to error on the make sure it fits your budget more than buying, leasing, cash, loan that kind of thing. Ken WhiteYeah. As as we head into this, this New Year, what kind of overall advice do you have for not just your clients and our listeners, but for everyone when it comes to their personal finances moving forward in this new year? Jen LeeI would say for personal finance goals for anyone is know what you have, know what's in your portfolio of debt and what's in your portfolio of assets. It's scary to look at, and I find I do a lot of debt therapy when we're talking through, trying to figure out what exactly you have and what your plan is for it. It's really easy to put it off to the side and say, I don't want to look at that. I don't want to touch that. I don't want to think about it because it hurts. And so, some good personal finance goals are just to sit down and have a plan. You have to find something that works with you and your family. Some couples are really good about talking about finances. I would say 70 percent of couples are not good at talking about finances. And so you have to find something, a system that works for you and use that system. Don't just let it go off to the wayside. Ignoring the problem is probably what contributes to the most stress. The other thing I'm seeing a lot of is employers, those financial wellness programs. Financial wellness is great. If your already in a good financial place. It's a proactive step to take is financial wellness. Most of the time, I see people who don't benefit for financial wellness programs because they can't even get to a place where knowing how to budget and knowing what their 401K options are are steps they can even take. So I find that financial wellness programs are missing the mark needed. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jen Lee, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Businesses and organizations are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program. Offered in four formats, the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Jen Lee, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Phillip Sun](images/phillip-sun-144-thumb.jpg)
![Changing the Face of Hollywood](images/phillip-sun-144-thumb.jpg)
Phillip Sun
Episode 144: December 17, 2020
Changing the Face of Hollywood
If you like television and movies, you're familiar with Michael B. Jordan, Donald Glover, Taraji P. Henson, and Idris Elba. They're among the biggest actors in the business. They're also people of color who are represented by a new management firm called M88 - an organization that represents actors, directors, writers, and producers of color, and focuses on inclusive storytelling. One of the two men who created M88 is Phillip Sun, a William & Mary graduate who - after earning his Bachelor's Degree in International Relations - went to Los Angeles. He started as a gofer on a movie set, then got a job in the mail room at the William Morris Agency where he later become a talent agent, and eventually the company's first Asian American male partner. Now he's changing the face of Hollywood by approaching diversity, inclusion, culture, and storytelling in a new way. He joins us today to discuss his journey from William & Mary student to popular culture influencer.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. If you like television and movies, you're familiar with Michael B. Jordan, Donald Glover, Taraji P. Henson, and Idris Elba. They're among the biggest actors in the business. They're also people of color who are represented by a new management firm called M88, an organization that represents actors, directors, writers, and producers of color and focuses on inclusive storytelling. One of the two men who created M88 is Phillip Sun, a William & Mary graduate, who, after earning his bachelor's degree in international relations, went to Los Angeles. He started as a gofer on a movie set, then got a job in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency, where he later became a talent agent and eventually the company's first Asian-American male partner. Now he's changing the face of Hollywood by approaching diversity, inclusion, culture, and storytelling in a new way. He joins us today to discuss his journey from William & Mary student to popular culture influencer. Here's our conversation with Phillip Sun of M88. Ken WhitePhillip, it's great to see you. Thanks for sharing your time with us today. How are you? Phillip SunI'm doing well. Thanks for having me. This is a this full circle for me to come back to a William & Mary podcast. So I Ken WhiteNo doubt. That's great. Thank you. Yeah. We're recording in December. You and I were just talking about the weather in Los Angeles versus the weather in Williamsburg. So a little bit different. Of course. Phillip SunAbout 40 degrees different. Ken WhiteYeah. Phillip SunYeah, a little bit. Ken WhiteSo what an interesting story. You're this international relations major from William & Mary. And so many I.R. majors go up to Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill and make their mark. You turned left and ended up on the West Coast in the entertainment industry. How did what was the first step? What was that first job you had that got you on that path? Phillip SunIt is a sharp left. The plan was to go to D.C. Senator Dick Lugar was a fraternity brother. So a lot of the Betas had opportunities to go up to D.C. just through our education, but also connections. So the trip to California was really just to scratch an itch that I had about L.A. It always been intrigued by celebrity and film and television content. So when I got the chance to work as a P.A., which is a production assistant on my brother's film that he was co-financing, I just jumped at the opportunity. And of course, it was for my brother, so I worked for free, but I learned the ins and outs of being on set, and as Hollywood works, it's just I met the star of the film, Parker Posey, who's a wonderful actress. The Christopher Guest movies were was her claim to fame. But I worked for her. I was a P.A., and then I got her coffee order, and then I got her the same coffee order the next day. I remembered her order, and she was like, Oh, my God, you remembered like, I can't believe I want you to be my assistant. Like, it's a coffee order. Like I went to William & Mary. I promise you; I'm educated. It's not that hard. But then I was I became I, I got promoted and became her assistant. And then as it kind of works in this world, it's just it's who you meet and then who they know. So before I was going to head home, she asked me to work for Kerry Barden, who was in casting then. So I worked for him. He asked me to work for Hans Canosa, who was a director and was a director's assistant. Then I went back to casting for Kerry Barden. And I got to meet Spielberg in that sense or in that in that job. And then before I left to head back, they all agreed that I should try the agencies because it's kind of like lobbying, right? It's like Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phillip SunYou gotta be good at salesmanship. And the skill set is very similar, actually. So why not? I'm here. Right. So I interviewed at all the mailroom positions, luckily I got offers from all of them and then my Chinese immigrant family, my parents wouldn't let me stay unless they could read about the institution. So I ended up at William Morris Agency, which is the most historic agency of all of them because they could read about the mailroom and people who had become Ken WhiteSure. Phillip Sunsuccessful from it and all the things that that Chinese parents need. And also, well, my brother and I sold it as the Harvard of agencies. So Harvard has a certain ring to it. And my brother went there, so I landed there and then I started to move my way up from the mailroom. Ken WhiteSo what was it early on in your career that made you say, this is where I'm supposed to be? This really lights my fire. Phillip SunNot much. I think it was more of this is so interesting and different compared to Virginia. And I wasn't economically able to travel abroad and enjoy, you know, traveling after college. I had to get to work. So this was an experience for me. It was just like, oh, let's see how far I can take it. Oh, definitely a little bit of the Southern kind of competitiveness. Frat boy competitiveness came out, and it was like, look, I'm going to swing for the fences here and see what a southern Virginia kid can do here. And then also the William & Mary kind of background. It's just like we get to learn so many different things at a liberal arts school, like, you kind of just have to move and learn quickly, which you were taught to do at the college. So it kind of worked in my favor. Ken WhiteSo you were an agent. What did that entail? What kind of work was that? Phillip SunYeah, I was an agent after I trained for like three years. So the work of an agent is purely to represent your client and build out their brand. Right. So reading scripts, putting together lists of directors, producers, people that they should be working with, strategizing alongside them and senior agents about how do you take someone from T.V. show or small movie and build them to the grand stage, if you will. So that is the job in a nutshell, like a very, very, like quick overview. You know, that job evolved also into what I like to say is like a CEO position. Right? You get to be the CEO of a lot of businesses. That resonated with me more because I was still learning the arts very quickly. I didn't grow up watching movies and television. Like the kids in L.A. did. We were raised differently. And we at the college, you didn't really learn about fine arts and such unless you took classes on it. So kind of just I knew I could learn business because of the classes I had taken at the college. Right. So I was like, okay, this is economics. This is these are these things. That's how I'm divvying it up in my head. But the CEO position made more sense to me because it was like, okay, cool. So you get to partner with x movie star. How are you going to build the business? It's not just arts. It's obviously the fuel. But like, there's how do you brand them? How do you get into Silicon Valley? How do you get into investments? How do you get in like kind of bringing it back to my strength and skill set? But that's kind of how my job has evolved. Ken WhiteAnd then the job to M88. How did it happen? How did you get there? Phillip SunThat was a lot. I mean, it was, you know, I loved the agency that I was working at. But I think with the birth of my son, which was last December, which is crazy, it's almost been a year and then COVID where everything just stopped. Like I was, I could take a second to breathe, and no business was happening. Right, like the world shut down. Ken WhiteYes. Phillip SunAnd I think for the first time in 15 years, the perspective of being a new father, plus the perspective of given to me of through time to think right. And then the unfortunate tragedy of George Floyd, kind of what I had built my career on, which is fighting for people of color, voices of color, voices from underrepresented communities. It just kind of was a calling of I think I've done everything I can do at the Agency for Diversity and Inclusion, meaning that no matter what I did there, you know, diversity would be a program or an afterthought or a reaction. It was just a constant push. Right, because you're kind of going up against the grain of any corporation. It's like not built on diversity and inclusion. It's just not anything built. Less or more than five years ago, probably isn't built on it. Ken WhiteRight. Phillip SunSo wanted to take my skillset and build a management firm, a representation firm. Partner up with my mentor, Charles King, who had started Macro, which is a production company studio that pushes out multicultural content as well, start the representation arm and like he had started a smaller version of it, but kind of supercharge it if you will and push out the mission of making sure that the world sees the content of the global majority told by the global majority and making sure that the representation reflects what they want out of the industry. And the opportunity just seemed to be perfect. And quite frankly, because of the Zoom world, a part of the reason I was staying at the agency is like I have so many good friends there, but like when you don't see them day to day, right, the emotional connection of people dissipates. And so you just start making decisions based on business. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Phillip Sun of M88 in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The post-COVID world will require new skills and new approaches. Those skills and approaches are taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats, including the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive, all taught by our top-ranked MBA faculty. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary today. Now back to our conversation with Phillip Sun of M88. Ken WhiteWhat was the reaction of folks in the industry, whether it's studios, production houses, actors, writers, what was the reaction? Phillip SunI think we were received very well. I think there is a strong appetite for the systems that have been established to change. I think it's just a unique opportunity where minorities in representation aren't really a thing until recently. Right. Like our parents or our immigrant parents were like, go be a doctor, go be an attorney, go be something stable. That can give you a good, stable economic life and minimal risk. Arts is not that. Right. So but there is more minorities are like, okay, there is a business in the arts. Right. There is something that we can find there. And I think my generation is the first generation where you see more people coming through. And I was just oddly situated to be senior enough and blessed enough to have a client base that was strong enough to start this venture with Charles. And it was received so well because I think two-fold one. The minority community obviously is cheering for it, right? They want something fresh. They want a minority-owned business minority-led business to be successful because it represents them. Right. It gave them kind of like a new home if you will. I think the again, the industry, the studios, the production companies, which are predominantly led by older white men, some of them want help and need help and need kind of like a go-to right. Like so, it's kind of simplifying it for people. Like you can come here like, you know the client, you know me, you know Charles, you know the people there. And then there are some people who I'm sure are cheering for it in publicly and not cheering for from behind because it's, you know, it's a tricky subject matter. Ken WhiteYeah. Phillip SunBut overall received very well. Ken WhiteI mean, you're influencing popular culture. I mean, that's how a lot of people learn about diversity. Phillip SunMy clients are influencing popular culture. I am just trying to help. Ken WhiteYou're assisting them. That's really that's really something. I mean, that's an influence on people that can really touch everyone. Have you thought much about that? Phillip SunI did. I did. When I was coming up about what the opportunity of a representative with a cause could be. Right. Because it's very much like politics, right. When you're lobbying or when you're in D.C., you're pushing for policy. We all know through government and watching television and just knowing how government works, it takes forever to get something through because of the politics. You're actually much more able to send a message in Hollywood. Right, because a lot of the a lot of my clients, everything that they do has some sort of social relevance or message. And they use their strength of their brand to push things forward. Policy forward right. But you're in a very liberal town here. Right. So they're not as much politics to get in the way of it. Right. It's just about can you are you lucky enough to work with the people that have like minded mission aligned with you, and can we influence the world that way? So, again, I thought about it in the way that, like, should I be in D.C. should be here, like, what should I be doing? It's the same skill set, but there's power in both coasts if you will. And that's I just chose my coast. Ken WhiteTo outsiders, to fans, you know, people who love movies and television and the arts. This sounds extremely innovative. Is it in your field what you're doing? I mean, it's different for sure. Phillip SunI think it's it's different. Well, look, we're the first, I believe we're the first minority black-owned minority-led representation firm. There's certainly no other representation firm led by people that look like us. And our though we're small, we're mighty so far, and we're growing intentionally. But our manager and assistant base is one hundred percent women, people of color. Our client base is majority women, people of color. It will remain so. I think that's the uniqueness in the innovativeness. Right. You're giving a traditional system of representation a new look. And the look is kind of the look of the new global majority. And look, it's we all know about institutions, right. It's like William & Mary. When the culture is set early on, you know what it's going to grow with the business, the college, wherever. We're trying to set the culture early on in the mission early on so that it grows and thrives but will always be the center point. And that's the innovative, I guess, avenue. Ken WhiteYeah. There was something I read in the L.A. Times; one of the actors said that M88 produces great work that has cultural integrity. Phillip SunWe try to. Ken WhiteWhat does that mean to you? Yeah. Phillip SunWell, our sister company Macro is actually the one who produces. Right. So they are exactly that. Whether it's fences, whether it's sorry to bother you, whether they are, they're tapped into the culture, and they are very hyper-vigilant about making sure that the stories told are excellent and told by the storytellers that are meant to tell the stories. M88s clients, they certainly are of the same ilk. M88 is a representation firm. Like this is just the industry we watch, right. We we're representatives our clients can produce in our sister company macro produces. But we always everyone knows the rule is like as a person of color. In any industry, you feel like you have to be that much more excellent, right? You have to be that much more perfect. I think we take that challenge on the clients, the representation firm, and also macro. We embrace it, and we rise to the level of it. Knock on wood. We'll continue to do so. But yeah, I take that as a compliment and an expectation. I just want to make sure that the alumni and also the students at William & Mary know that this is an opportunity and like people built like us and from a background, like the students, we need you out here, all right? Like if you ever think that this is not available to you, that's wrong. Cord Jefferson and I are of the same class. Cord just won an Emmy. I just started a management firm. We're both from William & Mary. So it's like it's there's something about the school and how we're taught that works. So certainly, if we can send the message to the students that we're open for the college's business on this side, just reach out to me. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Phillip Sun of M88, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Businesses and organizations are seeking professionals to lead in the post-COVID world professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and much more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive MBA. Check us out online to learn more. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Phillip Sun, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Kim Foley](images/kim-foley-143-thumb.jpg)
![Communicating Effectively in Virtual Meetings](images/kim-foley-143-thumb.jpg)
Kim Foley
Episode 143: December 8, 2020
Communicating Effectively in Virtual Meetings
Since the start of the pandemic, our workdays have changed. We're working longer, and attending more meetings. Look at your calendar, you're likely to see a never-ending list of meetings. And most of those meetings are taking place virtually: On Zoom, Teams, WebEx, Skype, and other vehicles. That virtual world requires a particular set of skills. Communicating on camera is different than doing so in a face-to-face environment. If you communicate poorly on video, your brand, credibility, and reputation can be adversely affected. If you embrace video communication, your leadership, presence, and influence can improve. Kim Foley is a communication consultant. She works with Fortune 500 companies and professionals from a variety of sectors helping them communicate more effectively on video. She's the author of "Virtual Meetings with Power and Presence: The Ultimate Guide to Online Meetings." She joins us today to discuss how you can communicate effectively in your virtual meetings.
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Kim Foley: Communicating Effectively in Virtual Meetings TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, since the start of the pandemic, our workdays have changed. We're working longer and attending more meetings. Look at your calendar. You're likely to see a never-ending list of meetings. And most of those meetings are taking place virtually on Zoom, Teams, WebEx, Skype, and other vehicles. Well, that virtual world requires a particular set of skills. Communicating on camera is different than doing so in a face to face environment. If you communicate poorly on video, your brand, credibility, and reputation can be adversely affected. If you embrace video communication, your leadership, presence, and influence can improve. Kim Foley is a communication consultant. She works with Fortune 500 companies and professionals from a variety of sectors, helping them communicate more effectively on video. She's the author of Virtual Meetings with Power and Presence: The Ultimate Guide to Online Meetings. She joins us today to discuss how you can communicate effectively in your virtual meetings. Here's our conversation with Kim Foley. Ken WhiteKim, thanks so much for sharing your time and your expertise with us. I'm so excited to talk with you. Thanks for being here. Kim FoleyOh, I'm so happy to be here. Ken WhiteTell us what you do. You have an interesting job, interesting background. What what are your days like, and what do you do? Kim FoleyWell, since April, my life has really changed because I pivoted from video production to and media training to teaching people how to do better Zoom meetings. And no matter what platform you're using, we all struggle with the same issues. And believe me, I had never done a Zoom meeting before April. And so, of course, I'd done plenty of face-time meetings, which is really the same thing. But I had to learn the platforms. And so it became very clear to me very quickly that I could no longer train people in my studio, and I had to start doing everything virtually. And the very first time I opened my computer to do this, I realized that the angles too low because my computer's down here and, you know, the shadows were terrible. And I immediately went into video production mode and started fixing things. And in ten minutes, I had something great going on on the screen. But I realized at that moment that other people are probably having a lot of the same issues, except they didn't know the solutions, right. Ken WhiteYou got it. You got it. People like you and I who've lived in the video world; we get it, but most people have not lived there. So, yeah, it's a whole new thing. So what are some of the common mistakes you're seeing where people are literally sabotaging their credibility because of things they're doing on Zoom? Kim FoleyIt's just unbelievable. You know, the whole point of this is to make sure that you simulate sitting across the table, having a conversation at a conference, at a meeting, whether it's in person, you want to simulate that. And the only way you can do that is by getting about five or six things right. And so the main things that I see people doing incorrectly are, first of all, they'll open up their computer while it's sitting down low around their waist, and all we see is their chin. We see the ceiling, we'll see the ceiling fan, we'll see recessed lights, whatever. But we're not seeing them eye to eye where it looks like we're really sitting across the table from someone. And so one of the first things I always say to people is figure out a way, whether it's a bunch of Amazon boxes you taped together, it doesn't matter. Get that computer or that tablet or that phone up to eye level. And I don't mean kind of eye level; I mean really eye level. And when you do that, it makes such a difference. And so that's the very first thing I would get people to do. But in my book, what I talk about, the first chapter is getting that Internet connection right. Because let's face it, if you get your framing in your audio and your lighting and everything just right, but you have really poor Internet connection, what's going to happen is you're going to have odd audio. It's going to sound very electronic. It may even cut off altogether. You're going to have freezing, and it ruins the meeting. So any time you have a lot of stalling, sometimes people are kicked completely off the platform because of Internet. So I go into how to maximize your Internet connection, how to reboot your router, and how to close out all your apps and make sure that your bandwidth is really supporting what you're doing, especially if you have an important presentation or meeting. You know, if you're a leader in your organization, you definitely don't want to be the one that's cutting out. You want to be the one setting the example right. Ken WhiteYeah. Kim FoleySo we got to get that right. So then get that framing perfect so that you're really, truly eye level and then step back a foot, because if you're right up close next to your computer and a lot of people do that because they're having trouble seeing the screen, don't worry about seeing the screen. Where you should be looking is in the eye of the camera, not at the other people on the screen or at yourself. And we're hardwired to do that, as you know, to look at faces. So it's very hard for people to keep that eye contact with that camera because it's a tiny little thing. So there's tricks for that. There's tricks to helping you remember that put a little Post-it behind there and make it very obvious so that your eye is drawn to that space and keep your eyes there if you're doing the talking. So there's a lot of body language that's involved in this. But if you step back, like I see that you are in my meeting here and I'm stepped back, we can actually use our full body language to support our message. We can move our head or shoulders. We can move or shift our weight. We can; it's really fantastic to get more of a chest-up shot going than a shoulder-up shot. And so you've got to back up to do that. And that's when it really looks good. Now, if you are doing that, the other problem is you need to make sure you're using a microphone because the mic in the computer is it's going to be too far away from you to really pick up beautiful sound. So I want you to think about what type of microphone. I use a lavalier microphone that's USB connected into the computer. It's very inexpensive; got it on Amazon. It works great. And it's a very simple thing to do so that you get rich, beautiful sound. So these are, you know, some of the tips that I work on with people. And then, of course, lighting, if you're if you've got overhead lighting, which most people have, you have deep, dark shadows. You may have darkness in the background, and it looks foreboding, sort of like a creepy horror movie. You can't quite see what's back there. We don't want that. We want to make sure that you're lit properly and that your background is lit properly as well. Shouldn't be brighter than you. For instance, I know you've seen people set themselves up or the windows behind them right. Ken WhiteYeah, backlighting. Kim FoleyBacklighting it's the worst. So they're in darkness, but the background is very bright, and that does not work for people. So, you know, it's important for people to understand the elements. It's not hard to do. And once you get that set up properly one time, you just repeat it so that it's not difficult to take in all the stress out of it by understanding exactly what you need to be doing. And then there's no more anxiety. Ken WhiteWhat I often tell our students is watch the news, watch how anchors communicate right. They're in the box that they got it. They're eye level, and so forth. And I love you said the Post-it note. I have so many colleagues who have those little arrow Post-it notes that they put on each side of the camera Kim FoleyYeah. Ken Whiteand their computer so that they do, in fact, look at the camera. Kim FoleyYeah, and remind you. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Kim Foley in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary's School of Business. There is no better time than right now to pursue your MBA. With businesses and organizations experiencing so much change, they're seeking professionals who can communicate, think strategically, and deal with ambiguity. Skills taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats, including the full time, the evening, also known as the Flex Program, the online, and the executive. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed in our post covid world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary today. Now back to our conversation on communicating effectively in virtual meetings with Kim Foley. Ken WhiteWe're on Zoom or whatever, whatever vehicle all day long, and questions I get are from people saying I'm busy at home, I have kids at home, there's so much going on. What do I do in that meeting? Do I need to appear on camera? Is it appropriate for me to put my photo up there? I know what I say to folks, but what's your advice? If somebody's got an environment where they're a little nervous that something could go wrong in the middle of a meeting? Kim FoleyWell, I think this is the time to start thinking about where in your house can you have some privacy? I have a client in a very, very large organization who's very high up, and she had to address forty thousand people in a video. And she was calling me in a panic because she has four children. And I said, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to get if you don't have a lock on the door, and she did not. I said, you're going to put a chair at the door and a sign on the door that you will be make sure that there's someone tending to them, and then you're going to make sure that they know you will be out in an hour so that they know you're coming and so they won't keep banging on the door and get that person to wrangle them for that hour because she had to do this out of her bedroom because there literally was no other place for her to do it. So it's a very tricky thing having a lot of people in the background. I don't generally recommend virtual backgrounds because people usually key out unless they're using a green screen and they have adequate processor in their computer. And if you do, like I can do beautiful virtual backgrounds because I have the processor that will support it, and I use a green screen. But generally speaking, I prefer not to do that. I like the realism of the real backgrounds. And so I try to encourage people to do that, and then I help them get that right. So did I answer your question? Ken WhiteYou did, you did. And actually, you brought up another point a background. So many people seem to be worried about backgrounds, not necessarily the lighting, but what is it behind me? Should I go virtual? Your idea of if you've got the technology, go ahead with virtual because it does. It bleeds out, and it doesn't look good. But what if somebody has a room in their house? What should they put in the background? What's the background that's not distracting, for example. Kim FoleyWell, I'll tell you what is distracting. A window is distracting because it's too bright. Another thing that's distracting is lot of people have a piece of art behind with glass in it. If you've got enough light shining on your face toward you, then it's going to be reflecting off of that painting behind you on the glass. And I've seen it a million times, very distracting. So what you want to do is you want to set this up, look at it and say, well, what things on the screen? People won't know what they are. They'll be trying really hard to figure it out. So if there's little things that sort of capture people's attention with reflection, get them out of the shot, just move them down underneath the table or in a box someplace else. I've had more people move things in their backgrounds and bring in things you might need. You might need some prettier books, or you might need a plant, or you might need to get rid of the like this morning with a lawyer I was consulting with, I said, you've got all those glasses in the background. Let's just get those out of the shot. We don't need twenty-five glasses in the background. Ken WhiteYeah. Kim FoleyAnd he just never noticed it because they've always been there. And so it's again, a credibility issue. What are people seeing in your background? It's part of the story about who you are. So you want to make sure it looks thought out, and it looks simple and neutral and nothing that's going to really detract from you. That's the important. You're not trying to show something off here. You're trying to keep the attention on you, and anything else that distracts should be moved. Ken WhiteIt's interesting that you're standing. Of course, I could see on video our audience can't. I am a stander. I do ninety percent of my meetings standing. That's tough to stand eight hours a day. But do you have a preference in terms of virtual meeting standards? Kim FoleyI stand eight hours a day. I do. Ken WhiteYeah. Kim FoleyAnd I'll tell you why. Two reasons. One, my back's much happier at the end of the day. I truly feel better, more energized at the end of the day if I stand than if I sit. I get much more tired, I don't understand it, but it's true. The other thing is I find that and the research does support this, but when you stand and use your body language, your voice inflection changes. You are actually speaking in different tones than if you're locked down, sitting. And so I find that by being able to use my body language, shift my weight and use my hands, that I'm a better teacher. I really am a better consultant because of it. And so I encourage people to stand when they do this. Again you got to get that computer at eye level, not kind of eye level. Ken WhiteWhich is actually not very hard to do when you stand, actually. I mean, you get a desk or a filing cabinet. It's actually not very difficult. You mentioned the nonverbal aspects. You're using your hands, you're able to move around, and you briefly mentioned some of the verbal side of things like inflection. How we speak on Zoom is a little different, right? How do you what do you tell clients in terms of their inflection and so forth? Kim FoleyWhen you are on a two-dimensional environment, and you're not in person? People don't have an opportunity to see your whole body in action. They're just looking into this little box, and they're trying to focus on your face. And so those micro-expressions are very important. So what people tend to do when they get on video, first of all, number one, people tend to not like the way they look on camera. That's one thing. And when you don't like the way you look on camera, people get kind of closed down. So what they'll do is they'll just sort of stare at the screen, and they won't have any expression at all. And it's different. And so if you're trying to inspire, you're trying to inform, you're trying to sell whatever you're trying to do with someone on that through that screen there, what you want to do is almost over animate because if you do that, it doesn't really translate because it's a two-dimensional vehicle. Ken WhiteYeah. Kim FoleySo, yeah. So what and I teach is in my media training, when people are doing a lot of video, they need this training to get comfortable with the idea that they can loosen up, use more voice inflection and use their body more because it's actually much more engaging if you're giving a presentation and you're standing up, and you're using your arms. What you don't want to do is use your hands if you are framing yourself shoulder up and the hands come popping in. It's distracting. Ken WhiteMmm-mmm. Kim FoleyBack up. Make sure your head's to the top of the frame, get a chest-up shot, and then when you use your hands, they're at chest level, and it makes sense. It doesn't distract from what people are seeing. And that's a great way to do a presentation. Ken WhiteIt is interesting. You said the two dimensional. It does. You have to be a little animated. It does steal a little bit away from your voice and your nonverbal the medium. It's kind of interesting how that happens. Kim FoleyYeah, it really is. And that's why when people watch people on the news or actors, they think, oh, I could do that. But then if they're ever put in front of a camera, they freeze up and realize, oh, no, I can't do that. It's really not easy to be all either dramatic or charming or enthused and use body language when you're sitting behind a desk. It's really, really hard, and it takes the skill level and self-awareness. And so if I could just bring some of that to people when they're doing their meetings to inspire their teams or to talk to potential clients and close deals, it's going to make such a difference, in the end, result in terms of building trust. That's what we're trying to do here, is build trust. And so you have to look like the expert that you are. And so many people have ruined that on this medium. They don't mean to. They don't want to, but they don't know the solutions. And that's why I ended up writing the book. Ken WhiteLeaders and even managers have got to embrace video today. Forget Zoom, just video in general. That's how we're communicate. This has become an essential skill for leaders. Kim FoleyIt has, as a matter of fact. I even use an app called BombBomb, where I can send video emails to people, and it's not like constant contact app that takes people off the page. It actually, they can just open their email, see my little video, click on it, and hear me have a conversation. And people are blown away that I email them with a video instead of a text. And it's far more powerful. And people say, oh my gosh, and I teach people how to do this because I want them to be able to harness this very, very valuable, very, very powerful platform video. It's just not hard to do. You just need to learn a few skills. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kim Foley, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The perfect time to pursue your MBA is right now. Businesses and organizations are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and more in the William & Mary MBA program. Offered in four formats, the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive MBA. Finally, we'd like to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest, Kim Foley, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Graham Henshaw](images/graham-henshaw-142-thumb.jpg)
![Escaping the COVID-19 Rut](images/graham-henshaw-142-thumb.jpg)
Graham Henshaw
Episode 142: November 19, 2020
Escaping the COVID-19 Rut
It’s been eight months since COVID-19 began to change our world, and during that time some leaders, professionals, and organizations have been quite successful in launching new ventures, serving customers differently, and finding new sources of revenue. But for others, the pandemic has been more of a challenge. It’s stifled their creativity and their ability to move forward. The uncertainty and fear of the unknown have caused them to spin their wheels. Our guest today says if you are struggling, there are answers. He says entrepreneurs and the traits and mindsets that make up entrepreneurial thinking can serve as a guide to success during the pandemic. Graham Henshaw is the Executive Director of the Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center at William & Mary’s School of Business. He joins us today to discuss the elements of entrepreneurial thinking you can leverage during the pandemic. Elements like Opportunity/Discovery, tolerance for ambiguity, and improvisation.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's been eight months since covid-19 began to change our world. And during that time, some leaders, professionals, and organizations have been quite successful in launching new ventures, serving customers differently, and finding new sources of revenue. But for others, the pandemic has been more of a challenge. It's stifled their creativity and their ability to move forward. The uncertainty and fear of the unknown has caused them to spin their wheels. Well, our guest today says if you are struggling, there are answers. He says entrepreneurs and the traits and mindsets that make up entrepreneurial thinking can serve as a guide to success during the pandemic. Graham Henshaw is the Executive Director of the Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center at William & Mary's School of Business. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss the elements of entrepreneurial thinking you can leverage during the pandemic. Elements like opportunity, discovery, tolerance for ambiguity, and improvisation. Here's our conversation with Graham Henshaw. Ken WhiteWell, Graham, great to see you. Thanks very much for sharing, sharing your time with us. Welcome back to the podcast. Graham HenshawAbsolutely. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteYeah, this is your second time. And so, yeah, you're in a special club. You know, we should have a plaque or a T-shirt or something. Graham HenshawI'm waiting on the t-shirt. Ken WhiteThere you go. Yeah. Yeah. That's the you know, you're into something, right, when you've got a t-shirt for it. Graham HenshawThat's right. Ken WhiteYeah. You know, we're living in such an interesting time right now, and some people are just not getting it done. They feel stuck. On the other hand, entrepreneurs often positioned and thought of as people who can lead, who can function, create, and even thrive under pressure. Is that is that an accurate statement in your mind? Graham HenshawI think it is in my experience. I've observed that. And I think I'd probably expand a little bit on the this notion of pressure. And I think that comes from being in situations where you can't reliably predict the outcome. And I think we're in that kind of situation right now. And these are where the past offers very little predictive certainty about the future. And often, entrepreneurs are just the people who thrive under those conditions where other people actually find themselves anxious. An entrepreneur actually might gravitate to that situation where the outcome is actually unknown. So, yeah, I do think that's accurate. Ken WhiteAre they born with that ability? Is it learned? How do they get there? Graham HenshawThat's an interesting question. There's been a lot of debate on that over the years. That turns out it's a little bit of both. So there are aspects of the entrepreneurial mindset that seem like they're built-in. And then there are others that are shown to be skills, and you can learn those. And so, as with any skill, if you practice it, you get a little bit better at it over time. But what the really interesting thing is about the mindset is even though you can't move the needle so much on the mindsets, if you just become aware of your mindset, for example, risk acceptance is one of those mindsets. There's not much you can do to move the needle on risk acceptance. But if you know where you stand on risk acceptance and you encounter a situation that kind of pegs your meter where it's at, then you can change your behavior in that situation, you can come up with mitigating practices to get around that. So maybe when you encounter that situation, you know, I've got a call, Ken. Ken has a really high-risk tolerance. So he's going to help me get through this, or you have a checklist or something like that. So the awareness on the mindset side can really be a big help as well. So it's a little bit of both. Ken WhiteYeah, interesting. Well, you in the Miller Center for Entrepreneurship? You focus a great deal on entrepreneurial thinking, which is a little bit different. Can you explain that? Graham HenshawYeah. So we made a decision years ago to focus on this broader application of entrepreneurial skills and mindsets versus the typical very narrow application, which is venture creation startups. And I love startups. That's sort of where I came from. But it seemed like that was not going to be the best focus for us at William & Mary. And so we instead zoomed out a little bit to focus on a set of four skills. And so those are opportunity discovery, failing wisely, improvisation, and collaboration, and then four mindsets, a tolerance for ambiguity, grit, risk acceptance, and self-direction. So the collection of those is what we mean when we say entrepreneurial thinking. And our sense is that they are a highly versatile set of skills and mindsets that can be applied in a lot of different settings, not just the venture creation setting. So startups are just one manifestation of that way of thinking. And the broader perspective has allowed us to engage in a much larger population. We formerly worked with predominantly MBA students, so five years ago, our programming really engaged just the MBA students. And fast forward five years, and we have hundreds of students from across campus that are engaged from majors that I didn't even know existed. We have twenty-five plus different majors that are plugging into this entrepreneurial thinking focus. Ken WhiteSo it's showing that their employers, large, small, for-profit, nonprofit, whatever it is, they value entrepreneurial thinking. Graham HenshawThey do. And we see that when they come into our space and our new entrepreneurship hub, we have a giant mural on the wall with these four skills and the four mindsets. And there hasn't ever been a time that an employer has come through and had a tour and not said, wow, if you have students with those things, we want them. And so, we have been trying to create a brighter line between entrepreneurial thinking and these great career outcomes. We want students to make that connection, as well as the employers, already have made that connection. Ken WhiteAnd we should mention congratulations to you and the team at the Miller Entrepreneurship Center, William & Mary, one of the named one of the top 50 business schools in the world for entrepreneurship. And that's you. That's congratulations. That had to feel pretty cool. Graham HenshawNow that felt great. Honestly, it's one of those things where we already knew we had something amazing happening. You know, we're in it every day, and we see the outcomes. But it is really good to get that external validation that what we're doing is working. And you don't often get to come up for air long enough to appreciate that. So this has been a neat moment to recognize the efforts of everybody on the team to make this a really wonderful program across the entire university, especially here, as in the Poets and Quants rankings for the MBA audience as well. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Well, you know, I've spoken with professionals, leaders, managers who feel the weight and the stress of the pandemic is getting in the way of their success, their ability to adopt entrepreneurial thinking, the skills, and the mindsets. But you say there are some elements that professionals can adopt to help them. What are those? Graham HenshawYeah, and first, I want to say you know I get that sense of being a little bit frozen in this season. I've connected with lots and lots of businesses in our area who are really struggling, and they're just trying to figure out how to survive amidst the pandemic. So I know it's hard, and I don't want to minimize those struggles. But having said that, I do think that for most people, there are a few skills and traits that could be really useful right now. And again, it does require coming up for air just for a second. But if I could wave a magic wand impart an extra dose of some of those skills and traits that we have been speaking about, I think I would choose to spread around some opportunity discovery, some tolerance for ambiguity, and certainly some improvisation. I think these things would go a long way right now to helping people navigate this situation. Ken WhiteWell, let's define those. When you say opportunity discovery, what do you mean? Graham HenshawSure. This one is the ability to spot opportunities where other people don't see them. This is a situation where sometimes some people see a problem, but the entrepreneurial thinker sees the opportunity that that is connected to that problem. Most of the time, people don't see anything at all. So a problem is a step up. But the opportunity is that next step. And so, in some ways, the pandemic has been a catalyst for some organizations to look much more closely than they ever have needed to before to serve their customers or to generate revenue. I think that sometimes normalcy can lead to complacency, and then it causes us to miss these opportunities that are right under our noses. So to opportunity discovery is hunting those opportunities that most people miss. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Graham Henshaw in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. There is no better time than right now to pursue your MBA. With businesses and organizations experiencing so much change, they're seeking professionals who can communicate, think strategically, and deal with ambiguity. Skills taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats, including the full time, the evening, the online, and the executive. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary today. Now back to our conversation on adopting entrepreneurial thinking during covid-19 with Graham Henshaw, executive director of the Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center at William & Mary. Ken WhiteImprovisation. Graham HenshawSo improvisation and tolerance for ambiguity, I would say go, go hand in hand, and so improvisation is the ability to make course corrections as the situation on the ground dictates. And that's, I think, what a lot of leaders are experiencing right now. They've got a playbook. This might and have not been in it. The pandemic was likely not in your playbook. And so you have to make some calls on the ground and adjust those as the situation dictates. So it used to be that entrepreneurship programs taught students how to write business plans. And we haven't done that for quite a while because we know that and even in good times, no plan survives first contact with customers. And I think that people are seeing that more now than ever. We need to be agile. We need to not hold on too tightly to how we thought the solution was going to be rolled out. We need to be able to adjust course as necessary. Ken WhiteGoing back to opportunity discovery, that's something that people can learn? Graham HenshawYeah, opportunity discovery is one of those skills that you can learn. One of the ways is to learn where you need to look. And oftentimes, organizations are looking in the wrong places. So I'll refer back to the classic Peter Drucker text where he talks about sources of innovative opportunity. And it turns out that most people are looking in the riskiest of places for those opportunities, which is this breakthrough discovery R&D that's never been done before. There are opportunities there, but oftentimes they're binary. It'll either work, or it doesn't work now. Now is not the time for that. There are other sources that are much more reliable, and they're easier. They have higher odds of success. One of those is to look for opportunities where the unexpected has happened. So the unexpected success or the unexpected failure. But let's take the unexpected success in the case of the pandemic. You could look at organizations that have unexpectedly seen success. What is it about their model that we might be able to implement for our own? So that's one. Demographics are another source of innovative opportunity. So so learning where to look is one of those things. And the other is a lens shift. If you're trying to learn this skill of opportunity discovery, you need to stop looking for ideas and start looking for problems. I try to get my students to see that all the time. They say I'd really love to do entrepreneurship, but I'm just waiting for that big idea, that flash of genius. I say, well, you're going to be waiting for a while, but you might find it to be more productive if you just look around and try to look for some challenges, look for some problems that potential customers are having. And if you solve that problem, you're probably going to develop an innovative solution that addresses that. And as a result of that, maybe a more sustainable business than if you just sit around and try to come up with a brilliant idea. There's lots of brilliant ideas out there, by the way, that don't make for a good business. So I think it's always better to search for opportunities and problems. Ken WhiteHow interesting. I read a story today about someone who was out of work. You talk about where to look, realize that people want to adopt pets, dogs right now, and now she delivers them all over the country. Graham HenshawYeah. Ken WhiteShe's made a huge business. Right. And it's looking for problems. That's so interesting. Graham HenshawExactly. That's a great example of opportunity discovery. That's the unexpected event. We didn't expect pet adoptions to go through the roof. And there's an opportunity there if you look at that. Ken WhiteIs it helpful to, I assume, helpful to bring others in and say, I'm stuck? This is what I'm thinking about. What do you think? I'm assuming that the answer, of course, is yes to that. Graham HenshawYeah. And so that's why collaboration is one of those pillars of entrepreneurial thinking. It's important to bring in those other perspectives, especially in these kinds of situations where we might view this situation one way. But someone else who maybe has seen something tangential, they bring a different perspective that's useful as you're trying to navigate through those challenges. So so collaboration is an essential part of that entrepreneurial thinking toolkit? Ken WhiteWell, especially to our listeners who find entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking interesting. I'm excited to announce that Graham, you, and the Miller Entrepreneurship Center have your own podcast now, which is I've heard I love the host. This is so cool. Please tell us about your new podcast. Graham HenshawYeah. So the new podcast is called Day One, and it's currently recorded by one the Miller Center fellows, Sonia Kinkhabwala, and I have to give all the credit to her. It was her idea. She is the fellow in charge of reaching out to alumni. And we just had an interesting problem this fall when we realized we had so many connections to amazing alumni stories and not enough space to tell those stories in our current lineup of programming. And so we thought, what can we do? That's a little bit different to feature these fantastic entrepreneurial journeys of these William & Mary alumni. And so she came up with this idea for day one, which is an unfiltered look at the life of an entrepreneurial thinker. It's not your typical startup showcase. It's more what is it actually like to start and run a venture? And we really do focus on these entrepreneurial thinking pillars in these conversations with those entrepreneurial thinkers. And it's not just startups. It's it's nonprofits. It's being an innovator inside of a large organization. It runs the gamut. So the diversity there matches the diversity in our student membership. So these entrepreneurial thinkers come from across the entire campus. So it's really been a wonderful opportunity discovery. Ken WhiteYeah. Graham HenshawAnd we have now, at the time of this recording, three great episodes under our belts, and we are excited to continue that journey. Ken WhiteAnd where can our listeners find day one? Where can they get to it and subscribe? Graham HenshawSo right now, it's listed on Spotify. And so if you just go to Spotify and search for day one, you will find those episodes that we have currently recorded. Ken WhiteGraham, thanks for your time. Give us a lot to think about. And if you're into this, find day one, and you'll hear so much more about how entrepreneurial thinking can really change your life. Graham HenshawAbsolutely. I fully believe that. Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Graham Henshaw, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. Now is the perfect time to pursue your MBA. Businesses and organizations are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and much more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the full-time, the evening, the online, and the executive MBA. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guests Graham Henshaw, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Jane Stevenson](images/jane-stevenson-141-thumb.jpg)
![Women are Leaving the Workforce](images/jane-stevenson-141-thumb.jpg)
Jane Stevenson
Episode 141: November 5, 2020
Women are Leaving the Workforce
The consequences of COVID-19 have been numerous. Some have been positive, some negative, and some have been eye-opening. Like the news that hundreds of thousands of women are leaving the workforce. In fact, leaving at four times the rate as men. Some of the departures are due to layoffs in hard-hit sectors like hospitality and retail, but that's not the driver behind the numbers. In many cases, women are leaving to homeschool their children and serve as caregivers. The fallout has the potential to be felt for years that erases some of the gains made by women in leadership roles. Jane Stevenson is Global Leader for CEO Succession, and Vice Chairman, Board and CEO Services for the global organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry. She joins us today to discuss why women are leaving the workforce and what organizations can do about it.
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Jane Stevenson: Women are Leaving the Workplace TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategy, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, the consequences of COVID-19 have been numerous. Some have been positive, some negative, and some have been eye-opening, like the news that hundreds of thousands of women are leaving the workforce, in fact, leaving at four times the rate as men. Some of the departures are due to layoffs in hard-hit sectors like hospitality and retail. But that's not the driver behind the numbers. In many cases, women are leaving to homeschool their children and serve as caregivers. The fallout has the potential to be felt for years that erases some of the gains made by women in the workplace in recent years. In addition, organizations are at risk of losing women in leadership roles. Jane Stevenson is Global Leader for CEO Succession and Vice Chairman, Board and CEO Services for the global organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry. She joins us today to discuss why women are leaving the workforce and what organizations can do about it. Here's our conversation with Jane Stevenson of Korn Ferry. Ken WhiteWell, Jane, thanks for sharing your time and your expertise with us. It's nice to see you. Thanks for being with us. Jane StevensonIt's a pleasure to be here. Ken WhiteWhat was your reaction when you saw these numbers, this large number of women leaving the workforce? What was your reaction initially to that? Jane StevensonI think I gasped initially. As you probably know, I led a body of work called Women CEOs Speak that addresses the pathway to CEO. And so thinking about the progression of women coming up through the ranks and what it really represents to lose, you know, potentially a quarter or so of them is really scary. And it potentially wipes out so much positive progress. I felt like we were just peaking in terms of two things coming together. One, the light coming on for women about what's possible further on in their career and even to the top of the house and two enough examples of that to make it seem normal. Right. And less of an oddity when we appoint a woman CEO. And so when you think about what it really represents, have so many high potential women out of the mix, that is a really tough, tough hill to climb. Ken WhiteDo you think this could continue as COVID continues? Jane StevensonYou know, it's hard to answer what the future holds on so many levels, but I think we have a real issue, and we have an issue that probably has always existed, the issue of care and who provides it. And one of the reasons that I think women have been standouts from government leadership to business leadership during this time is that really unique ability that women have to think outside themselves and not always empathetically but often, but certainly thinking about a system that is more than just me. And so it works really well to bring great leadership in difficult situations. But it also is something that pulls on women in unique ways when there's care that needs to be given, and they feel there's no one else to provide it. Ken WhiteSo that's certainly one reason we're hearing as to why some of the some women are leaving the workforce is they have to give care at home, or they're taking care of a parent or a child. What are some of the other reasons that some women are opting to step out? Jane StevensonWell, it's interesting. In the research that I mentioned, we saw that women's balance scores were higher. And in the easy read of that was that women wanted to build in time for family, etc. in different ways. When we dug underneath that from a psychometrics perspective, we found that actually wasn't the case. But what women do do is to evaluate and weigh out what needs are and where there is the most weighting isn't just the job. So it really looks at if you are a woman and you feel like you're working inordinately hard and you're going nowhere, and you have demands that are pulling you in other directions, you're going to try another way to get there. So oftentimes, women, even before COVID, left the corporate environment because it felt so frustrating, working so hard and not getting as far as they knew they should. But they're going to think about, you know, that that balance driver is going to have them figuring out another way to get to the goal. So you see a lot of women go starting businesses on their own or doing other things. The downside of that is that we then don't have them in the pipeline for top leadership because we lose them at the point at which they're really most able to contribute in ways that are significant. And so we've got to really figure that out. And COVID is just an exclamation mark on an already challenged situation. Ken WhiteMmm. Are there ways to get them back? I mean, has anyone figured that out? Jane StevensonI think there are some ways to get them back, and they're pretty logical. There are ways that look at what is someone capable of doing and how do we enable that capability to make a difference, which is very different than, you know, this is how it's done. And if you can't crack that nut, then too bad for you. Right. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Jane StevensonAnd so I view women's leadership as being an incremental opportunity or weapon, if you will, in, you know, in what the world needs. I think, frankly, diversity in all forms is true of that. But for women, if we don't have women in the mix, then we lose an element that we've now seen in multiple studies equates to better financial performance and better cultural environments. Both of which I think, you know, are very much needed. So so, so that's the nut that we have to crack in business and in society is, you know, do we want to create a penalty kind of organizational structure that we don't shift or change or do we want to tap into unique capabilities and opportunities for the world? Right. So this isn't just for the women. It really is for the world that enables the world to get that incremental difference to work for it. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Jane Stevenson of Korn Ferry in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. There is no better time than right now to pursue your MBA. With businesses and organizations experiencing so much change, they're seeking professionals who can communicate, think strategically, and deal with ambiguity. Skills taught in the William & Mary MBA program. We offer four different formats, including the Full-Time, the Evening also known as the Flex Program, the Online, and the Executive MBA. The William & Mary MBA will prepare you to succeed in our new world. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary today. Now back to our conversation on Women Leaving the Workforce with Jane Stevenson of Korn Ferry. Ken WhiteYou mentioned diversity. Tell us about your Power of All initiative at Korn Ferry. That's interesting. Jane StevensonSure. So Power of all was really, really born out of a belief that we need diversity in all forms in the work environment, and that there are huge benefits for everyone in doing that and that we at Korn Ferry were uniquely able to tap into that and we're willing to put some resources against it. So it started from some research projects that we did around pipelines to top leadership for women. We also then mentioned women CEOs Speak. We just last fall launched one for black P&L leaders. And so what frankly, some of our board members said to those of us in leadership was we need to have a resource that gives us confidence that the organizations that we're on boards for most board members have more than one board. And, you know, in our other boards, we would love to have a resource that we felt reliably could enable us to hold leadership accountable for having diversity. And so this really spurred our CEO, Gary Burnison. And several of us were pulled together, and we said, you know what, we really should take this on as an opportunity to ensure for all of our clients that we are able to ensure diversity and pipelines, ensure that our development and assessment tools are enabling diverse leaders to do well and to move forward, as well as in our pay equality efforts to ensure that they are rewarded in fair ways. And I could go on. I mean, we have, you know, top teamwork and other work, so it's a work in progress. But it is a I think, a major source of pride for a lot of partners of the firm that we're really it's a lot about action and a little about words. Ken WhiteYeah, you mentioned the word pipeline a few times. What we're looking at, the number of women leaving are these women who are in the pipeline, those who are middle managers, high potentials. Who exactly are we talking? Jane StevensonWell, you know, I think we'll learn more about that over time because I think we're pretty soon to be definitive about that. But we'll definitely lose some of those. You know, one of the things about COVID is it's an equal opportunity inflector. Right. And so, you know, it doesn't really matter if you're the president of a division or if you are more junior in the organization. Some of the issues that are being faced around family members, around care for kids, around elder care, around all these things are impacting people at all levels. Now, it most negatively impacts the more junior players because they don't have compensation that that allows them options. And this is where I think it is super important for organizations to think about. What does that really represent in terms of an opportunity cost? Because it's easy to think in terms of it being just a situation that can't be helped. And that's one way to look at it. But those of us who are more innovative and more looking at opportunity are saying, you know, that that doesn't have to be the way that it is. What are ways we can tap into the potential that we're put we're going to be losing so that we don't have, you know, just a major dent in the opportunity pipeline for the future? Ken WhiteYeah, sounds like retention, right? If you invest in it, you keep your good people. Jane StevensonIt's absolutely that. And it's also a little bit of marketing, right? I mean, you wouldn't target diapers to middle-aged men. Right. And so I think we have to think about who is the population and what do we do that really addresses needs for them, not just what are we going to do, a one size fits all. And, you know, that's the other thing. I think that is super important. And I was just involved in a small select session on mental health yesterday and, you know, the need for people to see, be seen and to understand their value is really important during this COVID period. And if someone's going through huge difficulty in juggling all that's on their plate, even just knowing that someone knows is is is not a small thing. I was in a session, and someone shared as a consequence of the Holocaust, a learning that what's shareable is bearable. And I never forgot that. I thought that is so powerful. And I think it's really true for workforces today and for leaders as we think about our organizations. How do we really share the load with each other, and how do we support unique needs for unique people? And just by the way, I know we're talking about women, but it's also true that some diverse areas of organizations have unique issues as well. So, for example, Latin X and black employees tend to have larger family systems where there are smaller numbers of people that have both physical and caretaking responsibility for more people. So, you know, that's part of this systemic issue that we face. How do we help people break out and use all of the unique gifts that they have in ways that actually serve us well? So we think about it as making this sort of do-good contribution. But the reality is, you know if you tap into a key number of those folks who have unique gifts that are not going to be realized and you enable that, that's actually a return on investment. And it's a really different way to think that I think is important in the COVID era in particular. Ken WhiteInteresting, yeah. From an individual standpoint, you're a woman in the pipeline. Career is going great. You can't do it. There's just too many responsibilities. I think we would say, tell your boss, tell somebody. But I know people are reluctant to do that. What kind of advice would you have for a working professional who should tell but just doesn't feel comfortable doing so? Jane StevensonSo I'll give you a few things there. But I honestly think we ought to be giving the advice to the leaders. I think the leaders are the ones that really should have the accountability to look out and know what's going on. And, you know, we just have no way to know. And I'll just share a story personally from this morning. There's a woman on my team who is absolutely extraordinary, and she is on the way to really big things. And she's been out delivering what I did not realize until this morning when I called her for no reason. She just was on my heart for some reason, called her. And I happened to ask how her husband was doing. He was fired last week. I didn't know that she has two small children at home. And, you know, this is a huge load to carry. Right. And it wouldn't have come up. It wouldn't have come up. So I think we have to ask. We have to understand. And it's all part of I think this time that we're in to make sure people are seen and heard and that what they're contributing isn't the only thing that we're interested in. We're also interested in what is their experience and how can we help each other because great leaders tap into what gets the best out of their people. And our lives are absolutely inextricably linked to our work. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jane Stevenson, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. The perfect time to pursue your MBA is right now. Businesses and organizations are seeking professionals who think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage ambiguity. You'll learn those skills and much more in the William & Mary MBA program offered in four formats the Full-Time, the Evening, the Online, and the Executive MBA. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Jane Stevenson, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week ahead. |
![Brett Alpert](images/brett-alpert-140-thumb.jpg)
![Job Seeking During the Pandemic](images/brett-alpert-140-thumb.jpg)
Brett Alpert
Episode 140: September 30, 2020
Job Seeking During the Pandemic
According to a recently released report by McKinsey, jobs will most likely change following the pandemic. The report says the adoption of automation and digitization will accelerate. Demand for contract and remote workers will increase as well. Thanks to COVID-19, the way we look for a new job is changing too. In-person, face-to-face interviews have moved to video. Traditional networking is now mostly online. But those changes don't mean you should put your job search on hold. Some of the tactics we've used in the past continue to be effective while some new approaches are also working. Brett Alpert is Associate Dean for Career Services and the Executive Director of the Graduate Career Management Center at the William & Mary School of Business. He and his team, among other things, offer comprehensive career planning assistance to students while working closely with employers. He joins us on the podcast to talk about the ways job seekers are finding success during the pandemic.
Podcast (audio)
Brett Alpert: Job Seeking During the Pandemic TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. According to a recently released report by McKinsey, jobs will most likely change following the pandemic. The report says the adoption of automation and digitization will accelerate, demand for contract and remote workers will increase as well. Well, thanks to COVID-19, the way we look for a new job is changing, too. In-person, face to face interviews have moved to video. Traditional networking is now mostly online. But those changes don't mean you should put your job search on hold. Some of the tactics we've used in the past continue to be effective, while some new approaches are also working. Brett Alpert is Associate Dean for Career Services and the Executive Director of the Graduate Career Management Center at the William & Mary School of Business. He and his team, among other things, offer comprehensive career planning assistance to students while working closely with employers. He joins us on the podcast to talk about the ways job seekers are finding success during the pandemic. Here's our conversation with Brett Alpert. Ken WhiteWell, Brett, thank you very much for taking time to join us. Good to see you. Brett AlpertGood to see you as well, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteYou know, you have the kind of job where I'm sure people come up to you all the time you know and say, what's it look like out there? Who's hiring and what's your crystal ball say so. And I want to ask all those questions. So basically, what's it look like when you see the overall picture out there? What do you think? Brett AlpertWell, the world is definitely changed a lot since COVID, the onslaught of COVID, and it hasn't changed everywhere and in every way. But it has changed a lot. And it's really important that people who are out searching for employment or those doing the hiring really accept that. And think about it. I remember a book by Amanda Ripley who survived disaster and why, and it talked about how people go through a stage during a crisis of denial, then deliberation, and then a decisive moment taking action. And while we're all dealing with difficult circumstances and some are dealing with more than others, they've lost loved ones in this difficult time. It is important to acknowledge that the world has changed. It is different. You can't just do the same things that you did before to find employment. And when you do that, and you accept that things have changed, you adopt different strategies to go out and to search. You find the silver linings. You find the opportunities in the midst of a crisis. You do things like connect in new ways by reaching out via virtual technology and other mediums versus just waiting things to get back to the way that they were before. Ken WhiteOh wow, what a great point. Well, you said reaching out, which, of course, is networking. Has that changed, or are there different strategies now? While we're still dealing with the pandemic. Brett AlpertDefinitely, it's changed. It's changed in multiple ways or some ways where, you know, common practices, what you follow in the course of a conversation stays the same. However, you've lost the ability for chance encounters for happenstance during this COVID time frame. Where you just bump into somebody in the hallway who happens to be in a building, and you shake hands, and you say hello, and you decide to sit down for coffee and a meal. You've lost that opportunity, at least during this time frame. However, the model, the mode, whatever you might want to call it, that networking has to take place in person, has been totally shattered. People have gotten accustomed to the fact now that they're utilizing Zoom and utilizing other forms of virtual technology. So with that, some of the geographic boundaries for networking have also been shattered. You may be somebody that's living in Virginia, and you'd like to make a contact with somebody who lives in California, you see, has the exact type of job that you one day aspire to be in. In the past, you might have waited. You may have done a quick email or a phone call or something of that nature or waited until you were in that area before reaching out to that person because you might have thought that the best way to do it was to meet for coffee or for lunch. Well, now you can't do that. And people on the other side of those interactions know that as well. And it allows people the freedom and flexibility to think about connecting virtually, setting up a Zoom chat, setting up a conversation by Skype or GoTo meeting, or whatnot. People are more receptive to it. It's also led to more of a benefit of the doubt where you're trying, of course, to put your best foot forward in the course of networking. But people understand that you may have kids in the background. They understand that you may have a situation where the technology just fails on you. And it's nice to be in that type of environment where people are going to at least give you more of the benefit of the doubt than you would have had before. Ken WhiteInteresting. So so in this case, change isn't necessarily all negative, right? Some people don't like change, but there's some real benefits to this then. Brett AlpertYeah, it's a mixed bag like most. You have to be looking at both sides acknowledge the fact that there's difficulties, there's challenges, there's things you wish were back to the way they used to be. But once you have really accepted and adopted the change mindset that there's a new world out there, and you have to do something because others are actually taking action, and you find out what the strategic things are that you need to do. And you build your network or reach out the right ways. Well, you have opportunities for expansion. There's a great book out there as well that was written by a gentleman, Steve Dalton, who works over at Duke. It's called the two-hour job search. And it does a great job of outlining strategic approach to network strategic approach to the job search to help ensure that you're not wasting your time on inefficient activities. And it's a wonderful book. And the practices still apply during a COVID time frame, even if the method by which you're communicating with those in the network have changed. Ken WhiteSo what do you see when you look at the employment front and opportunities, how overall, how's the picture look for professional people today? Brett AlpertThat's a great question as well. We'll hear from time to time. There's nothing out there for me or in my specific field. Well, we advise people to do is to think hard and deeply about whether they're defining their field too narrowly. If you're in a situation and where you're taking a look and two months into the COVID, you say, you know, your field or your industry of choice is travel and hospitality. And then beyond that, you are thinking more specifically about hotel and resort management. Well, I would encourage you to think a little bit broadly, more broadly, if you're thinking hotel and resort management and that's it, and that's all you're looking for. You really do need to think a little bit more broadly or think about how long you're willing to wait for those types of opportunities to continue to emerge. You're better off thinking and taking a skills approach and looking around and saying, you know, where can I find my skills and potentially acquire new skills so that two, three years from now or whatever it is, the travel and hospitality is booming again. You're able to take those skills that you've attained, and you've put into practice back into the hotel and resort management arena and possibly have a higher level role than you would have had a few years beforehand. And I would say likely have a higher level role than you would have a few years beforehand because you've acquired new skills. I would also encourage folks to take a look at their whatever institution they've graduated from, to take a look at their career management portals that their prior universities continue to maintain, whether it's through handshake, simplicity, 1220. There's a lot of platforms that are out there that are specifically seeking either current students or graduates of very specific colleges and universities. Often these employers will recruit regionally. So if you happen to be in the region where your alma mater was or continues to be, then you want to really tap into that and reach out and make use of those strategies in that network. Ken WhiteWell, you hit on something. You didn't say it, but you hit on that transferable skills, and everybody has them. But you and I work with so many professionals, and we see a lot of people don't see that they have transferable skills. Right. So I've been in the hotel business. That's where I keep looking. But, boy, I've got skills that allow me to really flourish over here in this industry. How do people learn that they have transferable skills? Are there certain processes you walk them through? How do you realize that what you really do have some talent and experience there? Brett AlpertYes, definitely. We've got a really talented team here. Fortunately, that helps to work with our student population to guide them through that process. But beyond that, just in speaking with the general audience, if you're really that best off asking others, I think to some, if you are not unable to determine yourself what skills would apply to particular areas, ask people within those industries to take a look at your resume and your prior experiences, see what types of skills resonate with them and they think are specific to their industry as well. Ask people that you care about. Ask peers, whomever it might be that you know will give you constructive, valuable information. But often, when you go to the leaders within the field that you're potentially looking to enter into, they are very skilled at being able to point out and pull out those particular skills, leadership traits, et cetera, that you may not have inherently noticed, but they will see are directly applicable to what they do or what they're looking for in terms of candidates. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Brett Alpert in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider William & Mary, whether you're currently completing your bachelor's degree or you have decades of work experience. The William & Mary MBA will transform you four different formats, including the full time, the evening, the online, and the executive. The William & Mary MBA will change and improve the way you think, the way you lead, and the way you live. Just ask any of our alumni. Now back to our conversation on job seeking during the pandemic with Brett Alpert, associate dean of career services at William & Mary's School of Business. Ken WhiteYou know, if one of our listeners has not been searching for work lately, things have really changed in just a couple of years. And one of them that I think really throws people the first time they see it is their use of video in interviews. Can you tell us how companies are employing video in the search process lately and now? Brett AlpertYeah, that's a very big issue. It's really interesting, too, because there's a consultant, her name is Mary Scott, who does an annual survey of recruiters and students and presents each year at the National Association for Colleges and Employers. And she gathers data throughout this whole process. And historically, but not counting this COVID time frame. Video technology had been on the increase, but students really didn't like it. They really, really, strongly preferred employers coming to engage in person and on campus. I have not seen yet. And they may not have gone through the process of these surveys again to determine what the reflections are of students. But now we're in an environment where there really isn't a choice as to whether you use virtual technology or not in order to connect. So my sense is that students have a lot more comfort with it than they historically did. And they're not drawing maybe the same inferences that they did in the past, which was, oh, this employer doesn't care enough to come to meet me where I am. So that's changed a bit. What I will say is continued is there still is discomfort. There's a two-way technology which is like Zoom or Skype or whatnot, where you have somebody literally on the other side of the camera in this or the laptop or whatever it is that you might be doing where you can read nonverbals, you can have interactions, you can ask questions. That's generally seen as a much more favorable approach than one-way video, which is something that's a reality as well, where a screen will pop up, and it'll have a question here. And you may have a limited amount of time in which you could answer that question, and then you have to make sure you're hitting your points within that limited amount of time. That is still perceived really negatively by students. It was perceived particularly negatively prior to COVID but from at least anecdotal information. Students still find that to be very difficult because they again read into it and say, well, first of all, it's awkward you can't read nonverbal. You don't know if you're perceiving you, your responses are timed, and you can't just rely on nonverbal cues to sort of help trigger when you narrow down your answer. And then it also gives that impression that the employer, on the other side, does not necessarily value you as a candidate enough. And you maybe just a number. They don't value you necessarily enough to actually have somebody on the other side of the camera. Now, some employers are doing a hybrid, which is also a legitimate approach where maybe the first interview, they're having a in-person interaction. And then to get through part two, they've got some specific technical questions or whatnot that they'd like to ask you. And they're deploying them both ways. But I wouldn't advise any employer to really think about doing whatever you can to help ensure that there's somebody on the other side of the camera, at least at some point in these screening interviews, because it does have a challenging and sometimes a negative impact on these student perceptions. And from a student side to be mindful of the fact that you really need to prepare utilizers. There's different technologies out there like interview stream and others that we deploy and others. I think another one called big interview that you could utilize to help practice one-way video type interviews and then watch your performance was like and adjust accordingly. Ken WhiteWhen I talk to professionals, if they have not done one of those one-way video interviews, it is such an eye-opener. It's a jarring experience. And for our listeners who've done them, they know exactly what I'm talking about. Technology is definitely in the game. The other thing that I'm hearing, and of course, you're our guest, you know more in terms of using technology. Is artificial intelligence being used to sort of scan resumes and pull out keywords? How is that? How's that work today? Brett AlpertYeah, some employers are using it, and some aren't. It depends also on the number of resumes that they're accustomed to receiving any unit. If they're receiving thousands of resumes for each sort of segment or set of roles. They will do some sometimes some artificial screening on intelligence screening, on making sure that the appropriate degrees are there, some key skills pop up, and also some of the experiences and the length of time that you've been working. Some of those things can be triggered and set up through AI, so it's a reality with some companies. What we advise students to do is to make sure they're including some of the key buzzwords specific to their industry at hand, but also include beyond the buzz words, some real concrete specifics. So, for example, if you know that a job that you're applying for is looking for coders and programmers. You don't just want to put in your resume. I took a coding class, or I have coding skills. You want to list the specific programs, packages that you are fluent in because those might be things that AI will pick up and will trigger you going into a pile where somebody else may not. You also want to be mindful of ensuring that you're including some other words sort of appropriate for the level of role that you're at. So if you're looking to be a manager of a particular organization, include words like leadership, led, co-founded, ran an initiative on. Things of that nature include key data points. Numbers also sometimes are picked up. I raised five million dollars in X, Y, and Z. If it was a fundraising role, people are going to want to see those types of things. It shouldn't just be long lists of verbiage that don't have any of those keywords that you would want to see or that, you know, an employer would want to see that are specific to your industry. Ken WhiteYou know, searching for a job when you don't have one or when you do is such a stressful situation. It's just so many unknowns. What kind of advice do you give to people to try to stay positive and to stay up? Because it'll happen, but it's easy for others to say that. What advice do you give? Brett AlpertYou know, I reflect back to several years back when I graduated from a doctoral program. And that can be a lonely process. You wrap up your dissertation, and you're trying to find employment, and you're searching as you're going doing your dissertation as well. What I found really helpful and advice students as well and those that I've worked with over the years have also found really helpful is to track your activity. And there is some guidance for this and that two-hour job search book that I referenced earlier as well. Because it can feel like you may have submitted 12 resumes, and you could feel like an eternity before you hear back from anybody. And then, all of a sudden, you hear back from three organizations or three companies who are interested in interviewing you. At some point, some of them may be successful; some of them may not. Some of them, they may have had internal candidates in mind, and you just don't know when you're going through that process. And so it can be very frustrating. It could be very lonely. So sometimes surrounding yourself with other people who are also searching can be a really helpful motivating factor, continuing to network with folks who have found positions recently or maybe a year beforehand where in your very shoes to make sure that they can hopefully potentially advocate for you within those companies. But tracking your activity is key so that you have things that you can check off that shows you're making progress along the way. If you set a goal of submitting five resumes and reaching out to 10 contacts today and you've done that, check it off. You may have zero results to show for it that day, but at least you know you're taking the right steps towards potential success. And that really, really is helpful for most students. It was helpful for me as well to show that, hey, I'm doing all the right things. I'm adopting all the appropriate fundamentals in certain cases. I'm going above and beyond by making that next contact or reaching out to someone who knows somebody. That's all you can control. And the degree to which you are focused on the things that you can control versus the things you can't is also something that is uplifting and will keep you positive on your path to finding meaningful work. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Brett Alpert, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, pursue one that delivers a transformational experience, the William & Mary MBA. Four format's the full time, the evening, the online, and the Executive MBA. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Brett Alpert, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dr. Kelly Crace](images/kelly-crace-139-thumb.jpg)
![Five Strategies to Avoid COVID Burnout](images/kelly-crace-139-thumb.jpg)
Dr. Kelly Crace
Episode 139: September 3, 2020
Five Strategies to Avoid COVID Burnout
It's been six months since COVID-19 began to change life dramatically in the U.S. and across the world. And as we move into the fall, that change continues, and the amount of uncertainty seems to be growing. Along with it comes ambiguity, disruption, and other elements human beings generally dislike. All of those factors lead to what our guest today calls "chronic too much-ness." For many people today, just "hanging in there" is a real challenge. But there are ways to not only hang tough, but to avoid burnout, and to even flourish during the pandemic. Dr. Kelly Crace is a licensed psychologist. He's Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at William & Mary. He's the co-author of Authentic Excellence: Flourishing and Resilience in a Relentless World. He joins us today to discuss five mindful strategies you can adopt to avoid burnout and thrive during the pandemic.
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Dr. Kelly Crace: Five Strategies to Avoid COVID Burnout TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business, the podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's been six months since COVID-19 began to change life dramatically in the U.S. and across the world. And as we move into the fall, that change continues, and the amount of uncertainty seems to be growing. Along with it comes ambiguity, disruption, and other elements human beings generally dislike. Well, all of those factors lead to what our guest today calls chronic too-muchness. For many people today, just hanging in, there is a real challenge, but there are ways to not only hang tough but to avoid burnout and to even flourish during the pandemic. Dr. Kelly Crace is a licensed psychologist. He's associate vice president for health and wellness at William and Mary. He's the co-author of Authentic Excellence, Flourishing and Resilience, and a Relentless World. He joins us today to discuss five mindful strategies you can adopt to avoid burnout and thrive during the pandemic. Here's our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace. Ken WhiteKelly, thank you very much for sharing your time. It's a busy time of the year for you, and you're on campus today. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, it feels good to be on campus and to be able to see the students walk by outside my window and wave at them. It's just a good feeling for the heart and the head. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Yeah, we really need each other, don't we? We need interaction as human beings. Dr. Kelly CraceWe do. We do. I mean, I think people have started to find somewhat of a rhythm to working at home and to teleworking. I think they've adapted to it, but I don't know if it's necessarily the preferred scenario. And it certainly rang true for me when I came to campus and realized just what I had missed. And it's a good feeling. Ken WhiteAs you interact not just in the education space but professionals in all sectors and no matter where they live, are you seeing people that have that are starting to really feel the stress and the inconvenience of coronavirus? Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, I think I think that distinction is stress differentiated from strain. I mean, we can manage challenge. Challenge is actually growth-producing, and we can manage stress if the stress is related to things of purpose or meaning. But if we find that kind of there's this chronic level of demands exceeding capabilities, it can move from stress to strain and strain is unsustainable. And that's what leads to burnout. That's what leads to kind of a deterioration of our energy and our motivation and our resilience. And so I think we are seeing in this chronic uncertainty, this kind of relentless pace because people have commented that they almost they feel more busy than before because they're juggling multiple roles in one space. And that strain and the uncertainty of where this is going. So they're developing plans, not knowing if Plan A is going to turn into plan F, you know, so many iterations, it just wears on us. Ken WhiteYeah. That's the thing I hear from our friends in the corporate space, and across all various sectors is I'll work all week long with my team. We have all this energy, this creativity, and innovation, and we finish it by Friday, and then we learn before we're done Friday scrap that we have things have changed. We have to start over and wearing people down. Dr. Kelly CraceIt is. Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceWe've called this summer the breathless summer because people have not been able to catch their breath. It is felt just ongoing. And now, at a time when we hope most staff and faculty and students come to campus with their tank full, many are coming with their tank close to empty. And that's worrisome to them that that kind of scares them of am I going to be able to get through this with a with an empty tank? Ken WhiteYou spoke to our incoming Flex MBA students a few days ago. These are working professionals, people who have great jobs, and lead others, and they're pursuing their MBAs now. And you shared your talk was on five strategies to avoid burnout in this time. And I thought as I'm listening, oh we've got bring Kelly on the podcast to talk about that, would you mind let's talk about that, the five strategies. First of all, you're feeling people are definitely, without question, feeling burned out and tired, as you said. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, these are burnout conditions. So when and some of the work that we did in the research that we were doing around predicting, flourishing and what predicts people to flourish during various conditions, we find that when we're in certain situations that are chronically uncertain but chronically demanding and can be also chronically upsetting. If you can remember, I mean, we're not only in a situation where we're managing pandemic, we're also managing a lot of social unrest around things that are attached to our values. And so people can have a wide range of emotions about these things, and that takes energy. So if that if all of these issues are combined, it creates this scenario of chronic too-muchness that we can step into too much at an acute or temporary level. But when it becomes chronic too-muchness, that's when it starts to move into strain. And if we don't be real intentional, if we're not really mindful about some strategies, we move into kind of a deeper state of burnout. That's pretty serious. And so we found that what do people do that flourish amidst burnout conditions? In other words, they can't change their scenario. They're in conditions that are vulnerable to burnout, and they can't really change that. How do you psychologically manage that? And we found that they are typically intentional and mindful about five key strategies. And that's kind of what we talked about with your group the other day. Ken WhiteYeah. Let's go through those. Your first one was start every day with purpose. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah. Ken WhiteWhat do you mean by that? Dr. Kelly CraceIt's just very simply the mindful intention of starting every day with what's important to me. What matters to me and of those things, what matters most today, so there's not only a crystallization of what matters, but there's also a prioritization that of these things that I thought about while I'm brushing my teeth in the morning and thinking about what's important to me, what matters to me today, to also kind of rank them, you know, of those things this one is most important. The key is to ask that every day with a clean slate as if you've never asked it before because the answers will be different based on your day. The reason why that one is so important is it differentiates wants from values, from needs. We typically kind of neurologically live according to fear and comfort. We're most motivated by fear and comfort. And what that means is we're then motivated to deal with all the urgent have to's of the day. And then we seek regulation; we seek comfort. And so we will typically start each day with either what do I have to do or what do I want to do. And the problem with that is when it's a want, that's a preference. And what follows from that is not enough psychological commitment to be able to really engage at it at the full level that you want to. So it never takes hold at a consistent level. Conversely, if it's a have to and a need, what brings with that a certain level of psychological intensity that actually gets in the way of your optimal thinking? It gets in the way of critical thinking, creative thinking; it gets in the way of your performance. So if we start the day with needs or if we start the day with wants, it just puts us in a place where we're not functioning at our optimal. The cool thing is the most deepest, purest form of human motivation are our values. So if we trigger our values intentionally at the beginning of the day by saying what's important to me today, what matters to me today, and then owning that, that gives us a sense of resilience because you're acting according to purpose and purpose is a buffer to burnout. Ken WhiteDo something every day, that's enjoyable. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, and that was kind of a that was a neat little thing we learned about people that that flourish is they're very intentional about doing something every day that's enjoyable. But it's not in the way we normally think about it. They don't chase happiness. They're not necessarily looking for something to take them away from their stress. They just recognize that amidst these burnout conditions and amidst the hardness and the too-muchness of my life, it is important to pause. It is important things become so quick in an environment of too-muchness and chronic too-muchness. And so things get real quick, which means we're quick to run, we're quick to sprint, we're quick to judge, we're quick to not think, but we act. We need to find a time where we can pause a little bit. And so they do something every day that's enjoyed. It doesn't have to be at a level of high intensity where you just feel chills and goosebumps. It can be something very quiet. It can be the favorite cup of coffee with this favorite person that you do in the morning that you're with every morning. To be able to kind of just spend that time together can be at the end of the evening, just sitting out on the deck and taking five minutes to look around in nature. Whatever it is, they never took it for granted. That was the key that in their business they didn't busyness. They didn't say; I just don't have time for this. They made time for it. And we found out it mattered. It mattered in terms of providing a restorative moment. Ken WhiteIt's just like a lot of very successful CEOs, no matter what, get their workout in every day. Dr. Kelly CraceAbsolutely. Ken WhiteIt's so critical to their success. Dr. Kelly CraceIt's absolutely true. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Dr. Kelly Crace in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. In today's environment, business and the world are constantly changing. You can sit on the sidelines and watch it happen, or you can learn the skills needed to lead and influence in this time of disruption and change. An MBA from William & Mary will provide you with the tools you need to succeed in our new world. There are four different MBA formats, including the Full-Time, the Evening or Flex program, the Online, and the Executive. The William &top-ranked Mary MBA and its top-ranked faculty will prepare you to be the kind of leader our new world needs. Now back to our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace. Ken WhiteGive encouragement, seek encouragement. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, that was really interesting in terms of the reciprocal nature of it. It made sense why to avoid burnout, why it's good to have your support system around you, and to make sure you're receiving encouragement and receiving support to help sustain you. But we found it was just as important to give it. That there was this reciprocal nature that we as human beings feel that if I'm only giving support and not receiving any, then that feels out of balance for me, and that's straining. But also, if I'm only receiving support and I'm not giving it at some level, that doesn't feel right to us either. And what we found is they thought of support in a multidimensional way. It wasn't just giving emotional support or emotional encouragement of Ken that was a great job or Ken I'm really behind you, that type of thing, that matters. But we found there were multiple dimensions of thinking about encouragement. They had people in their network that they turn to that were good listeners, and they would choose to also listen or people that they turn to for emotional support or even emotional challenge. Emotional challenge is a healthy form of support that I go to, Ken, because I just he challenges me to think about things in a perspective that I wouldn't go to on my own. Same thing with task, a task appreciation task challenge. I give Ken this paper because I know the way he looks at it. He can provide me ideas that I wouldn't normally get from my style of writing. But shared social reality, they go to people that kind of know their reality. So we found, for instance, student veterans may go to another student veteran because they know they only have to get halfway through a sentence Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly Craceand the other person knows exactly what their experience is. They get it. So what we found is that that they thought of encouragement in a multilayered way. And we also found that it wasn't necessarily like if you didn't have the support you need, they would actively seek to cultivate it. Ken WhiteMmm. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd what we found it was that process of cultivation that was that avoided burnout, not the actual attainment of it. It's wasn't that oh, I have to get my network in place. We found that if every day I am intending to, one, give encouragement to someone and seek encouragement from someone, just that process alone of cultivating your network helps avoid burnout. Ken WhiteStep into something healthy every day. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd I love that metaphor stepping in because that is that kind of mindful notion of step into purpose every day, step into enjoyment every day, step into encouragement, and then step into something healthy. And the reason why that's so critically important is we have to be intentional to step into healthy self-care because if we're not intentional, we tend to step into soothing. That's what we that's where we tend to go, especially in burnout conditions, because it's so hard, it's so stressful. We are wearing down. It's just a natural tendency for us to want to soothe. And there's nothing wrong with that per se. Nothing bad happens. The problem is the intentionality. And actually, the behavior can look the same. But when I intend to soothe, my intention is to feel better, and when my intention is to feel better, I'm trying to change brain chemistry as quickly as possible. I'm trying to change a mood from feeling bad to feeling good. And what I'll do is there's only five ways you can change brain chemistry really quick, and that's really quickly, and that is food, drugs, sex, pain, and compelling entertainment. That's where we go. That's what changes brain chemistry the quickest. And there's nothing wrong with that. Even like the pain of exercise, there's nothing wrong with those five things. The problem is when we intend to soothe, we don't manage those things well. We don't moderate them well. In fact, we kind of check out to where I can the example I gave with the Flex MBAs is we kind of we check out to the point where, you know, these two sugar cookies were absolutely delicious. I ended up eating twelve, and I don't even remember the last ten that I ate. It's just a dissociation where we're trying to check out and soothe. Instead, we found that people that flourish, they're mindful about stepping into something healthy. Ken WhiteUmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceLet me do something today that's healthy for me. Now, sometimes some of the healthy things also make us feel better, too. That's just a bonus. And so the consequence or the outcome of going out for a run and it also helping and also I do feel better. That's just a bonus that is great to celebrate and enjoy, but it can't be the reason you do it. The reason has to be healthy self-care. Let me step into something healthy today. Ken WhiteAnd then, the fifth step, you mention how to process outcomes. Dr. Kelly CraceYes. Yeah. Part of that healthy thing. And this is actually kind of the second part of the fourth step. The second part of the fourth step is what we found to really be healthy is also how you're thinking about your experiences in the day. And we found that most people that flourish are very verb focused, whereas, in burnout conditions, we tend to be noun focused, we tend to focus on the outcomes of the day. Are we getting things done? What did I experience? How did it go? Did it go well? Did it go bad, and we'll define our day by the outcomes? It was a good day. I had good outcomes. It was a bad day. I had bad outcomes. People that flourish do something very differently, they become very verb focused. They focus on behaviors and processes. We've all in the athletics world we've all heard that analogy of process over outcome and that type of thing. And we've heard a lot that a lot about that. But it's actually purposeful process that matters. And so it's about stepping into purpose, but it's engaging and defining your success by the engagement in those verbs. So when I'm engaging in something that matters, the success of it is my actual engagement in it. Now, based on the outcome that just impacts our mood of the day. So if I define my success by stepping into a verb such as learning or expressing what I've learned or relating or healthy self-care, that's my success. If it goes well and the world cooperates that that's just a bonus. That's a great day. And if the world beats us up for that, well, we're going to feel that we can say at the end of the day, well, I'm disappointed because I worked hard for something and didn't get it. That's okay. The people that flourish only see that as a mood. They define their worth by the engagement in those verbs. Ken WhiteAnd you said that the processing of outcomes. Is that step four A, or is that step five? Dr. Kelly CraceThat's step four B. Four A is healthy self-care, and four B is one of the ways to be most healthy is the perspective of how you're entering the day. And that's be more verb focused, process-oriented Ken WhiteGot it. Dr. Kelly Craceinstead of noun focus, which is outcome-oriented. And then the last one is really it's really the most critical one because it's the most neglected and the most neglected one is people that flourish will take a minute at the end of every day. And value and appreciate where they stepped into those other four things, they don't do it. I mean, they don't go into a lotus position and reflect for 30 minutes of self-love. Again, it can be a brushing the teeth moment. At the end of the day. Ken WhiteWow. Dr. Kelly CraceThey'll take the time and really value. Where did I step into purpose? Where did I step into encouragement, to enjoyment, into healthy self-care? And they take a moment to appreciate that. The reason for that is that's the transformational process that transforms purpose into meaning. Purpose is more motivational, meaning is more reflective. And so if we'll take the time to reflect on where we engaged in things that mattered to us, that actually transforms purpose into meaning. And what we found is the secret is when people believe that they are living meaningful lives, they don't burn out. They are able to kind of sustain the stress and the challenges of the day because they still feel like they are owning the day, or they are mostly in control. I can't control what the world has handed me, but I can control the fact that I'm living a meaningful life, and that is enough to prevent burnout. Ken WhiteAll five steps. Do we need to embrace every day? Can we do one or two or three? Dr. Kelly CraceSure. I mean, we're human beings. And so it's simple. We found that as a package, they work synergistically. So so as a package, it's best to be able to be mindful of all of those because they are interdependent. I can't. I can't really reflect on meaning at the end of the day if I haven't started with purpose. Ken WhiteRight. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd so you want to try as best you can. But again, this is hard. It's so simple. There's nothing about flourishing that's complex. It's just really hard to do in the relentlessness of our world. And so what I don't want people to do is, you know, I failed today because I only did three of the five steps. Now it's about admiring your courage and embracing the courage that if I'm stepping into something that's right and hard, that actually is what is courageous. And whenever I step into hard, that's growth-producing. So if every day I'm trying to step into these things and I'm trying to do this in a growth perspective, you'll move forward. It'll be forward moving. It just works optimally when you can try to package all five together. And the nice thing about it is all five of those intentions. They just take a couple of minutes. Remember, we're talking about mindful intentions. So it's directing your energies. It's consecrating your energy. It's kind of dedicating my energies toward this. That doesn't take very long in and of itself. It's just hard to carry it out. Ken WhiteWell, that's our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. There is no better time than the present to pursue an MBA. If you're thinking about it, pursue one that delivers a transformational experience. The William & Mary MBA four format's the Full-Time, the Flex or Evening Program, the Online, and the Executive MBA. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Kelly Crace, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dawn Edmiston](images/dawn-edmiston-138-thumb.jpg)
![Personal Branding in the COVID-19 Era](images/dawn-edmiston-138-thumb.jpg)
Dawn Edmiston
Episode 138: July 17, 2020
Personal Branding in the COVID-19 Era
You have control regarding the way you're perceived and positioned by others. Your personal brand tells people what you offer and how you're different from - and better than - your competition. In recent years, thanks in part to the continuously growing world of social and digital media building and especially promoting your personal brand has become easier than ever before. But with COVID-19, the personal branding landscape has changed somewhat. Our guest says the changes bring new opportunities to build your brand. Dawn Edmiston is a Professor of Marketing at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. She helps professionals and students create and promote their personal brands. She joins us on the podcast today to talk about personal branding, your value proposition, and how social media can help you build your brand in the era of COVID-19.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. You have control regarding the way you're perceived and positioned by others. Your personal brand tells people what you offer and how you're different from and better than your competition. In recent years, thanks in part to the continuously growing world of social and digital media, building and especially promoting your personal brand has become easier than ever before. But with COVID-19, the personal branding landscape has changed somewhat. Our guest says the changes bring new opportunities to build your brand. Dawn Edmiston is a Professor of Marketing at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. She helps professionals and students create and promote their personal brands. She joins us on the podcast today to talk about personal branding. Your value proposition and how social media can help you build your brand in the era of COVID-19. Here's our conversation with Dr. Dawn Edmiston. Ken WhiteWell, Dawn, thank you, it's great to see you. We're face to face. Isn't that nice? Dawn EdmistonYes, that is lovely. Socially distanced. Yes, of course. Ken WhiteI did pick the long rectangular table here in the studio so that the interview is being held appropriately. But thanks. It's really great to see you. And I hope you're well. Dawn EdmistonThank you. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. Ken WhiteWhen I think personal branding, you're the first person I think of, and I know a lot of people in the business school here at William & Mary think the same, and others do too. When you hear the term personal branding, how do you define that? How do you describe that? Dawn EdmistonFirst, there is no greater compliment that you have given me than to have said that when you think of personal branding, you think of my brand. So thank you. I define personal branding as a systematic and intentional process of defining your value proposition and determining how you will share your value with others. So I like to think that my personal brand promise is that I teach people how to pursue and promote their passions. And so hopefully I'm doing that in this very moment with this podcast. Ken WhiteIs it easy for people to identify their passions? Dawn EdmistonGreat question. And I am often asked that when I am delivering guest lectures on the concepts if I do not have a passion, do I not have a personal brand? And that's not true. And personal brands. And that can evolve with you. But you do need a direction. And if you do not determine your direction, it will be interpreted by others. There's a statement that in this digital environment, that information online implicitly brands people, whether or not they choose to explicitly brand themselves. So even if you do not have a passion, consider a direction, and that will be one step further in developing that personal brand. Ken WhiteAnd it sounds like you're also saying if you don't tell your story, maybe someone else will. Dawn EdmistonThat's the truth. Yes, that that is. And you need to think about your personal brand as a value proposition as I had said. And if you're not able to define it, typically, personal brands need to include both an internal perspective and an external perspective. So if you're not yet ready to give that internal perspective, if you're not ready yet to determine this is the passion that I need to pursue, then start with the external perspective. Meet with family and friends, colleagues that know you and ask them to give you three words that describe you and then ask them to give you three statements of what they believe is how you have contributed value in their lives, either in personal or professional lives. And that will help move you towards understanding. This is how I'm perceived. Now, how you are perceived and how you want to be perceived may be two very different things, but you always need to have that customer-centric focus. And so by getting that external perspective, that might help you define from an internal perspective, how it is you want to position yourself in the marketplace. Ken WhiteSo you create that brand, and then you deliver on that promise. Right. Dawn EdmistonYes, yes. Ken WhiteThat's pretty important. Dawn EdmistonYes. Yes. And I often get asked the first questions are about social media and the promotion element. But as you and I have discussed before, do not think about the promotion until you've actually thought about the development of your brand and be intentional about it. And then we can start discussing once you have that personal brand promise. How do we execute it? Who are the individuals that may gain value from what I have to share? And then how do we ensure that we promote it, that we communicate our value to reach those that may need our products and services? Ken WhiteCOVID-19 is everything seems to be upside down. Life is just so, so different now. It seems like some personal branding opportunities are lost right now, especially face to face interaction. How is this current arena affected personal branding? Dawn EdmistonI mean, COVID-19, has changed our entire lives. And from both a personal and professional perspective. But change can be good. And for a marketing professor who has taught digital marketing for the past decade or so. It has been very good because if you were not focused upon digital marketing in the past, it becomes an imperative now. And fortunately for us. There are plenty of social media platforms and digital marketing opportunities, where we can continue personal branding. So as much as I value and I appreciate being able to see you face to face today, I could also see you face to face through technologies. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dawn EdmistonAnd I could also ensure that I'm sharing and communicating my value through digital channels. And in most respects, I can meet, reach far greater number of individuals through digital channels than I ever could through Face-To-Face channels. So once we get past the anxieties that are associated with change, then perhaps we will soon be on the other side. Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn EdmistonAnd we will be excited about the opportunities that exist within this change, especially relative to personal branding and digital marketing channels. Ken WhiteI don't know that that newcomers to personal branding, realize how powerful the digital side is until they see someone post maybe something really small in LinkedIn and just see it take off. Thousands and thousands of years. Dawn EdmistonYes, yes. Ken WhiteAmazing, isn't it. Dawn EdmistonYes, it is. And people seek those personal connections. And. And again, you and I. I've had the privilege of doing podcasts with you in the past around the power of LinkedIn and personal branding. But when you think of LinkedIn, it's not just a job networking platform. In fact, a few years ago, a very powerful organization named Microsoft purchased LinkedIn because they really wanted access to the individuals that used LinkedIn to understand, gain data insights about these individuals. And so, they worked to create LinkedIn as a professional development platform. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dawn EdmistonSo it's not just focused upon connecting individuals relative to jobs, although that's a very important function, especially in the current environment. But it's also where you can build relationships and powerful relationships. And in fact, I'm often surprised at LinkedIn posts that I make that tend to be more personal, that literally have achieved hundreds of thousands of views. Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn EdmistonPeople are cheering for you. People want you to do well. People want to recognize professional excellence and want to recognize the grit and the grace that we need to work through this world. And LinkedIn is a good place to be able to share those experiences. Ken WhiteYeah, it's not hard to hit a thumbs up, is it? Dawn EdmistonNo, it is not. Yes. Yes. Ken WhiteSo you create the value proposition. You get the information that people help you create your brand. You're delivering on that brand promise. And you do want to branch out, as you say and you say digital and social channels is LinkedIn the first place that people should consider. Dawn EdmistonIt is the first place perhaps people should consider. But it's not the only place. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dawn EdmistonI do typically use LinkedIn as a starting point. And with Microsoft's acquisition, LinkedIn has become far more robust than it had been. In fact, you're now able to embed videos and projects. And, you know, a decade ago, we might have been encouraging individual students to develop blogs and blog posts. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dawn EdmistonYou can now do that on LinkedIn and have a far greater audience than you might have in the past. So LinkedIn has become a very powerful community. And I find as a professor; it's the way I stay connected with students and alumni as well as individuals with whom I've worked. And I just never underestimate the power of those connections. At this point now, I've been in higher education for more than two decades. There is not a single day that passes that I do not hear from a former student or a professional colleague that LinkedIn has had a positive impact in their lives. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. Dawn EdmistonAnd so that that feels good. And I want to be able to share that with others. But again, it's not the only platform. Ken WhiteRight. Dawn EdmistonAnd for certain individuals, for example, if you're creative, you might want to have a creative portfolio, although you can embed a link to that creative portfolio on LinkedIn. Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn EdmistonYou should have an Instagram account. You know, those accounts of social media platforms that are more creative, visual, compelling, or perhaps where you want to focus your efforts. But then LinkedIn can complement those efforts. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Dawn Edmiston in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider William & Mary. Whatever your stage of life, whether you're completing your bachelor's degree or you have 30 years of work experience, the William & Mary MBA will transform you. Four different formats, including the full time, the evening, the online, and the executive. The William & Mary MBA will change and improve the way you think, the way you lead, and the way you live. Just ask any of our alumni. Now back to our conversation on personal branding in the COVID-19 era with Professor Dawn Edmiston. Ken WhiteIn our gig economy, I've run into so many people that have their job, their career, their vice president of whatever. They're the director of this, but boy, they would love to branch out over here and do something different. How do you do that with your brand and the promotion of your brand when you're more than one thing, and most of us seem to be more than one thing today? Dawn EdmistonThat is a great question. I just recently contributed to a new book called Go to Market Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs, and women tend to be very active in the gig economy. Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn EdmistonSo they may have a full-time job. They may care for their families, and then they may have an additional job to help supplement the income to support the family. And in most, if not all instances, your personal brand, to a certain extent, does need to be consistent. You can be a renaissance man or woman, but that brand should still be consistent across those various ventures. So, for example, I would never encourage you to have two LinkedIn profiles. For example, have one LinkedIn profile that captures the essence of who are, your diverse interests, the various organizations in which you are involved. But then you can have multiple company pages that are connected. So you can have a company page for your gig, as well as being connected to the company in which you have your full-time role. And of course, you could have and should have websites and social media platforms that serve different target markets depending on the different gigs you might have. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm Dawn EdmistonBut relative to your personal brand, it is important to be authentic and do not confuse your personal brand with the products and services that you deliver. Ken WhiteThat's great advice. I mean, if someone is other audience-centric, their audience-centric, no matter what they do. Dawn EdmistonYes. Ken WhiteRight. Yeah, that's interesting because I have people have asked me, what do you think about if I have these two identities out there and what an interesting answer. Yeah. Wow. Dawn EdmistonTo your point, you have coined the phrase around here, which I love, which is own it, and individuals need to own it. They need to own their personal brand no matter what other brands. That may encompass. But they do need to own their personal brand and then focus on the products and services and the target markets where you want to deliver those products and services. But do those in through channels and through media that are specific to those target markets, but retain that personal brand that continues to provide that authenticity to what you do. Ken WhiteYou mentioned a little while ago video, and I know you often encourage your students and people you counsel. Try some video and put some real I mean, boy, some of these student projects I've seen, you know, from the MBA students they're putting themselves out there. Can you tell us about some of these video projects you've seen? Dawn EdmistonYes, it is one of the greatest rewards they have for teaching. And for those of you that are listening, you can access the perfect pitch videos that we have created by simply doing a quick search on my name on YouTube. And I have all of the perfect pitch videos there under my channel. And as you said, they are just brilliant. Ken WhiteThey are. Dawn EdmistonAnd in this current market environment, video is often how we're connecting with one another. We, as humans, are very visual, and we need that. We need those cues and being able to use video to share our emotions, and our experiences are far more relevant and persuasive than simply having that traditional piece of paper that we know as a resumé, Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dawn EdmistonImportant tool, but being able to have this perfect pitch video that explains the value of that resumé is as good as it gets. And so now I encourage my students as well. Not only do they have the perfect pitch videos on YouTube, but embed it into your LinkedIn profile. Ken WhiteI've seen them. They've sent them to me. Dawn EdmistonYes. Ken WhiteIt's incredible. Dawn EdmistonYes. Ken WhiteAnd some of these you think I not I'm not a production expert. Some of these are shot on iPhones. They're edited on iPhones. You'd never know. Dawn EdmistonYes, you do not need to be a professional and to your point. Yes. We have these mobile devices that allow us to do productions that we could have never potentially even considered a decade ago. And people just want to be able to connect with you. Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn EdmistonPeople want to be able to understand your character, your drive. In fact, during the pandemic, I actually cannot count the number of times that I have been contacted by an employer asking for an intern or a new hire. And I've simply sent them LinkedIn profiles of students with the video embedded, encouraging them to watch them. And every single time, those students are hired Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn Edmistonand I get comments back from the employer stating how much they enjoyed getting that perspective, Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn Edmistongetting that insight, and they're 60 seconds. I think the perfect pitch video is a 60-second video. You need to be clear and concise about your value proposition. And the video allows you to control your message and control the media environment and be able to share that value proposition very effectively. Ken WhiteIt is such a cool project in watching them to me. I walk away saying, oh, that's what makes that individual tick. Dawn EdmistonYes. Ken WhiteThat's what makes them differentiated and a little better than maybe another person in that field. It's not even so specific into what they do. Like you said, if you want to have multiple projects, it's that consistency of what you offer. Those come across in the videos. They're so fun and so creative. Dawn EdmistonYes. Ken WhiteSo, yeah, and once you see someone else do it, you think, well, okay, maybe maybe I could, right. Dawn EdmistonAnd you definitely could. And again, I mean, being able in this environment, you had asked an earlier question about how COVID-19 has changed our lives. And more than ever, we want that connectedness, and we want to be able to share our stories. And video allows us to do just that. So perhaps in addition to LinkedIn, I might also recommend you to have a YouTube channel Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dawn Edmistonand that would allow you to share experiences that you have in a visual manner that you would not be able to do as well through the LinkedIn platform. Ken WhiteWell, that leads me to my next question. We have a few minutes left. What I'd like to do is mention an outlet. And if you would, give us a few words on why that's a good outlet or who that outlet might be good for. And we already talked about LinkedIn. So that's sort of a basic Instagram. Who should consider that? Which professionals? Dawn EdmistonInstagram, if you are creative, professional of your visual, professional. If you are an individual that has a very strong brand focus. So if you're not perhaps selling consumer packaged goods, but if you're selling services. Definitely, Instagram is a good visual tool, although I will tell you that there are certain consumer packaged goods like Oreos Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dawn Edmistonthat have done wonders in social media. So, again, very visual tool capture the moment and be able to share it. Ken WhiteTwitter. Dawn EdmistonTwitter is good for quick conversations. I find Twitter especially effective when you are discussing particular topics or at particular events. I tend to use Twitter more often when I'm even when I'm in virtual events these days. This is how we communicate. This is how we chat. This is how we remain connected. Quick, quick communication tool does not have the staying power relative to messages that LinkedIn does. So that is, but quick connection used whether to drive to other platforms. Ken WhiteBlogging. Dawn EdmistonBlogging still very powerful, no longer perhaps as necessary to have your own personal blog. But blogs now we have a feature on LinkedIn where you can create and post articles just as you with a blog, embed videos and links and content. And very powerful to be able to share through LinkedIn. But you can also do video blogs. And those have become very compelling as well. And I would encourage individuals. Yes, relative to blogs. And again, in this current market environment, if you're not working, blogs can be a great way to capture what you've been learning or what you'd like to learn more about and share your knowledge with others. Ken WhiteFor professionals YouTube or Tick-Tock. Dawn EdmistonYouTube. Ken WhiteWhy? Dawn EdmistonYouTube because it just happens to be owned by Google, and it's considered by many to be the second-largest search engine in the world. So in marketing, it's all about language. It's all about understanding who you want to reach and speaking their language and using the words that they would use to describe your value proposition. So when you look at a tool like YouTube that has such great searchability, it's important to be there from not only a visual perspective but also from the perspective that you can be searched and found. Ken WhiteRight. Is Facebook appropriate for professional? Dawn EdmistonIt depends. In many entrepreneurial organizations, Facebook is a great place to create more of a close community. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dawn EdmistonNow, once students graduate, they often connect with me as alumni. And so I have more of a community. You're going to see my dogs, you know, post my animals posted in my Facebook world. You will not have that in LinkedIn. Again, you don't necessarily ever want to post and share in social media images that or words that would be inconsistent with your brand. But I tend to use Facebook for personal purposes. But it can be very effective for building communities and especially for organizations that might be smaller startup organizations. So I would encourage you to have both a Facebook site as well as a LinkedIn profile and a YouTube channel. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. As we move into, continue to deal with COVID-19 if we if the listener hasn't been doing a whole lot with a personal brand, what's the final message you'd like to share with them as we're moving into the future? Dawn EdmistonNow's the time. And when you are thinking about developing your personal brand, you need to be thinking about the value proposition that you can share with others. Very often, when we start to use language, you we start to define ourselves by the positions we've held or the titles that we've been called. And honestly, that's not that important. So if you happen not to be working at the moment and you had to find your personal brand by where you had worked, you know, now is your chance to create your own personal brand and understand what it is that you really want to do and develop language around that and be able to share that with others so that you can start living the life that you had wanted to, perhaps that you might not have even known that you wanted to prior to the pandemic. But this is a really wonderful chance for many of us to hit the reset button and to move forward in a way that we know cannot even imagine before. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Dawn Edmiston. And that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, pursue one that delivers a transformational experience. The William & Mary MBA four formats the full time, the evening, the online, and the executive MBA. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Dawn Edmiston, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Brad Franc](images/brad-franc-137-thumb.jpg)
![The Succession Solution](images/brad-franc-137-thumb.jpg)
Brad Franc
Episode 137: July 1, 2020
The Succession Solution
Seventy percent of all businesses fail to survive past the first generation of business owners. One reason for the failures is the lack of a succession plan. Our guest today says not only should family and closely-held businesses have succession plans, but creating one greatly increases the odds of a successful leadership handoff and a bright future for the business. Brad Franc is the author of "The Succession Solution: The Strategic Guide to Business Transition." He's an attorney, entrepreneur, and business strategist who has helped countless businesses make positive leadership transitions. He joins us today to talk about succession planning and the system he created that guides businesses through this important step.
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Brad Franc: The Succession Solution TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Seventy percent of all businesses fail to survive past the first generation of business owners. One reason for the failures is the lack of a succession plan. Our guest today says not only should family and closely-held businesses have succession plans, but creating one greatly increases the odds of a successful leadership handoff and a bright future for the business. Brad Franc is the author of The Succession Solution: The Strategic Guide to Business Transition. He's an attorney, entrepreneur, and business strategist who's helped countless businesses make positive leadership transitions. He joins us on the podcast today to talk about succession planning and the system he created that guides businesses through this important step. Here's our conversation with Brad Franc. Ken WhiteWell, Brad, it's nice to see you again. Thanks for joining us and for sharing your time and your expertise with us today. Brad FrancOh, thank you. And I appreciate the opportunity. Ken WhiteLet's just jump right into it. Succession. What is that? How do you define it? Brad FrancYeah, that's a great question, because it goes all over the place. The way I view succession it is the preparation, execution, and review of the transfer of either ownership of the company or management of the company. Although I will say this. There are also three types of succession. There is a succession of knowledge. There's a succession of management and ownership. So whether you are trying to teach the next generation how to do things, that's knowledge. Right. But the formal succession planning process is you develop a plan. You execute on that plan. You see how it's going. And then you iterate just like any business does. Ken WhiteWhat is succession not? How do you people sometimes get confused? Brad FrancSuccession is not your estate plan. Succession is not tax planning. Succession is how do I void my creditors, slash in-laws from getting any of these assets? Those are specific tactics that might come into play with succession. But if someone thinks that their succession plan is found in their will or their power of attorney, the likelihood of a successful transfer is not very high. Ken WhiteHow did you get into this? What what what what attracted you to succession planning? Brad FrancWell, for about 25 years, I've worked with closely held business owners, and I've seen them struggle with the transfer. And I also found there were two camps, Ken. There were the psychiatrist, psychologist that talked about the emotional issues. And then there were the tax lawyers swinging the nine hundred pound tax hammer. And there didn't seem to be any strategic process, thought process. And I brought those two together because they do a lot of strategic planning and some of the business I've run, and I put strategic planning into that process. And remarkably, I found a lot of success with it. Ken WhiteWhy do so many people struggle? That's the exact work you used was struggle? What? Where's that come from? Brad FrancYeah, there are lots of reasons. But when I was writing the book, it was very interesting as to why people the reason people fail. It really came as a surprise to me. Less than 15 percent of the time, it had to do with taxes or some type of technical planning issue, creating a trust. That wasn't it. Twenty-five percent of the time, it was an ill-prepared successor. The next person is not ready. Right. But 60 percent of the time. 60 percent of the time, there's a failure. It's due to lack of communication and trust. So I am engaged right now, and a telecommunication company that is primarily family control and they can't get on the same page. So it's not that they're bad people, they just can't communicate very well. And so the main reason is communication. There are lots of other reasons, Ken. For instance, the founder doesn't want to give up control. A great line I once heard the CEO of a company told me I'm going to go from he's the man to who's he. A lot of psychology behind it as well. Ken WhiteInteresting. Yeah. Way deeper than I think most people think. There's a lot to this, isn't there? Brad FrancThat's right. That's right. That's why it's it's hard because there are a lot of disciplines that you need to bring to bear in order for this to work, both from a legal tax, accounting, business, talking to the employees. And that's why I believe the process that I've developed at least brings in the lion's share, if not all of those issues, to help formulate a plan. Ken WhiteWhy did you write the book? Brad FrancIn law school, one of my law school professors once told me writing is the highest form of thinking. And I thought I had this process down. But I wanted to prove it to myself. I am one of those slow thinkers. And so I wrote the book one to prove it to myself and to help people because I saw so many business owners struggle with this thing. They don't have to engage me. I believe they can take this book and use it to help them with their succession plan. Ken WhiteWe've got an intelligent audience. The listeners to our podcast get it. They understand business and leadership. And I bet a high percentage of them could write books with about their own area of expertise. But it's tough writing a book. How did you do it? You're busy. I mean, wow. Yeah, a lot of balls in the air. How did you pull it off? Brad FrancIt is I will not kid you. It is very hard. And another great, great quote I once heard. There are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic timeframes. And so I thought I could do this in six months to a year. It ended up being a four-year project. And what I did, I disciplined myself to every Saturday, a fair amount of Sunday's sitting down. I created an outline. I thought this is what it looked like. And I took one chapter at a time. And I think it was Stephen King who said, I write 250 words a day or whatever the case may be. So was one of those situations. I got it in a very rough form. I took it to a retired law school professor as an editor. She ripped it apart from an editorial standpoint, and I probably edited it and reviewed it about 30 times. And then, interestingly, Amazon has a self-publishing process that I think is real handy. Where you can pick and choose how you want to use this promote it market it. And so I went through the Amazon route, and I'm happy to report. I know it sounds a little self-serving, but it was the number one seller on Amazon in four business categories. Ken WhiteIf you wouldn't have said it, I would. Yeah. It's worth it. All that discipline, it paid off. So congratulations. The book is done well, and it's been a little over a year now. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Brad Franc in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider William & Mary. Whatever your stage of life, whether you're completing your bachelor's degree or you have 30 years of work experience, the William & Mary MBA will transform you. Four different formats, including the full time, the flex, the online, and the executive. The William & Mary MBA will change and improve the way you think, the way you lead, and the way you live. Just ask any of our alumni. Now back to our conversation with the author of The Succession Solution, Brad Franc. Ken WhiteIn the book, The Succession Solution, you talk about six stages of succession. Let's walk through those. The first one you called purpose. Can you explain that? Brad FrancYeah. Yeah. The purpose stage is getting to the foundational aspect of an organization. What are the principles, the values that make up the company? It becomes the culture. You know, how do you define the culture of the company? Because Ken, there will be disagreements along the way. And if you go back to what are our core fundamental principles? If you can establish that, you can pretty much test any succession plan against that. Then I say, OK, if that's your core principles, where do we want to go? That ultimate vision. Right. Which you'll never get to. But it's way out there. So there's a point of reference. And then if you've got the principles and you know where you want to go. Another question is why. Simon Sinek, you know, getting to why. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm Brad FrancIf you can answer the why, that gives you the strength to keep going. You know, I once had a business owner, didn't have any family member, but his employees were key. He wanted to make sure the employees were protected. Every time we stumbled, I said, Jim, what's this about? He says, thank you, right. And then I say, what does failure look like? Nothing motivates people like fear. So if we get it wrong. So that's the first stage is the purpose stage. Ken WhiteAnd then you move on to discovery. Brad FrancRight. And the example I give is, you know, you got to know where you are to know where you're going to get to. My belief is that if you know where you are, and you know where you want to get to, then you've got the road map. The joke that I give is there's a local mall in our community. And I hate going to the mall, and I don't know where anything is. And so what's the first thing I do when I walk in the mall? I look for that big kiosk for the red dot. Where am I? And that's how we start. And I find that lots of business owners don't know where they are. There will maybe directing their ownership to a place they don't want to go to. So we kind of do a discovery in that situation. That's the next stage. Ken WhiteInteresting. Then after purpose and discovery, you move on to challenge, which sounds like a SWOT analysis to some extent. Brad FrancVery good. It's very similar to a SWOT analysis. We have our strengths. There are opportunities. But most importantly, what I believe is another critical part of succession planning is identifying the obstacles. Another great book, The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. And again, I believe if you know where you are, and you know where you want to get to. The only thing that's stopping you is the obstacles. Otherwise, you'd be there. Right? So we have to find those obstacles because that's going to be the jet fuel that we'll use to move us forward. Ken WhiteSo now that you've identified those obstacles, you move on to the fourth stage, which is mission. Brad FrancRight. Again, I keep using quotes, but Bill Gates once said most people overestimate what they can do in a year. They underestimate what they can do in five. So I say to a business owner, hey, look, let's not worry about tomorrow. If we're sitting here three years from today, what would you like to see have happen with respect to your succession plan? Oh, that's easy. Three years it's so far. It gives them a little more. It removes some of the anxiety. So we list those things we want to do in three years. The obstacles we're gonna run into and the action steps we're going to take to overcome those obstacles. Ken WhiteI could see that relieving the heat and the stress because three years does seem like quite a ways away, doesn't it? Brad FrancThat's right, that's right. Ken WhiteYeah. Then it's on to the annual review. Brad FrancSo the natural progression is, if this is what we want to do in three years, what do we want to do over the next 12 months? And once again, what are the action steps? Where do we need to watch that two by four that's going to come and hit us in the head? Right. Whether that's a family member, whether it's a key employee, whatever the case may be, we have to tackle this because these obstacles, they don't go away. Right. And so, you know, as I like to also say, you know when you start with truth and honesty, that's when you can make progress. So that's what we do. And we look at over the next 12 months. Ken WhiteAnd then, the final step is the quarterly review. Brad FrancThat's right. And so, you know, what we're trying to do is limited to three or four action steps. We want to do in the next 90 days. What's the saying? If you want to improve something, measure it. If you want to improve something exponentially, measure it, and report out. So what we do is we assign three or four tasks to a particular person. They don't have to do the work. They are accountable for showing up and reporting on the status. I like to say a plan without action is nothing but a dream, and action without a plan is nothing but a nightmare. So when I work with owners and I tell people this, don't do this unless you're willing to execute on the plan. Too many times, plans don't get executed. If you have a 90-day report in, then the likelihood of success increases. Ken WhiteHow long, and this may be an unfair question. How long does it generally take when you're working with someone? Brad FrancKen, I normally ask people, don't hire me unless they're willing to work throughout the year meeting every 90 days? Because I believe it's usually around the third meeting. People like, oh, I see how it going first meeting your trying to figure things out. The second meeting, we're putting a little more to it. But normally it takes about a year. Can you do it quicker? You can. But the likelihood of failure increases. So that's normally what the process consists of. Ken WhiteBut in the mission stage, you've got the three-year goal. Can it also go that long as well? Brad FrancThat's right. I mean, and what I find is people will ask me to come back, but I can, as I like to say, I can take the training wheels off, and they can work themselves. So I'll normally check-up every six months to a year if we have a continuing relationship. Ken WhiteYou and I talked earlier, long before we recorded, and you said, yes, my book, great. But find some template if you don't adopt yours. Right. That template, that game plan is important here, isn't it? Brad FrancYou know, there in my research for my book, Ken, there was another book that looked at thirty-five hundred family businesses worldwide. And that was the one thing that they said where success was found, that they found the family business, where the business owners, family business found a process. And so it doesn't have to be my process, although I think it works. It can be anybody's process and stick to it. Ken WhiteNow, you bring a business background. You bring a legal background. If someone is seeking help, what should they look for in someone who's going to guide them? Brad FrancYes. I mean, I do think, unfortunately, it's multifaceted, and not everybody can do it. And that's why I think when you have the proverbial nine hundred pound tax hammer, you don't have that perspective. So I would look for a business owner that's been through the process or a consultant that's been through the process. I mean, I'm not suggesting you need to have all the background that I have, but maybe someone who has done it several times, that have seen various permutations, I tell people I'm much smarter than you. I just have seen this a hundred times, and I can bring that experience to bear. Ken WhiteIs it an emotional process? A rewarding process? What's it like by the time it's all said and done? Brad FrancYeah, know, that's a great question. It's a scary process because sometimes you go in the room and there are some angry people. It is extremely rewarding one at this end of the day you've actually helped people. And it is it's that's what drives me, is to help the business owner. You know, we all have our skill sets are unique abilities. And I just like working with business owners and helping. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Brad Franc, the author of The Succession Solution, and that's it for this episode of Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, pursue one that delivers a transformational experience, the William & Mary MBA. Four format's The Full Time, the evening or Flex, the Online, and the Executive MBA. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Brad Franc, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Bob Williams & Brian Baines](images/bob-williams-brian-baines-136-thumb.jpg)
![Civil Unrest & the CEO](images/bob-williams-brian-baines-136-thumb.jpg)
Bob Williams & Brian Baines
Episode 136: June 9, 2020
Civil Unrest and the CEO
It's been over a week since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protests and demonstrators have taken place in cities across America. Business leaders and CEOs have responded in different ways. For example, the CEOs of Target, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Lowe's, Apple, and Google were among the first CEOs to speak out following the nation-wide civil unrest. Other CEOs have remained silent. How should business leaders and CEOs respond? What roles and responsibilities does the CEO have in this case? We asked two of our colleagues from the William & Mary School of Business to share their expertise. First, Professor Bob Williams. He's a former longtime business leader and executive who now teaches leadership. Second Brain Baines. He's the business school's senior Human Resources partner - the Chief HR Officer. They join us to share their experience and thoughts regarding the ways CEOs should respond in difficult times.
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Bob Williams & Brian Baines: Civil Unrest and the CEO TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's been over a week since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protests and demonstrations have taken place in cities across America. Business leaders and CEOs have responded in different ways. For example, the CEOs of Target, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Lowes, Apple, and Google were among the first CEOs to speak out following the nationwide civil unrest. Other CEOs have remained silent. How should business leaders and CEOs respond? What roles and responsibilities does the CEO have in this case? Well, we asked two of our colleagues from the William & Mary School of Business to share their expertise. First, Professor Bob Williams. He's a former longtime business leader and executive who now teaches leadership. Second Brian Baines, he's the business school’s senior human resources partner, the chief H.R. officer. They join us to share their experience and thoughts regarding the ways CEOs should respond in difficult times. Here's our conversation with Bob Williams and Brian Baines. Ken WhiteBob, Brian, thanks so much for sharing your time. We appreciate you being on the podcast. The first time for Brian but Bob, you've been on before, but thanks. Thanks very much to both of you for sharing your time and expertise with us today. Brian BainesHappy to be here. Bob WilliamsGlad to be here. Ken WhiteBob, you spent a number of years in the C Suite, and when you started in business, CEOs weren't really expected to address issues outside of the business. Am I right in that? And has that changed over the past few years? Bob WilliamsYeah, I think it changed a lot. And I think you've characterized it well. I think the thing that's really been changed now with this advance, which is a blending of technology. You know, when guys like Jobs walked out onto the San Francisco stage, and I think it was 2009 showed that the iPhone really what he was telling is that everybody knows everything at the same time. And that was not characteristic of corporations and regardless of your size prior to that. But now, with the movement of just your thumbs, you blow away any kind of insular material that might protect CEOs or protect senior management people from what is basically the truth of the situation. And that changed the role, the role of the C Suite, I think. Ken WhitePolarizing topics like the one we've been experiencing for the last eight, ten days. Should a CEO step up and say something to customers and employees and the general public, Bob? Bob WilliamsYeah, I think they're obligated to do that. I think if and of course, I need to be very open about my position on something like that. I say that, but I think there's a lot of good things that are going on, and this is going to continue into this movement of diversity and inclusion. It is dramatic when you look at these crowds, for example, the death of this young man. Watch the MSNBC or FOX or CNN, and you see African-Americans. You see, Asians use the occasion. You see them supporting one another. This is really powerful and very important. And I don't think CEOs can do that because it's a reflection not to comment on that, because it is a reflection of their employee base in many cases. This is really important; we are in a reflection point on this. Ken WhiteBrian, as the chief human resource manager. Do you want your CEO to speak up and speak out now? Brian BainesDefinitely. We have a lot of employees and customers who are interested in knowing where a company stands in support and solidarity with people who are being affected by this. We have black and brown people, as the subject is right now, who are hurting, and they're not okay. We're going to work every day, and we're keeping on a smile because that's what's expected. But we need to know that our company stands behind us. Ken WhiteIs there anything specific other than what you just said that a CEO can be saying right now is something as simple as we are thinking about you, we are behind you. Is that enough? Brian BainesWell, I think it needs to be a stronger message. I think that message needs to be it's not tolerated that, you know, we, in effect, are appreciative of the efforts of all people, but are brown people, are black people, those who are being affected at this moment. We stand behind them, and we support their efforts to seek equality and to seek, you know, basic human rights. Bob WilliamsCan I jump in on that? Ken WhiteYeah, please. Bob WilliamsI couldn't agree more with Brian's comment on that. I would add to this, you know, you could write some of the box and some of the reactions that many CEOs now go to the broadcast media with and television media and other forms of communication. I mean, you could write it easily because so many of them have said, you know, this is regrettable, this should not happen, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't think that's enough. I think what the CEOs of the senior management. So these companies have to do is say, look, I'm going to audit my task force. I've got to sit down with my H.R. director. I'm going to find out what our diversity quotient looks like. I'm got to find out how we decide on promoting people. I'm going to look at pay. I'm going to this whole movement, Ken, I think, is overlapping with this whole issue of diversity and inclusion. And CEOs and senior-level people have to stand up and say; I'm taking it further than just telling you. And they're right in saying this. I think you have to show empathy. But they have to go further than that now. People are looking for action. They're not looking for just a gauze to cover something like this. So I think CEOs need to really take a look with their human resource people and say, look, are we living to what the words are here? And if we're not, let's change things. Ken WhiteIt has been interesting to read through that because some are not saying anything. I'm sorry, Brian. Go ahead. What were you thinking? Brian BainesYeah, I was going to agree with Bob there. You know, they need to look at the dynamics of their organizations and put together teams that are directly responsible for looking at, as Bob mentioned, diversity and inclusion and how the culture affects the people in your organization and start to make changes because, yes, the words are hollow without the action, the words are what are needed upfront. But then we have to effectively put a plan together and do things to make a change. Ken WhiteAnd many of the words are, you know, it's frustrating to read some of them. Some of them are saying nothing. They're just statements. And you feel like saying, oh, you just wanted to be on social media. You just wanted to be included where there's others who are McDonald's, for example, throwing money. They're saying here; we're actually going to take money we're going to work with the NAACP, we're going to make donations here. We're moving things forward. What do you say, Bob, to that CEO who is a little reluctant to say something concrete? Bob WilliamsI think writing checks is good. I think cash is good. It's what the engine is that's going to allow you to make this big change maybe a little faster because you have the resources that you need. But I don't think that's enough either. I think you have to its behavior. We're talking about behavior here. I think that what we're going to have to look at is the culture of these companies. We've done all the right things in quotes. We've done all the right things. But have we actually lived our words? And that's a cultural thing, the way we do things around here if you use that as the definition of a culture is what has to be investigated, audited, looked at and changed if it's necessary to change. Ken WhiteSome of those changes take time. And in a social media world, people are looking for quick results. So how do you communicate that Bob, that this is a longer-term strategy as opposed to I can give you something tomorrow? Bob WilliamsThat's a key. That's a key point. On the one hand, the thing that social media has done is you can no longer obscure the truth and the reality of what employees are living in. It happens quickly, and it's so transparent. If CEOs and C Suite people want to really make a difference, they will use that to their advantage. They will use social media and the way they communicate. You use the word community. That is so key. The two words that are important in times like this for businesses, I think are communicate and collaborate. You have got to involve the employees in the changes that you make to make diversity and inclusion work the way they're supposed to work. You have to listen to these people that are in the streets, the people that are in your company. You have to establish two-way communications, which really with this technology is one of the great advantages is that you can have a discussion and not be there, but you can have the discussion. And that's something that's a tool which should be using. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Bob Williams and Brian Baines of William & Mary in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider William & Mary whatever stage of your life, whether you're completing your bachelor's degree or you have 30 years of work experience. William & Mary School of Business offers MBA programs that will transform you, four different programs, including the full time, the flex, the online, and the executive. The William & Mary MBA will change and improve the way you think, the way you lead, and the way you live. Just ask any of our alumni. Now back to our conversation with Bob Williams and Brian Baines. Ken WhiteBrian, if the CEO comes to your counterpart, the head of H.R., and says this is the message I want to send out to the employees. What don't you want the CEO to say? What is something? Is there anything they should avoid saying at this point in time? Brian BainesYeah, I think so. And actually, the Harvard Business Review published the article, I think it's called U.S. Businesses Must Take Meaningful Action Against Racism. And they actually gave some good topics. But from my personal perspective, depending on who you are as a CEO, avoid saying, you understand because you don't understand. I am a black male, and I don't understand everybody's perspective. Everyone's experiences aren't like mine. And that's not to say that I have a better, you know, perspective than anyone else. That's just to say the things that I have had to go through in life are not as harsh as those that some other people's people have. So it's about letting people know that you hear what they're saying, that you want a better understanding and that you are looking to make a change. CEOs are a large group, and I'm sure many of them communicate with each other. So they have counterparts, and they can reach out to and get some thoughts on how to properly express their feelings. Many of them have communication specialists to help them write information out that will be suitable. But at the same time, they have to make sure that it is coming from the heart, that it's just not words on paper. They have to put a little bit of their self into the words that they write. But also, at the same time, stay away from things that can be even more polarizing and fan the flames of what's going on right now. Ken WhiteWith that said, and I'll ask both of you this and kind of put you on the spot. But is there a channel that's more one channel more appropriate than another channel in terms of who should it be? Email to employees. Should it be a video from the CEO to employees? Normally we can walk the halls. We can't do that right now. Mostly speaking, generally speaking. What's a good delivery? What's a good delivery tool or media channel for an important message like this to employees? Bob WilliamsI think it's all of those things. I think senior-level people need to walk around. They need to do what they can in terms of contacting their employees. If that's by video, if that's by email, if that's by giving them a voice on Zoom, they should do it, and they shouldn't do it once and not say, see, I did that. They should do that on a consistent, frequent basis. They should, to Brian's point, form task groups of employees and let their ideas flow to the CEOs and to the C suite and then not let them die. Use those communication vehicles and say to them, look, we heard from this task force. These were follow. These following things are problems. I want to share with you that this idea is not one I totally agree with, but this idea is awesome. This idea is something that we are going to work on. And you keep that dialogue going through all media, not just through a singular media because what we're watching is a lack of communication. I mean, Martin Luther King said it beautifully. And I heard this one of the commentators that was covering the Atlanta gathering's followed a gathering. And it wasn't a riot. It was just a group of people expressing their First Amendment rights. But he's quoted Martin Luther King when he said when you watch something like this or you were involved in something like this, you are watching the unheard finding a voice. And I thought that's just a great capture. And if you're going to answer that voice, you've got to do it through every medium at your disposal. Brian BainesRight. Ken WhiteBrian, from the H.R. standpoint, what about the channels to reach employees? Brian BainesFrom an H.R. standpoint, you have to understand the demographics of your employees because not everyone is going to receive information the same way. Some people aren't on email. Some people are text message people. Some people are actual hard copy to the home letter people. So you have to employ those multiple mediums in order to get the message out. And like Bob said, you have to say it more than once. But what's important is that the first time you say it right. Because there are no new take backs. Any apologies you make after the statement that you initially put out are just they fall on deaf ears, people, you lost the confidence of your people once you put out a statement that harms more than helps. And, you know, it's very important that they speak up. CEOs and company heads speak up because what people will tend to do is see the silence as acceptance of what's going on. And that's something that they definitely want to stay away from. Of course, there are people on both sides of the issue. There's always going to be people on both sides of the issue. But you want to take the approach of deciding which side the company is going to be on. Yeah, you may lose some customers or whatever down the way, but take Nike, for example. About a year ago, they put out a statement or rather a ad using Colin Kaepernick that had lots of people upset, burning the Nike products and things like that that they own. But also at the same time, they saw an increase in profits. So for those you lose, you probably will gain more people, or you may gain more people buying multiple products of yours or utilizing your services more often. So, you know, be on the right side of it is what you have to do. And that's the message that I think they have to get out and again through as many different avenues as they can. Bob WilliamsI think to the generations that companies are dealing with now from a recruitment standpoint, of an employee standpoint are different than they were, say, ten years ago, not only because of the fact but because of the way they feel about value. So if you're worried about offending a customer because your communication maybe not what they want to hear, I would say don't let that be a barrier to communicating. I would say, look, people are looking at value and more than just tradeoff between cost and price. They're saying, do I want to do business with this organization because of what it believes? So for a CEO to be put off and fearful that they'll offend somebody that's in their customer base. I think they need to get over that. I think what they need to say, well, what do I stand for? Does it have value? And if it has value, my customers will respect the fact that my company thinks this way. You can see it in the environmental movement. You can see it in sustainability. There are people in this generation, young people that won't do business with people and companies that don't respect the environment that don't respect sustainability. I think the same thing is true about human resources and human relations. People want to be respected. They want to be treated with equity and with fairness. And companies that are very good at communicating that they are doing that and they're serious about making that kind of a thing live are going to benefit from the customer base. They're not going to be threatened by it. Brian BainesYeah, people have to take a tough look at their company if they're not making a statement. I've actually asked people on my personal network to explore new opportunities if their companies are refusing to make a statement and take a stand on this. You know because, again, people who are most affected by this, that is, in essence, saying that, you know, we're not here for you. Whether it's true or not, the lack of a voice from the company is harmful to the populations that work inside that organization. Bob WilliamsRight. Brian BainesThat may be the next George Floyd or Ahmaud Arbery or Breonna Taylor or one of the many other people who have lost their lives or been harmed through injustice. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Bob Williams and Brian Baines. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, pursue one that offers a transformational experience. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary, the full time, the flex, the online, and the executive. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guests Bob Williams and Brian Baines, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Rajiv Kohli](images/rajiv-kohli-135-thumb.jpg)
![COVID-19: Returning to Normal](images/rajiv-kohli-135-thumb.jpg)
Rajiv Kohli
Episode 135: April 27, 2020
COVID-19: Returning to Normal
After several weeks of social distancing, virtual meetings, and shelter in place, most people are ready to go back: Back to work, back to their favorite restaurant, and back to normal. While we're ready, we don't know how long it will take, and what it will take before we can return to normal. Rajiv Kohli is the John N. Dalton Professor of Business at William & Mary. He's a leading scholar in health information technology and a healthcare expert. For over 15 years he's worked and consulted with several healthcare organizations. Kohli says before we can return to our pre-pandemic lives, certain events must take place. He joins us on the podcast to discuss what needs to happen in order for us to return to life as we knew it.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, after several weeks of social distancing, virtual meetings, and shelter in place, most people are ready to go back, back to work, back to their favorite restaurant, and back to normal. But while we're ready, we don't know how long it'll take and what it will take before we can return to normal. Rajiv Kohli is the John N. Dalton Professor of Business at William & Mary. He's a leading scholar in health information technology and a health care expert. For over 15 years, he's worked and consulted with several health care organizations. Kohli says before we can return to our pre-pandemic lives, certain events must take place. He joins us on the podcast to discuss what needs to happen in order for us to return to life as we knew it. Here's our conversation with Dr. Rajiv Kohli. Ken WhiteRajiv, thanks for taking time to join us. I hope you're well and hope your family's well. Rajiv KohliThank you, Ken. Everything is going well. Thank you for having me. Ken WhiteYeah, well, you know, if we all agree to be conscientious citizens and I know a lot of people are. Wearing the masks, staying at home, washing our hands, practicing social distancing, that's great. But it's not enough. You say a number of things have to take place in order for us to get back to normal—things like testing. Rajiv KohliYes, testing is really the first step. That is what tells us where we are. That's like the inventory of the disease itself. So testing is very important for a number of reasons. First, we have to know who needs help. Second, testing helps us understand where the disease is located and who do we have to isolate. Or we have to self-isolate. It also is a measure of making sure that people who need help get help where they need help. And then it also gives confidence to other people saying that I know where the disease is and where it's not, and then I can continue with my normal routine. So, I see testing is really the first step to know what is going on. Ken WhiteRight now, we're using 14-day isolation that that's just not cutting it right. Rajiv KohliNo, 14-day isolation is NATO's test, if you will, where we are saying we don't have a proper test. We'll let the nature tell us who has the disease, who does not. The trouble with that Ken is that thirty percent or so of the people who have the COVID-19 are asymptomatic, meaning they do not show symptoms, and they are walking around without knowing that they have the disease, and they may be spreading. So, by the time you find out up the 14-day period, they may have already spread that. Ken WhiteYou say we need to treat people who are very sick nationally and hot spots. Are we able to do that as a nation now? Rajiv KohliYeah, so that's really the second step along with the testing part is that after we find out that who has the coronavirus, they need help. Unfortunately, a percentage of those will be very sick and they will need help. Hospitals are prepping themselves for taking care of these patients with ventilators, ICU's and train staff I might add, in addition to the equipment, we need people who are able to provide care and use that equipment to answer your question. That's kind of spotty. Some places are saying that their numbers are manageable, meaning that they're not seeing a big surge. But we know other places like New York or Washington State, and increasingly a few other places in the country are seeing the kind of surge that they were worried about. Also, as of now, I think we are still kind of behind the eight ball in terms of having proper equipment, and that includes ventilators, personal protective equipment, things like sanitizers, masks, which is for the common public, a very important piece of this puzzle that helps us stay safe. Ken WhiteYeah, you said that was sort of step three was making sure that the public has preventative equipment. That's a bit of an issue, isn't it? Rajiv KohliThat's correct. So, step three is the public being protected, knowing who has the coronavirus, who does not, and then making sure that if we do come in touch with them or do, we interact with them, that we are protected. And the simplest and perhaps the most effective way is for everyone to have a personal mask, a disposable one, many of them. Each time they go out, they should have a new mask that they use, so and we don't have enough of those. On Amazon, the delivery period could be anywhere from three to four weeks, and they should be easily accessible. So, when I talk about the testing and the masks and PPE, what I also am implying in that is that not only are they available, but they're easily accessible to people. They don't have to go hunt for it. They don't have to go wait for it. So, can I get my mask, have them delivered tomorrow morning? If they are available, then we are in good shape. Ken WhiteYeah. You and I were talking the other day. We ordered masks in our family several weeks ago. They're supposed to come today. We're recording on Friday. Right before you and I logged on. I looked out the window, and a FedEx truck rolled up. And I'm really hoping it's that and not another delivery from Ulta or something that my daughter has ordered. So, fingers crossed. Rajiv KohliHow long-ago Ken did you order those? Ken WhiteTen days. Rajiv KohliOkay, so that's not too bad. Ken WhiteNo. Rajiv KohliBut I would like it to be available overnight if I wanted them. Ken WhiteRight. And like a lot of families, we created our own homemade masks, not knowing if they're any good. So, we're looking forward to the actual medical masks that we'd like to use for sure. You say the next step is social distancing must continue. Rajiv KohliYes. Social distancing is something that we've been practicing in a number of ways by self-quarantine. And when we do come face to face with someone, we stand across the street and have a conversation. It should continue because that is really our way of defending us and others that we are working with. That in case I am one of the 30 percent asymptomatic individuals who has COVID-19 but does not show any symptoms. So, we are protecting ourselves, each other from that disease. So that will continue and will have to continue. And I think it will become part of our day to day interactive behavior when we meet with other sort of like, you know, when you and I have a cold and I see you in a meeting, I said, Ken, I'm not going to shake your hand because I have you know, I have the sniffles. I think that will become more ingrained in our day to day lives, at least in the near future, where we will say just to be safe, let's keep this distance. Ken WhiteYeah, it was I just read a piece this morning on the Office of the Future, and everything was spread out, no doubt. Desks were spread out, doorways, and so forth. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Rajiv Kohli of William & Mary in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, consider William & Mary. Whatever your stage of life, whether you're completing your bachelor's degree or you have 30 years of work experience. William & Mary School of Business offers MBA programs that will transform you. Four different programs, including the Full-Time, Flex, Online, and Executive MBA. The William & Mary MBA will change and improve the way you think, the way you lead, and the way you live. Just ask any of our alumni. Now back to our conversation with Rajiv Kohli. Ken WhiteYeah, the next step you said, we'll probably see a rolling return to work. Rajiv KohliYes. The way I see the question is always, when will this be over? Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Rajiv KohliAnd then when we get back to work or the things that we were doing in our normal lives. I see this as a rolling return to work in the sense that there will be. Let's say if you were divided into four weeks, the first week, there will be essential people who need to be at work, will be at work, who are probably going to work once or twice a week right now, but they'll go on a daily basis and then followed by those individuals who have the option to work from home or would be more effective if they're at their desk. So that'd be the second wave. The third way will be people who were working from home could work from home, but they missed the interaction, and they are needed. And then finally, I think it will be the last quartile will be people who are a little bit more cautious who could do without being physically at work. And they will probably see three-quarters of their colleagues that say it's working for them. I'll get back to work too. I miss the interaction? Ken WhiteInteresting. So, we need a 24-hour turnaround testing. We have to be able to treat people who are sick. We need the preventative equipment. Social distancing must continue when work returns. We'll do it on a rolling basis. But when you and I were talking the other day, you were saying the goal still remains we need a vaccine. Rajiv KohliAbsolutely. That is the final goal. But we know that in the best of cases, the vaccine is about twelve months away, and that is when everything goes well. Some of the previous experiences of vaccines had been years before they were properly tested and the trials were done, and they were deemed to be safe because one of the things that the medical community is very worried about is in the rush, as serious as this is, to get the vaccine to the public. They don't do more harm than they prevent the disease from spreading. Also, they will be absolutely sure before they will release that. And that estimate is about a year. Until that time, all the things that you described Ken are things that we will have to practice at different levels of our daily routines until we have the vaccine. And then it will be sort of like dealing with the annual flu. Ken WhiteYeah, so even when we all do go back, it will still be a very different place. And different interaction with one another. Rajiv KohliIt will be and one of the things that will determine that is what I call social confidence. Social confidence is a level of assurance that an individual must-have. And it's a kind of a conversation we have with ourselves by absorbing all the information around us. And we say to ourselves; I'm looking around, I'm not seeing any really bad cases. I'm seeing people actually leave the hospital. I had the conversation with my physician, and she's beginning to see patients. Life is kind of getting back to normal. And then that will give me the confidence to say, yeah, I can now interact in my social circle. But it also has the possibility that can swing the other way. If something comes on the news, you hear something in your local community, something bad happened. You know, somebody was didn't fit the profile of a high-risk patient had a serious illness and had to be in ICU. People will regress a little bit, and it will it'll take a toll on their confidence. So that is not so much based on the resources of testing and PPE and masks, and things like that we talked about that is more of a confidence that comes from inside, and that is dependent on what's happening around us. Ken WhiteYou see, a generation is playing a role in social confidence. I'm guessing younger folks might have a little more confidence then say someone who's older. Rajiv KohliYes, I see that already in my two kids who are in their 20s, they are a little more confident than us. They are a little more antsy and itchy to get out to see their friends. But I'm also seeing something that is very positive among the younger generation is that while they want to go out and they feel more confident from all the news reports that this is something that affects people who have underlying conditions, I'm very pleased that they are also very considerate. As I was talking to one of my colleagues who has two sons in their 20s on East Coast and West Coast, and I was asking them, are they home? And he said, no. They wanted to come home. We wanted them to come home. But they said, for your sake, mom and dad, we have got to stay where we are. Ken WhiteWow. Rajiv KohliSo that is also a good thing among the younger generation that while they are confident, they are being very considerate for other people who may not be at such a low risk as they are. Ken WhiteYeah, that's fantastic. You know you touched on one of the issues. There's so much conflicting information out there. Did you have any suggestions, any recommendations? Where in the world do people go? Rajiv KohliYeah. So that is one of my pet peeves. And each time I see something on TV or somebody in my own family talking about, I saw this on Facebook or I saw that on WhatsApp. And unfortunately, some of our leaders as well give us conflicting information. I squirm every time I see that because this sounds like an exaggeration Ken that the bad information that we tell someone that oh I read this on Facebook or what's happened and I saw this, I heard somebody say this. Is almost as bad as the contagion itself. So, the virus spreads. But we are also spreading misinformation, oftentimes not purposefully, but just because we read something. So, I tell the people that share or try to share misinformation, what I consider misinformation without a proper attribution from a good source Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Rajiv Kohlinot to talk about it, not to spread it, because it's very difficult to reel it back in once you spread that information. So, to answer your question, yes, we don't have one reliable source that people all people go to. Yes, we do have reliable sources like the CDC and the scientists. But there is also conflicting information coming from our politicians among people that we should trust otherwise. I would like people to be very careful about information that they consume and information that they share with others unless they can be sure that it came from a reliable source. And then, too, I would say, well, this is what I read at this source so they can verify it. Ken WhiteSo, all in all, if the steps you had talked about take place and we get there, we it'll end, so to speak, we'll get back it'll just a little bit different. Rajiv KohliYes, it will be quite different. And we are not even talking about the business side and the sociological side that will be different, there will be a lot of new changes, that we will see new developments. Many of them will be positive developments. We will see a greater use of technology. We will see different processes of how we interact. So, for example, I become a big fan of Instacart. So, I think we are going to keep it after all of this is over, because I think that's a great service. And I can use that time to be more productive in other ways. And I think similarly, people are going to discover new ways of doing things. I'm imagining a lot of telehealth, or mobile health will be people will be more comfortable with that. Yes, there are issues we'll have to address of security and privacy and all of that. So, yes, there will be a lot of changes, but I think we'll come through this. We will get back to life as we knew it slightly different. But we will be able to continue to do what we were doing and be more productive. I just worry about people who are trying to short circuit the process by jumping these steps that we just talked about. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Rajiv Kohli, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the William & Mary School of Business. If you're thinking about pursuing an MBA, pursue one that offers a transformational experience. Check out the MBA programs at William & Mary, the Full-Time, the Flex, the Online, and the Executive. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Rajiv Kohli, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dr. Kelly Crace](images/kelly-crace-134-thumb.jpg)
![COVID-19 & Your Mental Health](images/kelly-crace-134-thumb.jpg)
Dr. Kelly Crace
Episode 134: March 24, 2020
COVID-19 & Your Mental Health
Everywhere you turn, you're hearing and reading more about coronavirus: Testing kits, the number of cases, quarantines, the effects to the economy and the stock market, universities and schools going online, people working from home. It's clearly the top-of-mind issue and new territory for everyone. Managing your thoughts and emotions during this unprecedented disruption will have a great effect on your attitude, outlook, and overall mental health. Dr. Kelly Crace is a licensed psychologist. He's Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness and Director of the Center for Mindfulness and Authentic Excellence at William & Mary. He joins us today to explain how you can not only manage but flourish in this time of change.
Podcast (audio)
Dr. Kelly Crace: COVID-19 & Your Mental Health TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, everywhere you turn, you're hearing and reading more about coronavirus, testing kits, the number of cases, quarantines, the effects to the economy, and the stock market, universities, and schools going online, people working from home. It's clearly the top of mind issue and new territory for everyone. Well, managing your thoughts and emotions during this unprecedented disruption will have a great effect on your attitude, outlook, and overall mental health. Dr. Kelly Crace is a licensed psychologist. He's Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness and Director of the Center for Mindfulness and Authentic Excellence at William & Mary. He joins us today to explain how you can not only manage, but flourish in this time of change. Here's our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace. Ken WhiteKelly, thank you very much for joining us. Greatly appreciate your time. Dr. Kelly CraceThanks, Ken. It's always an honor and pleasure to be a part of the series, as well as to spend a little more time with you. So thank you. Ken WhiteWell, you know, before we start talking about the topic, we have always done face to face interviews. We've never relied on technology. So you and I sort of face to face. We see each other on Zoom, but we're recording it this way. And I have a feeling we'll be doing several podcasts in the future this way until things that I get back to normal. But thank you very much. The unprecedented times. Right? And these are stressful times. Why do change and uncertainly, uncertainty like this cause us stress? Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, it's you know, there's kind of different layers. There's kind of this universal human layer that's kind of a part of all of our minds, our brain. Then there's a personal level and kind of a cultural level. At all levels, our brain processes change as stressful because, with change, you're always leaving something. Something is now different that you are leaving, and by leaving it, it was known. So it's moving from something that was known into something different. And there's always uncertainty with where we're moving. So that our brain processes that as both loss and fear, the loss of what you're leaving, and the fear of what is uncertain ahead of you. And so that's stressful. It doesn't necessarily mean bad stress. Even the most positive changes are stressful at some level. But then if you add on to that an unwanted change or an unexpected change, we're kind of this universal chronic level of uncertainty such as this pandemic. It just heightens that sense of stress even more. And then you have the personal level. You know, some people kind of get excited by change. And some people really like for things to be the same. They don't want to change. So there's this personal level of how we react to it. And then there's a cultural level. We come from various cultures where we may come from a culture where change has always been threatening and has had awfulness attached to it. And then there are cultures where change has been a positive thing. So all of that matters in how we think of this particular uncertain time that's ahead of us. Ken WhiteInteresting that you mentioned personal level. We've had a number of virtual town hall meetings with our students so over the past few days and how some are looking at this. Yeah, as really positive. This is exciting. Let's see. Let's see what happens. And others a little less tentative or a little more tentative, rather. Yeah, which is understandable. And your work, you say we can flourish through this unwanted uncertainty by considering the work of wellness and resilience. And you've spelled out some steps. Can we walk through those steps that students and working adults can focus on? Dr. Kelly CraceAbsolutely. And remember kind of how we have always defined flourishing as we define flourishing as a consistent level, not a perfect level, but a consistent level of productivity and fulfillment and resilience. So you feel like you're doing good work. You find meaning in that work, and you find yourself to be resilient to the hardness of that work. So that's kind of really what we're focusing on when we think about flourishing. Ken WhiteAnd through the change, we want to stay consistent as well. Dr. Kelly CraceAbsolutely. Ken WhiteRight. Dr. Kelly CraceAbsolutely. Ken WhiteSo one of the things you had laid out, is you say, fear has its place. What do you mean by that? Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, I think during these times, it's important to remember kind of the utility of fear and the function of fear. Fear is essentially a it can be a very healthy emotion because it's designed to protect us from hurt. It's a level of awareness that we have developed over evolution and over our lives of this sense that something bad or something hurtful could happen. Fear has its place here because there is a lot of uncertainty. This is new. This is unprecedented. This is a global issue that is causing all of us to kind of wonder and worry. And so I think worry has its place. It's not I don't think it's healthy for us to kind of try to convince ourselves to not be worried, because our wisdom is kind of poking at us saying well you do kind of have something to worry about. There's uncertainty here, and you could get hurt. You know that that possibility is there. So the difference is effective versus ineffective worry. Effective worry is being able to listen to your worry and fear and then act in a healthy way so it can be motivational. It can motivate me to take this seriously. It can motivate me to be informed. It can motivate me to learn. What does what is this new thing called social distancing and self-quarantine. It can help motivate me to be informed and to do things that are right and purposeful in my life. Ineffective worry is when you just start spinning. You know that you start spinning on all the what-ifs and all the uncertainties and all the worries, all the what-ifs that are out there. And without anything to do about it, that feels like we can fix it. So this is one of those pandemics that an individual themselves can feel helpless in. So they can spin with that worry. They can get overwhelmed by it. They can go through this. They can go through kind of compulsive rituals to try to calm themselves down, or they can go to the opposite end and just kind of move into this need for it to not be real, not be serious. That I just need this to not be so serious as everyone's making it out to be. So then they just ignore it and move into kind of reckless behavior and hang out with everybody and just pretend it's not even there. Those are typically the unhealthy kind of ineffective worry cause it leads us to actually be more anxious and more overwhelmed. Ken WhiteThe trap of chasing calm or happiness. Dr. Kelly CraceSo ineffective worry when we do get overwhelmed. And we are feeling or if we're just normally feeling upset. People go through different ranges of feelings around this, from worry to anger, you know, looking and see how things that they feel may be done right. And things that may they feel like they're not being done right and it's upsetting them. That type of thing. It can be this aspect of this kind of worry that is both about mourning and anxiety that I can be actually mourning what I'm seeing around me. I'm feeling a sense of loss. I'm feeling a sense of loss of what I expected. Think of our students and our faculty and staff that and the parents that their lives have kind of completely changed here. And that can cause us to kind of chase calmness. We kind of rush to calm. We rush to feel better. That typically doesn't work because what it does is it causes us to be so over sensitized to how we're emotionally feeling in the moment that we kind of start defining our day by that. So how was today? Today was a good day. I was calm. Today was a bad day. I was really anxious. We're constantly checking in on our emotions. And a lot of times when we're feeling upset, we not only want to go to calm. We want to kind of go to the other complete and try to find happiness. So we try to chase anything that will make us not only feel calm but to make us feel really good and make us feel really happy. Instead of kind of chasing calm and happy. We really kind of want to move toward instead of calm, move toward self-care instead of happy, move toward kind of purposeful, meaningful things. It's okay to go through enjoyment. It's okay to look for enjoyable things, but not necessarily for the purpose of feeling good. It's more for the purpose of enjoyment is healthy. So it's good to have some enjoyment in your life, but especially important to have a sense of purpose and meaning in your life where you feel like you're acting on things that are right. Ken WhiteBecome values focused amidst uncertainty. Dr. Kelly CraceSo one of the best ways to find a sense of personal agency, a sense of personal control when when we're surrounded by a lot of uncertainty and a lot of helplessness of, you know, how do I fix this or how do I change this thing that's worrying me. Is it a lot of times if we can if we overfocus on trying to reduce something, I'm trying to reduce being overwhelmed or reduce being worried, that doesn't work too well, because we tend to kind of be more preoccupied the more we try to reduce something. Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceInstead, if we can try to increase something positive and focus on that, that's more helpful. And one of the most positive things to get at is one of your purest forms of motivation, and that is that your values. And so if we can kind of start every day looking for a sense of purpose and meaning by asking ourselves what matters most today, you can start off with kind of generally what matters. But of those things that matter. These things that matter to me, what matters most, and then what matters second-most. So you want to kind of clarify what matters to me today but then prioritize to. What's most important to me today. If you can engage in those things of value, what you're doing is you're creating purpose in your life. If at the end of the day, you can also take a moment and appreciate where you acted on that, that creates meaning. A lot of people kind of equate purpose and meaning. Purpose is a little more. They're very similar. The purpose is kind of a motivational type thing, a direction of your energy. Meaning is kind of reflective part of reflecting and letting that paint dry instead of skimming over it and just saying going on to the next thing. It's really important during this time of worry that you stop and say take a moment and reflect and appreciate where you acted on things of purpose today. That's what creates a sense of meaning. Ken WhiteUnderstand your personal experience and change and loss. What do you mean by that? Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, I think it's important during these times to really reflect on the personal sense that this has on you. We can reasonably infer that everyone has been affected by this change. Everyone is adjusting at some level, but we just don't know what this change means to everyone. For some, it's exciting. For some, it can be very threatening. For some, it's changing kind of completely their thought of what, like, for instance, for students, what the second half of this semester was going to be like, especially for our graduates, our undergraduate and graduate students. This looks completely different. So it's important to really understand your sense of what this means to me. How is this impacting me? What do I think about it? What I feel about it. And the important thing about that is don't judge what you're learning in your reflection. As I think about what this is. It's important to honor what I'm understanding rather than immediately judging it as a good feeling or a bad thought. It's allowing it to be okay that whatever I'm experiencing, this is normal and appropriate. And then you kind of want to think about how do I want to talk about that with other people? Most people are not completely alone. They're in the house with someone else right now and often with a lot of people. You've mentioned how your whole family is kind of coming together from all of their areas. Ken WhiteRight. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd so it's about being able to. How do we share this with each other? How do we seek to understand each other's personal experiences? Then assume them instead. Because I'm feeling this way. I just assume everyone is feeling this way. It's important to ask and not assume and kind of how is this impacting you? And it's also it's important to be sensitive to impact. I may want to kind of talk about this a lot, but I may recognize someone in my house may not want to talk about it so much. So it's being sensitive to impact as well, to kind of think about how and how this experience is affecting me. Ken WhiteWow, that's such a great point. You're right. I know I find it fascinating to talk about it and to think about the future where we're going. Not thinking maybe somebody around me it's the last thing they want to hear. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah. Ken WhiteYeah, that's an interesting point. Possibility versus probability. I find this real interesting. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, that's a real important thing in terms of how we manage worry and also what can lead to effective worry versus ineffective worry. Fear causes the possible to feel probable. So when we're in a fear state, when we're worried and afraid, we think of a lot of what-ifs, and all of those what-ifs probably are possible. But when we're leading with fear, those possible things start to feel probable. Well, the interesting thing is we brace ourselves. Our mind is very protective. And so anything that is probable and negative, we immediately feel compelled to act on that in some level. So if if you're not afraid right now that there's a poisonous snake underneath your chair because you kind of know your surroundings around you. Is it possible? Yes, but it's not probable. But let's say things change somehow and you're in your environment there where it became probable Ken WhiteRight. Dr. Kelly Craceyou wouldn't just be sitting here talking to me right now. You would be acting in some way. You'll be doing something that would be protective. Well, the same thing exists with this. We can what if our ourselves to a place where possible starts to feel probable, and you want to use your analytical mind as well as the help around you, support around you to really discern what's possible versus what's probable? Individuals may be thinking, is it possible that I could really, really something really bad could happen to me if I get sick, you know? Is that possible? Yes. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceBut if I think about, okay, well, what am I doing to take care of myself and what am I doing to be healthy, and what am I doing to self corner? Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? No. And so the point is you can always want to land on probable. It's okay for the reaction to be all of it, you know. But you want to go through a period of discernment to where you land on probable and you kind of commit your behavior to the problem. Even if I may feel still worried, Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceI'm going to commit my behavior to the probable. Ken WhiteThat's great. Yeah. And I can see many people going the wrong path there. That's great. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Dr. Kelly Crace, Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at William & Mary, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. The best businesses and organizations in the world invest in educating and retaining top employees. And many of those businesses call on William & Mary's Center for Corporate Education to create and deliver customized executive education programs. The programs are designed and taught by William & Mary's top-ranked MBA faculty. If your organization wants to educate and retain its top people, contact the Center for Corporate Education, or visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace. Ken WhiteStay informed, not stuck. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, and worry can cause us to really seek a lot of information and where we seek information to try to find a sense of calm, to find a sense of agency or control. It is so easy today with so many of the competitive news channels and the noted competitive news sources. It's important to remember that it's also their motivation to make sure that you stay on their channel, that you stay with them. So they need to compel you. They need to captivate you. So evocative news can often, often be a part of what we're experiencing. And all that does that escalates our worry it escalates the what-ifs. At the same time, you want to be informed. You want to feel like, you know, I'm still learning about this, and learning and growing from this is important. But you want to do it in ways that you feel are healthy for you. So be sensitive to the impact information is having on you and figure out your, like for me, I've learned, you know, I. For me personally, I just. I go to NPR once a day and get and get my updates that take about 10 minutes. And that's about as much as I really want to help me feel informed. But if I do it twice a day, it just feels like too much. I start thinking about it more. I start worrying about it more. Find out what your exposure time kind of your SPF factors. We do that with suntan lotion, with SPF factor. Find out what your exposure you need to news and information that helps you and try to find sources that can give it to you. In brief, brief bites without a lot of evocative emotion to it, let it be factual so you can learn without being stirred Ken WhiteYeah, that's great. And I think social media can really take you down, too. If you're on something like Twitter and a negative thread can just take off and take you right with it. That's great advice. Yeah. Dr. Kelly CraceOh, completely agree. And there's also that added feeling of the anonymity in social media Ken WhiteYes. Dr. Kelly Cracewhere people can post things that are very evocative without recourse or without consequence. So that's a really good point. Ken WhiteSoothing versus self-care. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, it kind of relates to what we had talked about earlier in terms of chasing calm, you know, and soothing, soothing, and self-care in terms of the actual behavior. It can look like the same. The key between these two is all the intention. It's about the intention. So with soothing, the intention is to feel better. That's my sole motivation is to feel better. In other words, I feel bad. I want to feel better. The quickest way to do that is to change brain chemistry. And so I will be then if I'm motivated to feel better, I will be motivated to try to change my brain chemistry as quickly as possible. But there are five things that change brain chemistry the quickest, and that's food, drugs, pain, sex, and compelling entertainment. Those are the things that change brain chemistry. And none of those five things are bad in and of themselves. The problem is when the intention is to soothe, we don't moderate those things well, and that's when it can then move to unhealthy kind of behavior. As opposed to self-care, when the motivation is to to to take care of yourself. The intention is to be healthy. And so when the intention is to be healthy, we can pick things that may make us feel better. It's okay. That's kind of a bonus if it does, doesn't have to, but the intention is to be healthy. So examples of healthy self-care are verbal, you know, converting your emotional energy to talking to someone that is safe and trustworthy, that can be verbal expression, that can be to friends or family or a professional, whatever. Converting your emotional energy to physical expression through exercise, through yoga, through breathing, active breathing, progressive relaxation, meditative expressions, and other forms, self-care. And that's where you're converting your emotional energy to some form of meditative expression, be it meditation, mindfulness, prayer. Any of those things that are congruent with your values. And then creative expression is a great form of self self-care where converting your energies to some kind of writing or creative expression. I've been so inspired by some of the things I've heard from families that are being very creative with this time of let's do something new, let's do something different. I know you're planning on doing that with your family, and I've heard so many stories about that. It's a really healthy form of self-care. The last two to think about are sometimes just very simply taking a break from it, sometimes taking a temporary break. And that's when you just get away from it, and you realize you're not denying it. You're not putting a lid on it, but you're putting it on the shelf and saying, I just need a break from that. That's when you go and watch a movie, or you go talk with your friends, but don't talk about it. That distraction can be a even distracting into our work, can be healthy. And then the last thing is, is kind of reminding yourself of what else is true. When we're upset, we can get very myopic in how we're seeing ourselves and seeing this problem. We need to periodically ask what else is true about my life? What else is true about me? What else is true beyond just this pandemic? It's just healthy. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. And finally, courage training. Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, with courage training. Really, what it's about is recognizing that all these steps that we talk about are hard. It's just hard to do. And it's about kind of changing how we think about hard and how we think about struggle. So many of the things I've heard from colleagues and from students that we're working with during this transition and from peers is they'll say so-and-so is really struggling or I'm really struggling, or we're all struggling with this transition. That type of thing. Struggle is not bad. Struggle in and of itself is not bad. Struggle is a struggle can be a healthy challenge. There's a difference between struggle and strain. There's a difference between challenge and strain. Challenge is good challenge is growth producing. We can step into this new area of pedagogy and feel completely inept in it, but we can struggle through developing a sense of agency. You know, one step at a time. And the wonderful thing about this kind of pedagogy is we don't have to be perfect with it. We can be clumsy with it. We can make mistakes with it, and it's okay. Like you said, we can have children screaming in the background or my five dogs that are right in the same room as me right now. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Dr. Kelly CraceBut those things can happen. It brings the human element of it. The main thing about us recognizing is one you want to honor that this work is hard. It's, and it's only hard. That's the key, is that we don't place a lot of emotional value on hard. You don't lament it. You just accept it for what it is. We accept struggle. We accept hard. And that's actually what courage is. Courage is stepping into right things that are hard. It's stepping into this hardness. That's right to do. It's right for us to be healthy. It's right for us to do pedagogy in this way now. This is right for us. In this rightness, when it's hard, that's actually being courageous. Dr. King, one of my favorite quotes from Dr. King, is heroism is the courage to act every day according to your values. That's heroic. And I think we can find a lot of support with each other by stepping into that courage together. So it's like let's be courageous together. Let's step into this hard together and see it only as hard. Ken WhiteWell, and speaking of support, you and your team, the website is absolutely fantastic for the wellness center. And much of what we just talked about is available on there. And you've done a number of things. Because it's interesting in our town hall meetings, we've had with our students in almost every one. They're asking about mental health support. You know, what do we have? And it's fantastic that we can say, boy, you check out what William & Mary is doing, some phenomenal stuff. Can you kind of give us an idea of what's available on the website? And there's a lot of things going on that ordinarily you might think would have been suspended because we're not meeting face to face, but that's not the case. Dr. Kelly CraceExactly. One of the things that we first lamented and mourned was we've just gotten so much traction with our health and wellness, our programs, our resources, the new integrative wellness center. And the way, you know, over 80 percent of our things, 85 percent of our students access the rec center, the campus rec programs, and so campus recreation and the wellness center. We're just so happy with the work that's being done without students or engaging in these things and really, really grieved the aspect that this wasn't going to be available to them. So our staff immediately starting thinking. Lets create a virtual wellness center. Let's create a health and wellness center that brings the best of campus recreation, the best of the four departments of Integrative Wellness with the counseling center and the health center and health promotion and the Center for Mindfulness & Authentic Excellence. So we started building programs, and that includes live programs and archived programs. Our first program we offered was a live yoga class. We had over 160 people join the class Ken WhiteWow. Dr. Kelly Craceand it was great, and we're recording all of these so they'll be archived so you can go on it anytime. We'll be building something new every day and adding new things just like what we do when the buildings were open. We'll be adding new things so students can access. Parents can access. We're also opening this up beyond the William & Mary community. So it's open to the public. Anybody can go on and experiment and look at what is wellness look like for me and try to find a resource there that would speak to you. Ken WhiteYeah, it's fantastic. And it's so important, right? I think that people are feeling it right now, especially I keep thinking of our students at William and Mary, but students all across the country at universities who are now going online. You and I are recording this on Saturday, March 21st. We should point that out to our listeners and come Monday. Oh, boy, it's a big day, so there's a lot of stress leading up to that. And it's great that there's so many things available on the website, so thank you for that. And Kelly, thank you very much for your time. Greatly appreciate it. And take care of yourself. And any words of advice, last parting words for our listeners about the upcoming days and weeks ahead. Dr. Kelly CraceJust really kind of stay values focused. Stay with your sense of purpose. Accept the hardness of it. Step into that courage. But more importantly, do the few things that are enjoyable each day. But at the end of every day, really take the time to appreciate. And with each other, talk with each other about appreciating what you did that day with a sense of purpose. And also, my deep gratitude to you Ken to have continually bringing opportunities for us to grow and learn. You're challenging us to grow. You're challenging us to step into hard. So I just really appreciate all the work that you're doing on our behalf. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education offers customized leadership development programs that help organizations and businesses develop and retain their best people. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Kelly Crace, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Josh Jackson](images/josh-jackson-133-thumb.jpg)
![People, Strategy and Leadership](images/josh-jackson-133-thumb.jpg)
Josh Jackson
Episode 133: March 19, 2020
People, Strategy & Leadership
SAIC - it's a premier technology integrator headquartered in northern Virginia. The organization solves the nation's most complex modernization and readiness challenges across several markets including defense, space, federal, civilian, and intelligence. Josh Jackson is Executive Vice President and General Manager for SAIC's Solutions and Technology Group. He leads 3,000 of the organization's 23,000 employees. In his almost 20 years with SAIC, Jackson's had some interesting leadership experiences. He visited William & Mary and met with business school students last month. Afterward, he joined us to share his thoughts on leadership, strategy, and how to hire professionals who possess character, competence, and grit.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. SAIC, it's a premier technology integrator headquartered in Northern Virginia. The organization solves the nation's most complex modernization and readiness challenges across several markets, including defense, space, federal, civilian, and intelligence. Josh Jackson is Executive Vice President and General Manager for SAIC Solutions and Technology Group. He leads 3,000 of the organization's 23,000 employees. In his almost 20 years with SAIC, Jackson's had some interesting leadership experiences. He visited William & Mary and met with business school students last month. Afterwards, he joined us to share his thoughts on leadership, strategy, and how to hire professionals who possess character, competence, and grit. Here's our conversation with SAIC's Josh Jackson. Ken WhiteJosh, thank you for sharing your time with us. You had a busy day today. I appreciate you sitting down with us. Josh JacksonAbsolutely. I'm happy to. And I've had a great day interacting with the students. It's been a lot of fun and energizing. It's just great to be on campus. Ken WhiteYeah, it's nice to have you. It was fun. I sat in on one of the sessions where you were with a big class of undergraduates. What's your impression of the students? Josh JacksonI'm impressed. They seem thoughtful in their questions, right. Just by virtue of being at William & Mary, it's the top of our country. And that's part of our future. And it's exciting to see their vision for where they want to go and how they think about the world. It was it was energizing. Ken WhiteI think one of the differences in today's student versus maybe 20 years ago, a lot of these students are on track. They want to be leaders when it was as soon as possible want to lead something. I really want to make a difference. When you first got out of college with your engineering degree, leadership wasn't necessarily something you had in mind. How did you get into leadership and leadership roles? Josh JacksonRight. Right. Now, that's a good question. So I love engineering. I thought I wanted to be an engineer my whole career, right. And build things and engineer things. And when I was working on a submarine design project, my team leader asked me if I wanted to lead a team that was growing. And I said, sure, why not? He said I think you have the capabilities to lead a team. And it was then that I got hooked on leadership and seeing something that was accomplished that was much bigger than myself and accomplished over time and how it fit in with the bigger vision. And ever since then, I've been hooked on this building teams and leading teams and seeing things come to fruition. It's a lot fun. Ken WhiteI often ask our guests this growing up way back when would friends and neighbors and relatives have said that's a leader in the making? Would they have seen it? Josh JacksonI don't know. I think I was hyperactive as a kid, and I broke a lot of things. So engineering came naturally. And I think that some would say they saw a spark of leadership, but it was something that I'm an introvert by nature. So I love small groups. So it was something that I had to work on consciously to develop some of those leadership traits. But I love it. Ken WhiteWhat makes a good leader in your mind? Josh JacksonI think it's someone that understands and can articulate a vision for the future that's bigger than the current state and rally a team of individuals that may or may not be part of their formal organization to achieve and accomplish that. Ken WhiteHow do you motivate? I mean, you have different types of people who require different types of motivation. How do you approach that? Josh JacksonSo I think you have to get to know the individuals on your team. And it may be your team that is in your organization, or it may be a team that you're pulling together from multiple functions to solve a problem. So building the team is always step number one, right. Understanding how each other works, how each other thinks, and embrace the diversity and the chaos that comes with that early on. And encourage that dialogue so that when you really struggle maybe in midway through the project or the initiative, you've built that level of trust amongst the team members. Ken WhiteThat takes time to get to know the people. Josh JacksonYes. Ken WhiteHow do you balance that while trying to get things done? Josh JacksonSo I think it's a matter of investment, right. And it's not unlike engineering, right. They say that you know, investing an extra hour in engineering, something will save you three hours in manufacturing. I think of it the same way with teams, right. Investing that extra hour upfront to build relationships will save you three hours or triple-fold later on in a project or an initiative. Ken WhiteIt's interesting when you mention that the thought came to mind. Engineers often make the greatest MBA students. They just I think they think alike. What is it about that? Because you have your engineering degree. Later you went on for your MBA, and it worked for you. What's the connection there? Josh JacksonRight. Right. Great question. I think at this point in my career; it would not be safe to walk on a bridge that I design because I've been away from it for so long. But what the my undergraduate in engineering gave me was a sense of how to solve problems, right. Complex problems and how to approach a complex problem. You know, not only with math but also with looking at it from an interdisciplinary perspective, right. And that's not unlike business problems that we have today, right. You're solving problems to achieve an outcome. And now you have to do it with people and resources and functions instead of, you know, math and science. Ken WhiteOftentimes in business, as the leader, you've got to make a decision. You don't have all the information you need or the time. Is engineering different? Do you often have the information, or are they similar? Josh JacksonThey're similar. Many times you have all the information. And many times you can do a very analytical, methodical, and the clear choice pops out. Many times you don't have all the information, especially if you're engineering something new that's never been done before. You're not going to have all the information. And what I found in my leadership experiences that you have, sometimes you have all the information, and sometimes you don't. And it's a matter of trusting your team and your people that have done some of that homework and done the analysis to present those results. Ken WhiteSo the you trust them. How do you trust yourself to pull the trigger? Josh JacksonSo over the years, you have to build kind of a, you know, heuristics that you can rely on to make some of those decisions. So there's a pattern recognition that you may have seen before so you can put eight of the pieces together, and maybe there's two that are new. And then the next time you encounter that similar problem, you have nine of the pieces instead of all ten. Ken WhiteYou mentioned the students earlier today. When you hire people, you you've three characteristics you look for. I thought this that was interesting. Share with our listeners what were those three? Josh JacksonSo I look for character, competence, and grit. Character is kind of fundamentally being a person of integrity. Competence is not that they have a superior IQ, but they deliver on the results and the goals that they've set forth. And lastly, grit is just right, the ability to persevere through multiple challenges over a long period of time to achieve an objective. And it seems like all three of those things are almost innate in an individual or something they want to develop. Many of the other things and attributes around business acumen and skills you can train and equip and coach. Ken WhiteYeah. How can you figure whether or determine, whether or not a person has the characteristics in an interview setting? Josh JacksonSo I ask them the questions about, you know, situations and where they've applied some of those things and so put them in a situation and ask them to. How did they how would they navigate it? Right. And maybe describe a time when they've persevered over multiple years to achieve a goal. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Josh Jackson in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary School of Business. The best businesses and organizations in the world invest in educating and retaining top employees. While many of those businesses call on William & Mary's Center for Corporate Education to create and deliver customized executive education programs. The programs are designed and taught by William & Mary's top-ranked MBA faculty. If your organization wants to educate and retain its top people, contact the Center for Corporate Education, or visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with SAIC's Josh Jackson. Ken WhiteWhen you mentioned grit, I think resilience and we've talked about that quite a bit on our podcast with various leaders, and one of the questions that comes up is, is that in us, or do we have to learn that? Josh JacksonYeah. Ken WhiteHow is that with grit and resilience? Does that come through time? Or do we have that inside us? Josh JacksonI think it's both. I think there's a certain amount that, you know, you're a gritty person, or you're not. And it probably has to do with your, right, your upbringing and maybe experiences. I think it is something that you can establish and develop more maturity over time in terms of your grit and your ability to persevere. But I think it's something that you're that you have and that you can almost measure. Ken WhiteSo you pay attention a great deal to the people side of things, but also to the strategic side as well. And you talked in class today about a four-level diagram in terms of strategy and love to walk through that. At the bottom, you have team culture and the plan. What what's that all about? Josh JacksonSo when you think about building a strategy, it starts with that, you know, kind of the vision. But the foundation really is the vision, the culture and the team, and the plan, right. The team, meaning the people that are actually going to execute the plan, to deliver the strategy, deliver on the strategy and the culture of your organization and the culture of your customers that you're attempting to serve. And then the plan itself, right. That's the those are the foundational kind of elements that you have to build upon to achieve that vision. Ken WhiteSo is that a starting point? Josh JacksonYeah, I think it's a starting point. Right. And you have to have all three of those ingredients in my experience, if you lack any one of those, right. You're building on a very shaky foundation. Ken WhiteYeah. And then the next step, you have frameworks or the tool kit. Josh JacksonRight. So I look at business tool kits, right. And everything from the McKinsey 7s models to sophisticated metrics and other tools and templates, right. You're building out a toolbox of tools that you, as a trade business tradesperson, can apply to solve problems, right. And you need to know what tool to use when. And so building on that foundation, you and the team, right. Have to pull out those tools and use the right tools at the right time to get the job done. Ken WhiteAnd that leads to execution. Josh JacksonRight. And then which is kind of where we fall short a lot of times in strategy. Right. Because it's fun. It's fun to build the strategy. It's fun to build this shiny PowerPoint presentation that looks nice and has your vision stated in your plan stated well. But at the end of the day, you have to deliver on the strategic plan that you've put forth, and you have to measure people against that plan. Ken WhiteSure. And then your final stage was vision. Josh JacksonRight. Right. And that's really the final state, the end state. But it's also the starting point. Right. Because you need to start and motivate your team and build the plan around that vision and your end state. Ken WhiteAre you seeing corporate vision? Does it matter much when you're out there, when you're hiring when you're interacting with people are people looking at the vision today? Josh JacksonI think people want to work for companies that are purpose-driven, that exist for the long run, that don't exist just to make a quarterly profit or a revenue target but exists for some purpose. And at SAIC, we're fortunate in that we serve the federal government, and we do a lot of cool and interesting things that are serve important missions. And really, that's what we're all about. Right? We wake up every morning thinking about how to solve these, you know, seemingly intractable problems and helping our customers navigate through that. And that's exciting. Ken WhiteYou mentioned, take a step back. You mentioned PowerPoint for a moment. You're not totally on board with PowerPoint. Josh JacksonNo, I think I think it often is a crutch to summarize things that don't need to be summarized. And just like NASA found with the Challenger disaster, that oftentimes you can gloss over details that should be looked at. So I'm not to the Jeff Bezos Amazon, no PowerPoint ever. But I think it's a good practice to force leaders to articulate their ideas in words, in paragraphs and words, rather than summarizing them into bullet points. Ken WhiteYeah. You mentioned strategy is not about. Is about what you're doing, but it's also about what you're not doing and what you've stopped doing. How do you communicate that to the team and the importance of that? Josh JacksonYeah, that's a critical part of the overall plan, right. When you build a strategic plan that's going to execute to the vision, it's great to talk about all the things you're going to do. But inevitably there's got to be a handful of things and maybe more than a handful of things that you're going to not do or stop doing. And it's important for your team and your enterprise to know those things as well. Otherwise, you're going to lack focus on the executing part of your plan. Ken WhiteWhich means you've got to communicate that. So communications are a big part of your job. Josh JacksonAbsolutely. Yeah, I feel like communication is probably the main purpose of my role as a general manager at SAIC. I'm communicating the strategy and vision and intent to my team. I'm also translating up and across the organization on a regular basis. And that's a big part of what I see my job as. Ken WhiteAs a leader and in the world you live in. What do you see coming down the pike? What what's were the next five years, going to be looking like what should we be thinking about? Josh JacksonSo I think in the next five years, complexity and connectedness of the world will only continue to exponentially increase. And I think we have to embrace things like AI machine learning as not only as technologies but also within our cultures and organization and adopt those in different ways. Otherwise, we won't be able to handle the complexity and the connectedness that we find ourselves in. Not only from a business perspective but just from operating in a global economy. Ken WhiteAnd as you mentioned, in making sure everyone on the organization is on board, making it part of the culture. Josh JacksonRight. Right. Ken WhiteYou mentioned earlier today about culture at SAIC. We talked a little bit about diversity. You say it's not necessarily D and I, sometimes I and D. Josh JacksonRight. Ken WhiteInteresting. Can you tell more about that? Josh JacksonYeah. So we created an inclusion and diversity strategy and a council that includes the CEO and key leaders to drive that strategy across the enterprise. But we intentionally put inclusion first instead of D and I. And the reason was that we felt like if we created an inclusive environment where people could bring their whole selves to work and felt like their opinions were valued and not only valued but heard and considered, then diversity will be an outcome of that. And then an outcome of that diverse environment and team are better business results, better business decisions. And the science is pretty clear on that. Right. Ken WhiteYeah. Josh JacksonResearch has shown. Ken WhiteAnd better culture. Josh JacksonRight. Ken WhiteYeah. Full circle. Josh JacksonYeah. Ken WhiteRight. Some of the students asked for advice. Well, what kind of advice did you give young people, youth starting off on their career? Going to get a degree soon. What kind of oh, what kind of information and guidance can you give them? Josh JacksonYes, I think a couple of things. One is right. Ask for a mentor early on in your career. Right. And provide them with your perspectives on where you want to go in your career and offer to help the enterprise and organization wherever you happen to be. And then give back. Right. Everybody has an opportunity to mentor somebody no matter what their level is in the organization. So it's that flow that I would encourage anyone, especially getting into a career, to have. Look for mentors as well as look for people to teach something. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Josh Jackson. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education offers customized leadership development programs that help organizations develop and retain their best people. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Josh Jackson, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Phil Tuning](images/phil-tuning-132-thumb.jpg)
![Long Term Success with One Employer](images/phil-tuning-132-thumb.jpg)
Phil Tuning
Episode 132: March 5, 2020
Long Term Success with One Employer
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average professional changes jobs 10-15 times during his or her career. For most people, that means changing employers too. But for others, like Phil Tuning, the changes occur within the same organization, and they often lead to a terrific career and organizational success. For 20 years, Tuning worked for John Deere where he held a variety of leadership roles in the U.S. and abroad. In his most recent position, he was President of John Deere Financial Canada. Throughout Tuning's tenure at John Deere, he adopted strategies that helped him successfully move from one opportunity to the next while reaching or exceeding team goals. He joins us today to discuss those strategies; including the Say-Do Ratio, Just Say Yes, and Perform and Connect.
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Phil Tuning: Long Term Success with One Employer TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average professional changes jobs 10 to 15 times during his or her career. For most people, that means changing employers, too. But for others, like Phil Tuning, the changes occur within the same organization, and they often lead to a terrific career and organizational success. For 20 years, Tuning worked for John Deere, where he held a variety of leadership roles in the U.S. and abroad. In his most recent position, he was president of John Deere Financial Canada. Throughout Tuning's tenure at John Deere, he adopted strategies that helped him successfully move from one opportunity to the next while reaching or exceeding team goals. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss those strategies, including the say-do ratio, just say yes, and perform and connect. Here's our conversation with Phil Tuning. Ken WhitePhil, thank you so much for joining us, and thanks for coming back to William & Mary. Phil TuningThank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Ken WhiteHow long's it been? Phil TuningGosh, I graduated in 2002, and I've been on campus once since then. So at least ten years. Ken WhiteHow about it? And you just spoke to a group of undergraduate students. What was your kind of reaction when you met them? Phil TuningI enjoyed it. I was really pleased with their interaction and engagement. You know, lots of times when you go into these situations, you just don't know what to expect. But I was really pleased to see their level of engagement and really good questions and their thoughtfulness was really impressive. Ken WhiteYou mentioned, you know, you wonder if you had to start your career now. It would be pretty competitive when you see those kinds of students. Right. I get it. They're good. I mean, they're really quality people. Phil TuningThey're very good. And boy, it can be intimidating as well, because you know that what you thought you knew when you're in college, and you see these guys, and you're going, wow. New day, new game. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. One of the students asked you about your approach to leadership. And you said that you like to consider yourself, and you strive to be a servant leader. And we know the term. But can you talk about how you approach that? What that means to you? Phil TuningYeah. So from my perspective, being a servant leader is making sure that I'm investing in others and trying to understand what's most important to them to be successful, what are their aspirations and where they need what skills they need to develop and make sure that I'm really focusing on them. I'm investing in them so that they can build their competencies. So that they can actually contribute more to the business, and it helps sustain our business. You know, one of the things that lots of times people talk about, what's the legacy of a leader? To me, the legacy of a leader is the people that he invests in. And so for me, taking the time to support them, advocate for them, and ensure that they have the resources that they need to be successful is how I would term a servant leader. Additionally, I tend to look at them holistically, not just who they are from a work perspective, Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phil Tuningbut additionally, what's happening in your family so that I can better understand what situations we need to help them be successful. Ken WhiteYou also have a bottom line. You've got things that need to get done. How do you balance? Because that takes time. Right. Phil TuningYup. Ken WhiteBeing that close with your team. How do you balance that? Phil TuningSo for me, the approach is what I call the three p's people, process, and product and the product, p. Part of it is around the profitability. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phil TuningSo again, from my perspective, I think balancing investing in people is going to drive the results because a business ultimately is about the people. And again, if we build their competencies, build their confidence, empower them to be successful, we will get the business results. And as you look at the different groups, I've had the opportunity to lead, that's absolutely been the case. Invariably employee engagement goes up, and invariably we are a much more sustainable operation. Ken WhiteOne of the things you talked about was the say-do ratio. I love that. Can you explain that? Phil TuningYeah, that's one of the things that I learned early on. In fact, from one of our colleagues that went to William & Mary as well. It's one of those things where people want to know that they can trust you. How can I trust you? Did you do what you say you're gonna do when you said you were gonna do it? So the say-do ratio. And I think that's how we all are measured. We just don't know it because people looking at you as a leader and say, can I trust this person? And the one true way to know if you can trust them is that they do what they said they were going to do. And that's to me is the say-do ratio. And you want that to be high. Ken WhiteYeah. So what does that mean for you then? You're paying attention to the say, paying attention to the do, to both. How does that guide you? Phil TuningSo I'm paying attention to both because I want to make sure that whatever I say, I know that we can deliver. And if there is stretch in it, I want to let people know that there is stretch in it. And then we've got to make sure that we time-box it. So that we know that there is a time period in which we should make a deliver what we say we're going to do and then we go back and measure it. And in general, I'm not a big measurements guy because I believe that if you do the right things, you'll get the results Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phil Tuningand the measurements are just an outcome. But if you time box it and then you've got the right things that you want to work on, then you can have a very high say-do ratio. Ken WhiteIn your career, you've had a number of promotions, a number of different jobs and titles, and opportunities. How do you decide? Yes, I need to take that. This is good for me. How do you make that call? Phil TuningThat's a really good question because I've been asked that question a lot. And what I can tell you is trust is how I make the call. Because generally, I've been approached by a leader that I admire and trust, and they're asking me to take on the role. And I almost always say yes, in fact, I've always said yes, because I trust a leader that's approaching me. And then, when you look back, you realize that you're being prepared for a path because I could not have mapped my career together the way it was mapped. But obviously, someone had a vision, and I just had to have trust in the organization. That they're going to, they're going to have one the best interest in the organization. As well as the best interest in me and supporting the organization. And so my assessment has always been, do I trust a person that's approached me? And if I do, it's an easy yes. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Now, if it's a position or a division. You really don't have any expertise. What do you do in that situation? Phil TuningPanic. Ken WhiteYeah. Right. Phil TuningSo no. Yeah, that's. Yeah. And I shared that experience earlier today where I took a role. I didn't know anything about it, but I knew that it was an opportunity. And as an opportunity for me to stretch, and it was opportunity for me to build a competency I didn't have or to fill a gap in the organization. In a way, I prepare for it as I do a lot of research. I talk to people. I talk to my predecessors. I talk to the people that are in the organization. And after I've accepted the role, the other thing that I do is I make sure that I get to the key stakeholders, and it could be a direct report, it could be someone else in the organization. And I develop sort of an interview format that I ask people the same questions. And then I'd come back, and I'll look at what are the themes that I learned. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phil TuningAnd then, I share those themes back with the organization. I say, is this what we need to work on? And then I just really focus on what the team thinks is important and plus what I've learned. And then, how do we map a path for us to be successful? And then I have to continue to work on my competencies. And the other part of it is, is really challenging sometimes as a leader. But there I have to say; I don't know. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phil TuningAnd so then you better trust and that empowers the rest of your team. That's been sort of a ticket to success if you will. Ken WhiteWhen you're going into a new position. How much do you recommend that you speak to the person who's leaving that position? How much insight do you want from them? Phil TuningI want a lot of insight from them because I want to understand what were the areas of focus for them. More importantly, I want to see what they know about the people, because, again, my approach is always start with people. And I talk. We will do a transition to make sure that we're transitioned appropriately. And then I ask, what are the key themes and what are the issues? And then I'll take a step back and make a determination from there. Ken WhiteSame way when you are leaving, and you're bringing someone up, you approached the same way. Phil TuningSame way. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phil TuningAbsolutely. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Phil Tuning in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. If you want to think and lead strategically in your division and across the organization, the Center for Corporate Education has the program for you. The Certificate in Business Management is a five-day program taught by William & Mary's world-class faculty. Each day is devoted to one important topic, including effective communication, managerial accounting, operational effectiveness, business strategy, and executive leadership. The next Certificate in Business Management program takes place next month at William & Mary from April 20th through the 24th. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation on long term success with one employer with Phil Tuning. Ken WhiteWhen you look back on your career, good leaders, you've had people you've looked up to. What qualities did they have? What made them good and effective? Phil TuningSo the good leaders that I look up to invariably they're inspirational. They understand the business. But they don't necessarily just talk about the business. They talk about the why. Why are we doing what we do? Because so often it's easy to talk about. You've heard Simon Sinek talk about this. It's so easy to talk about the how and the what, but the why is important so if they can connect the dots on the why that makes it inspirational. Those are the leaders that I look up to. Secondly, I believe and feel that they care about my development and my career. And that's very, very important to me. And then the other part of it is what is even more important? They are people of integrity. And they and they almost always unless there's some reason that they didn't know that they were doing it. Walk the walk. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phil TuningSo whatever they say, they do. And so that's really important. And then the other part of it is they are very capable people. They are people that have demonstrated success, and they've demonstrated that they can lead an organization. And those are people that I've always looked up to as my leaders. Ken WhiteYou've been so many words mentioned without mentioning the word authenticity. And we talk about that a lot. What's that mean to you? How is a leader authentic? Phil TuningSo for me, a leader's authentic. When you can observe that person, even when they're not in the key role and see how they respond under stressful situations. And then again, it kind of goes back to their say-do ratio. Did they say what they were gonna do, and did they do it? And then do we have observed behaviors that are very, very consistent throughout time. So that authentic piece comes through over time because you want to have an opportunity to sort of measure the proof points Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phil Tuningand then you build from that. Ken WhiteYou've lived, you grew up in Virginia, you've worked in the Midwest, you've worked in Canada, you've worked all over the world. What was that? What are those instances like when you're in a brand new land, new people, new culture? How did you get rolling there? Phil TuningSo probably the most extreme was when we moved to Thailand. It was invigorating because, one, it's an opportunity to learn about a new culture and to learn and test yourself in that environment. And so we again spent a lot of time just making sure that we understood the culture. My wife and I we did not want to live in an ex-pat community. We wanted to live in a community with tight the local Thai people. Ken WhiteYeah. Phil TuningAnd we did. And so it was an opportunity to learn? And so we moved a lot. But the one thing that we learned embrace where you are is the most critical piece. You cannot duplicate where you came from, but embrace where you are. It will be different. But if you embrace where you are, you will learn a lot, and you'll have a much, much more enjoyable experience. Ken WhiteA very other-centric kind of viewpoint. Phil TuningYes, yes. Ken WhiteYeah. You when you go to Thailand, you look different, you sound different, and you stand out. How do you deal with that? Phil TuningThat's a good question, because, you know, one of the things as you travel and many people have around the world, your recognized as an American and in some ways that's a very, very in most ways is a very, very positive thing. And even though you stand out, you look different again. You try to learn about the people and who they are. And so it becomes a point of how do you connect with people. And build from there. Ken WhiteYou mentioned you just said connect. One of the things you talk to students about was perform and connect. That's sort of been one of your battle cries that's helped you in your career. Can you talk about perform and connect? Phil TuningYeah. So one of the things that I shared earlier today is performance is number one, if you're going to be successful in any organization, make sure that you're performing as expected. And quite candidly, better than expected. Now, the connection piece comes in that not only do you want to make sure you're performing, you also want to make sure that you're sharing with others and building your network of peers. I talked about peer advocacy today because that's a piece that people sometimes don't think about. Your peers can be very critical to your success and then build on a network with others that may be in a different organization than yours and make sure that you're connecting with people, that you have something in common with, not just for professional growth, but make sure that you connect with them individually and build upon that. So make sure your network is large, both from a peer perspective and also maybe from a leadership perspective. And what I've found over time is that that turns into advocacy, which which is helps you develop, and it also gives you an opportunity to help other people develop. Ken WhiteYou were in a business with, and you're African-American. You're in a business predominantly white, major, major white peers, and others. How did you approach that? Phil TuningSo from so maybe what touched on a topic of diversity and inclusion, certainly from a company perspective, there aren't as many people that look like me in our organization. When I go back to is what are the opportunities to build on things where we're alike and where we are alike are on the objectives and goals of our business. And so if people know that you're focus on these same objectives and goals and that you perform, then opportunities will they will show up. And the reason they show up is because everybody wants to be around someone that's focused on the goals and objectives and successful. Then you get an opportunity to learn more about each other individually. And so my approach has always been, what's our objective, what's our goal? How can we build our relationship? And then if there are differences, we'll figure out what they are. But I'm going to spend more time focusing on the areas where we're alike Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Phil TuningAnd so is this one of those things where you've got to make sure that you're expanding your horizon. Ken WhiteYou got your MBA in the middle of your career. What did that do for your career? Phil TuningHaving an MBA from William & Mary did a lot for my career, and what I shared earlier today is it really is much about personal development. It gave me the opportunity to test some of my ideas and learn that boy some of your ideas are actually pretty sound, but I didn't have the confidence to share those ideas. The other part of the MBA did for me was he gave me the opportunity to say, you know what, some of the things you thought you knew, you probably don't know as well as you think. Ken WhiteYeah. Phil TuningAnd then the third category was around just new information. So it gave me the confidence to actually go back to work because I did the executive MBA program. There were things that I recognized I could test and implement today, there are some things I'm going maybe not so much, but from a career development standpoint, it gave me that extra credential to help me demonstrate that I'm one a continuous learner, which is what a lot of organizations are looking for, are people that are continually learning and developing a solid disposition. Me a little bit definitely in the organization, but I would also go back to the confidence piece. It actually gave me more confidence to share my ideas, to test ideas, and frankly test others ideas. Ken WhiteAnd that confidence is so critical in leadership, isn't it? Phil TuningYes, it is. Yes, it is. Because the reason is it is important because people, again, want to know that I can follow this leader because he or she knows the path. They understand the goals of the objective of the organization, and they have the confidence to deliver appropriately. And frankly, sometimes I tell the team why this is what I promise for you. And they've got to have confidence in me that I've got the confidence that we can do that and we do. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Phil Tuning. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education offers programs that help you reach and exceed your career goals, including the upcoming certificate in business management program April 20th through April 24th. The program is taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty recognized year in and year out as one of the best in the business. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Phil Tuning, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dr. Kelly Crace](images/kelly-crace-131-thumb.jpg)
![Cultivating Joy In Your Work with silhouettes holding hands in the air and a handshake](images/kelly-crace-131-thumb.jpg)
Dr. Kelly Crace
Episode 131: February 20, 2020
Cultivating Joy In Your Work
Do you like your job? Does it make you happy? Despite a good economy and low employment, a number of recent studies by organizations such as Gallup, Deloitte, and others state "the majority of people in America and the world do not like their jobs. The majority are not engaged at work." There area number of reasons for being unengaged: A bad boss, a low salary, poor company culture, and the list goes on. But our guest today says if you're unhappy at work you can do something about it. In fact, he says you can find joy in your work. Dr. Kelly Crace is a licensed psychologist. He's Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness & Director of the Center for Mindfulness and Authentic Excellence at William & Mary. He joins us on the podcast today to share the four steps that help you cultivate joy in your work.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Do you like your job? Does it make you happy? Well, despite a good economy and low unemployment, a number of recent studies by organizations such as Gallup, Deloitte, and others state the majority of people in America and the world do not like their jobs. The majority are not engaged at work. There are a number of reasons for being unengaged. A bad boss, low salary, poor company culture, and the list goes on. But our guest today says if you're unhappy at work, you can do something about it. In fact, he says, you can find joy in your work. Dr. Kelly Crace is a licensed psychologist; he's Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness and Director of the Center for Mindfulness and Authentic Excellence at William & Mary. He joins us on the podcast today to share the four steps that help you cultivate joy in your work. Here's our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace. Ken WhiteKelly, thanks so much for sharing your time and being with us on the podcast. Dr. Kelly CraceThank you, Ken. It's good being with you again. Ken WhiteYes, and you've been a guest more than once, and not many people have. And that tells you that, you know, I think what your area of expertise and what you do. I think so many people find it really fascinating. When people when you meet people, and they ask you what you do. What do you say? Dr. Kelly CraceWell, I talk about just the honor I have of being able to be present to hear the human story. I mean, that's really what led me to the field of psychology is not necessarily this real strong drive to help. It was a fascinating curiosity with the human story and being very fortunate to know that in that curiosity, that leads to it being helpful. Which I am happy to be a part of helping people, but I'm not the one that helps. It's usually that person helping themselves and feeling understood and us working collaboratively together. And so the ability to just say I'm just professionally curious and personally curious at all times is what has led me in my research and my clinical work. Ken WhiteBefore we get into our topic, I do want to talk about the center we're recording in the center. It's fascinating. Can you tell us about it? Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, it really is. It's about kind of the architecture of wellness, the architecture of resilience. We really wanted to create a place in the heart of campus that really showed how prominent and intentional wellness should be in our life. But to look at it from a holistic perspective. So in the building, you'll see everything from the full continuum of prevention and health promotion to intervention, both in traditional medicines as well as complementary treatment modalities. And it's a Frank Lloyd Wright style design. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd that the intention is if you looked at all four corners of the building and stood in all four corners of the building, you would see a different building. And it's designed to kind of portray the multidimensionality of wellness. The intent of it is really for students to for this to be a learning center for students to learn. What does wellness look like for me, and what does the harmony of wellness look like for me among the many dimensions of wellness. And for them to be active in that and for them to know that it changes and is a dynamic part of their life throughout the four to five years that they're here. Ken WhiteWhat is the response from the students been like since the building's been open? Dr. Kelly CraceThey have owned this building. Ken WhiteNice. Dr. Kelly CraceWe actually did a study, a groundbreaking study collaboratively with UVA and William & Mary, where we did a pre-test, a pre-assessment of the culture before the building was built and then a year after the building was built. And we're going to do it every year afterwards for longitudinal reasons to see in what way is it affecting the culture? How are students and staff and faculty seeing wellness and thinking about wellness? And there is a shift going on, and they do get it. It is interesting as the research showed that students are still coming in for like a specific reason. Like I came into the building to get an allergy shot, but they leave feeling like something bigger is going on, and they always return. They engage in more activities and programs and services here as a reflection of what the building speaks to them. So I always joke about the fact that because it's in the heart of campus, I tell them that you may not walk in the building, but you've got to walk by it every day. Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd it's intended to compel you to think about your wellness. And so they really seem to be embracing that concept. Ken WhiteIt is a fantastic facility, and I get it. I could see coming in for one purpose and then really opening up your mind on a lot of other possibilities. You recently gave a talk on the campus of William & Mary, cultivating joy in your teaching. And I reached out to you, and I said, can that transfer to cultivating joy in your work? Because so many people just seem on edge now, are unhappy with their work. And you said yes. Are you seeing am I correct in saying it seems like many people are sort of struggling with happiness and fulfillment professionally now? Dr. Kelly CraceYes, I think there is living in this kind of relentless world of pace and noise, and change and uncertainty is causing a level of stress that quickly moves to strain. And that's kind of where joy starts to diminish. Stress is a good thing, but the minute stress kind of drifts into strain, that's unsustainable. And that's what leads to burnout. Part of the workaround this workshop about joy came from our research. As you know, my life's work for the past 30 years has been trying to understand what really predicts flourishing. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd one piece of that work has involved spending time looking at burnout and looking at the factors that kind of cause burnout. More importantly, we were really interested in seeing what do people do that thrive during periods of burnout or that prevent it. So burnout is when you kind of reached this place of strain Ken WhiteHmm-mmm Dr. Kelly Cracein your life, whether it's a work role or another role. And so what did people do that prevented stress to move into strain, or that when people found themselves under strain, how did they successfully move back into a healthier place? And we found that there are some very distinct intentionalities that people do that well. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd it really is an intentionality, and so that's why I use the term cultivating joy instead of finding joy or experiencing joy. We found this is work. It's the work of wellness. And to experience genuine joy in our work and in our lives. It requires work. Ken WhiteRight. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd so what does that work look like? And that was kind of the nature of, but it's funny Ken WhiteRight. Dr. Kelly Cracethat the topic was about teaching. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceBut the conversation quickly became about for you to find joy and cultivate joy in your teaching. You have to think broader. You have to think beyond just teaching. And that's a lot of what the conversation was about. Ken WhiteWe'll talk about that in just a minute, the four intentionalities, but I thought of a question as you were talking about strain. Do people have different thresholds for strain? You know, some person, one person can really hang on for a while other person maybe not. Dr. Kelly CraceIt's highly variable, it's very individualized because of a person's life experiences, both internally, you know, their biological makeup Ken WhiteRight. Dr. Kelly Craceand just who they are as a person, plus their life experiences as they've grown up affect they attenuate. They can either buffer against our tolerance of strain, or they can amplify our sensitivity to strain. And interestingly enough, one of the factors that we found that really didn't predict a level of distress, tolerance, or strain is this notion of sensitivity. We used to think that sensitivity was a weakness and a lot of people that are kind of highly sensitive people, that they feel things deeply and they think deeply. Many of them were often socialized growing up as children as saying you're too sensitive or connoted in some way a level of weakness. When, in fact, one of the things that we know leads to a real strength and is a predictor of flourishing is a degree of sensitivity. It's about how do I manage that sensitivity in a way that it works as the power that it is rather than the strain that it can become. So it's really about managing our life in a way that allows our gifts to truly be expressed. Ken WhiteSo when we talk about the four intentionalities. Can you walk us through them? Dr. Kelly CraceYeah, so as we look through this and I'll stop with each one to see if you have any questions. Ken WhiteGreat, yeah. Dr. Kelly CraceOr anything like that. Or for me to clarify if you want to. But one of the things that we looked at and it's kind of I come from the mental health profession and largely to some degree. It's our fault that we've created somewhat of an expectation of searching for joy, searching for happiness. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceOne of the things that we found in the research around flourishing and positive psychology is that we do know that people that flourish, they do experience happiness, they experience more happiness, they experience more joy, and they feel more balanced. So the mistake we made with that at times is we as a profession started kind of setting that up as an expectation. So, therefore, you need to seek happiness, seek joy, seek balance. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd we find that that actually gets in the way that people that genuinely flourish, they don't strive for work-life balance. They don't strive for joy. They don't strive for happiness. They're more intentional and mindful about a few things that just happen to lead to that. So it's not searching for joy by intention. It's achieving joy by effect, and it's by the effect of being intentional around these four things. And so that's what was fascinating to us in our work Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly Craceis so what are people being more mindful about? Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceThe cool thing about it is we all have that capacity for these kind of intentionalities and mindfulness, the truth of it is there are no natural-born flourishers, flourishers, work at it. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd they're more mindful of the things that they know are important to them. So they accept the work of flourishing and enjoy cultivating joy. It's really around kind of four areas of mindfulness. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceThe first area is really doing a reflective period. It's kind of you have to think about it about one. There has to be a reflective period and a clarification, kind of a crystallization period, and their need. Then there needs to be the practice of mindfulness about what you discern from that reflection. So the first reflection that in this workshop that I ask people to think about and reflect upon and share with each other. It was a conversation we all have with each other is where do you currently find purpose in your work. It's centered around kind of three questions. Where do you currently find purpose in your work? Where do you currently find purpose in your teaching? So a little more micro, Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly Craceyou know, a little more specific Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly Craceabout this teaching part that's in your work. Where do you find purpose there? And where do you currently find purpose in your life outside of work, in your other roles, outside of work? The reason for that is we find striving for passion doesn't really lead to flourishing, but striving for purpose does. And the reason for that is purpose keeps us more value-centered rather than emotion centered. Because if I'm looking for passion, I'm also looking for kind of that emotional charge that comes with passion. But what happens during the week that you're not feeling it that week? That can be affected by a number of different variables that affect your emotions. But you're not feeling the passion. However, with purpose, we can very clearly identify and crystallize. This has meaning to me. This has personal rightness to me, and actually, I don't even have to like it right now. You know, so it can be during times where there can be a lot of things that might be impacting my happiness or just the emotion of satisfaction. And we want to look at that, and you want to honor that and understand what that's about. But you want to lead with purpose and our world kind of doesn't foster that. Our world kind of fosters fear and stress and anxiety to kind of creep to the for purpose, to the foreground. It the emotion our emotional state in this moment kind of creeps to the foreground. We have to intentionally and mindfully bring purpose to the foreground. So we can have a professor that might be saying, you know, honestly, the deepest purpose I have in my life right now is my writing. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceI'm really this feels most right for me. And if I were to prioritize everything in my work right now, it would be writing. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceBut I have a contract to teach three three, three courses in the fall, three courses in the semester in the spring. I don't enjoy teaching right now. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceI enjoy my writing, so I can't wait to rush out of the classroom, and I'll rush in and rush out to get to my writing. Being able to clarify, though, the purpose that is in your teaching honor, the purpose that's in your writing, and it's okay to even prioritize that number one. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceBut when you're stepping into that classroom, what purpose is there for you? Cause there is it's there at some level. Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceIf I can clarify that and crystallize that and then be mindful about that. Even if I'm mindful the minute before I walk in the class, I'm fully there in that moment. I'm fully there teaching with my purpose. Even if that purpose is 10th on my priority list Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly Cracewhen I'm there teaching, I'm fully there, and I'm fully engaged. And then, when I leave, I can fully and without guilt step right into my writing at a deeper level of purpose, too. Ken WhiteAnd that that that example is like every job, that there's a million things we all have to do Dr. Kelly CraceThere are. Ken Whitein business and in every sector. Educate. Interesting. Very interesting. So start off with the reflection and the clarification stage. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd then there has to be the commitment to the purpose. So to what you reflect and clarify, the reflection and clarification for this first intention is truly clarifying at my life right now. Where is there purpose in my work, and where is there purpose beyond my work? And then step into that purpose very mindfully. Every time you engage in those roles, every time I step into work today, I'm going to lead with my purpose. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceEvery time I go home or step into my other roles in my life, I'm going to lead with that purpose. That tends to cultivate a deeper level of joy. Ken WhiteSure. Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. The next step Dr. Kelly CraceThe next step, the next intentionality, is where do you find enjoyment in your work, and where do you find enjoyment beyond work? And so the reflection and clarification is about enjoyment, and that's different than joy. Enjoyment, we're actually talking about restorative health practices. We're talking about restorative things. Small little wants, things that bring us a certain degree of just kind of quiet satisfaction. So I don't have to feel kind of the woo hoo moment of, you know, deep happiness. But where is enjoyment? The little moments or the things that you just find enjoyable right now about your work or and enjoyable beyond work and at sometimes in our life that might be one very specific thing. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceIt might be. I just really enjoy that I work at a place that happens to be right next to my favorite coffee shop. So on my way to work every morning, I get my favorite cup of coffee Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly Cracewith my favorite person that gives me that coffee. And that's pretty much it right now. Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceRight now, my enjoyable part of work is my cup of coffee in the morning. The thing about this is if we're doing our enjoyable activities, but shooting our mind somewhere else of I'm doing this, I like this, but I should be doing this or I should be doing that. You're actually not experiencing the restorative benefit of that want. Ken WhiteOf course. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd so the mindful intentionality around that, Suzuki, a zen philosopher, said when you wash the dishes, wash the dishes. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd so it's about being fully engaged in that activity. We just simply find we have so many shoulds in our life. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceWe really need to intentionally bring wants into our life, small, enjoyable wants that are a part of our life. Small ones, everyday ones that take a little more time every week and ones that take a little more time every month. It allows us to accept the shoulds in our life. And if we're mindful about these enjoyable moments, they have more bang for their buck. They really become restorative. The purpose of that second intentionality is, how do we make sure we're bringing our restorative practices front and center? Ken WhiteI grew up with a guy whose family at the dinner table the father would say every night. What was the highlight of your day? That relates right to that. Dr. Kelly CraceThat's a great question. Ken WhiteThen you're thinking about the enjoyment. And that would lead to happiness and other positive feelings. Dr. Kelly CraceIt's so funny you bring that up. One of the things that we share with parents. I meet with the first-year parents every year as they bring their adult son or daughter to school and one of the things, one of the tips and strategies we give them to help join us in this quest of helping their adult son and daughter flourish is that there's this natural tendency that when you talk to your adult child when they come to college, is when you're talking to them, you're naturally going to say, how did it go? How was your class? How was your quiz? How did you do? How's it going? Which is fully fine, Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly Cracebut it's intentional out of love. But it causes the person to start thinking evaluatedly. They start thinking like they're reporting in. And that just eats away at kind of their sense of that expressive mindset that leads to flourishing. Instead, what we ask them is just what you shared that that man did at night, at night at dinner. Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceWe ask them that when they get on the phone, ask them to share a highlight Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceJust share a highlight with me, and that encourages them to think about the meaningful moments of the day. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Dr. Kelly Crace in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. If you want to think and lead strategically in your division and across the organization, the Center for Corporate Education has the program for you. The Certificate in Business Management is a five-day program taught by William & Mary's world-class faculty. Each day is devoted to one important topic, including communication, managerial accounting, operational effectiveness, business strategy, and executive leadership. The next Certificate in Business Management program takes place at William & Mary from April 20th through the 24th. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation on cultivating joy in your work with Dr. Kelly Crace. Ken WhiteThe third intentionality. Dr. Kelly CraceThe third intentionality is being able to reflect and clarify. Where are you giving and receiving encouragement in your work, and where are you giving and receiving encouragement in your life around work, beyond work? Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceWe found that there's this notion of social support that is really important in cultivating joy, and people that flourish are very intentional and mindful about creating a support network in their life. And it's beyond the support of meaning emotional support, where people are just giving me positive feedback all the time, all the time. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceOr just giving me encouragement from the standpoint of making me emotionally feel better. There's actually several dimensions of social support that go beyond just emotional support. There's this deeper level of listening, but there's also emotional challenge, and there's also task appreciation and task challenge. There's shared social reality of I come to you for support because you and I are kind of doing the same things. And so you know what my reality is. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceA Dean sharing with another Dean. An injured athlete sharing with another injured athlete because I only have to get halfway into my sentence. And you already know Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly Cracewhat my experience is. Ken WhiteThat's why the whole sales team goes out together on Friday. Dr. Kelly CraceExactly and there's that form of support that shared social reality. And sometimes it's just tangible assistance in material assistance where I'm giving you my time, or I'm giving you my resources. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceWhat we find is no one person can provide all of those dimensions of social support for us. So you have to develop that social support network to where I know when I go to Lisa. She's always going to be honest with me. So that's why I go with go to her, because she's always going to challenge me and how I think. I go to Ken when I want someone on my corner because he's just always in my corner. He's always gonna give me this encouragement. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceBut we need to know who those people are Ken WhiteGot it. Dr. Kelly Craceand we need to cultivate them. We found that people that flourish are very mindful about cultivating the support around their life and, more importantly, not expecting any one person to do that. But that wasn't it. We found there was a bi-directional piece to this. There was a level of reciprocity that people that are experience more joy in their life. They are equally focused in being mindful about giving support as they are about receiving support. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd I think that's the relational nature of our species feeling like we're at some part of community and also feeling like I need to feel like I'm contributing to support as well as receiving because if all I'm doing is receiving, we can appreciate that. But there's a certain part of our human nature that wants to feel like we're giving back too when we're receiving. Ken WhiteAnd we hear that in wellness. That's one of the basic things, right? Dr. Kelly CraceYes. Ken WhiteWhen you give, you feel better. Dr. Kelly CraceThat's right. Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceBut they're very well we found interesting about it is they're strategic. They're strategic about their support instead of sitting back and kind of passively saying, do I feel supported? No. Or do I feel supported? Yes. I feel blessed, or I feel fortunate or no. Well, I'm in an unsupportive community. They do the work of cultivating the different dimensions of support they need. Here's the interesting tip we found about giving support. We're naturally inclined as human beings to steer support to be in the dimension that we're strongest at. So if I'm a good problem solver Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly Cracethen I'm always going to kind of steer the there's someone's coming to me for help and support. I'll usually steer that in the direction of it being about problem-solving in some way so I can step into my strength. Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceWhen actually people feel support, when support sought is matched with the support given. So what we have to do in thinking about how do we optimally give support is being very simply going forward with saying how can I be of most support to you right now and being willing to be coached to where the person can say, I just need you to listen. I just need someone to understand. Or they may say, I want your head. I want it. What do you think? Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceOr they may actually say, I want you to solve this for me. I want you to fix it for me. But whatever it is, instead of assuming what they need or steering it to where I give you what I'm good at, asking and being willing to being coached is one of the most supportive things we can do. Ken WhiteInteresting. And the final intentionality. Dr. Kelly CraceThe final is the first three or more kind of what we do during the normal hardness of our life. But there are times when also we are going through a period of strain, kind of temporary strain due to the fact that we are experiencing a hardship in life where we're really affected by something and can't necessarily fix it. So there's no problem that if we're affected emotionally by something, and we can solve it, go solve it. Ken WhiteSure. Dr. Kelly CraceIf we can fix it, go fix it. Always go there first. But there are times in our life where really what we're called to do is cope that we can't fix it. Grief is a great example that I'm experiencing. I'm in a place of bereavement. I'm going to feel bad for a while, and I can't fix that. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceHow do people flourish and cultivate joy in their life while heartbroken, while distressed, while going through a place of being affected? And one of the things that we found that people that flourish do very intentionally, very mindfully, is they focus more on self-care than soothing. And we have this natural vulnerability when we're hurting is to move towards soothing. And it's interesting. The actions can actually look the same. It's the intentionality behind them that matters. So when we soothe when the intention is to soothe, our intention is actually to feel better. We're saying at some level; I don't feel good. I want to feel better when the intention is to feel better. We're naturally going to go toward things that will change brain chemistry the quickest because I feel bad I want to feel better. Got to change brain chemistry. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceWell, the five things that change brain chemistry the quickest are our food, drugs, sex, pain, and compelling entertainment. Those are the five things Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly Cracethat change our brain chemistry. And there's nothing wrong with any of those five things like even pain. It can be the pain of exercise Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly Cracewhatever it is. But the problem is when the intention is to feel better and to soothe, we don't moderate those things well. We don't manage those things well. Ken WhiteYeah. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd it becomes a slippery slope where we become excessive in those things. When the focus moves toward self-care, the intention is to be healthy. We do it for the health of it, not with the intention to feel better. Now, the consequence just may actually also be that I happen to feel better, too. But if I go in and say I'm going to go exercise because it's healthy for me to exercise right now, I'm actually also afterwards feel better. That's just a bonus. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly CraceBut the intention has to be for the health of it because I will moderate and manage that activity much better. So if you can combine this kind of combination of the second step of finding little enjoyable wants that are just about restorative enjoyable moments Ken WhiteHmm-mmm Dr. Kelly Craceand really appreciating them. That I just this one tree next to my parking spot in the morning, the way it looks, Ken WhiteRight. Dr. Kelly Craceyou know, and taking that moment to really soak that up and enjoy that. Combining that with this commitment to self-care through hardship, that's when it's bumping up a little more. That's when I'm hurting, and my natural inclination is to feel better if in this moment. Instead, I can mindfully ask myself what is a healthy way for me to take care of myself right now. It not only helps move you through this coping phase in a healthy way, it starts to cultivate this very quiet level of joy amidst hardship. Ken WhiteAll of the steps, as you said, intentionality, it's effort. And especially Dr. Kelly CraceYes. Ken Whiteif you're unhappy in your work, you don't want to put forth the effort. Dr. Kelly CraceThat's right. Ken WhiteYou want a magic bullet, right? You want something just to say fix it. Dr. Kelly CraceYou do. Ken WhiteBut that's not the answer. I mean, the answer is, is to walk through the steps. Dr. Kelly CraceAnd that's why support can be helpful because you don't just do these four things. You sometimes have to fight to do them. And what you're fighting to do is you're fighting through the anger, you're fighting through the frustration of this feels so unfair that it has to be such hard work. And could the world just cut me a break for a minute or two? You know, especially for people that have genuinely experienced cumulative ripple effects of hardship to where they haven't gotten up from that wave before, they get hit with another wave, and they just feel like they're just overwhelmed by the cumulative effect. It's just human nature to decry that and to lament that. And that needs to be a part of our reaction. It's okay for us to as human beings, to react to our world, to emotionally Ken WhiteSure. Dr. Kelly Cracereact and feel our world. That's okay. We just don't want to lay in there. So people that flourish feel their world very fully. They'll react to their world. You know, they'll say, what the hell on those days when something is happening that's absurd Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Dr. Kelly Craceand ridiculous. They'll react to that absurdity as a human being. They just don't lay in there. They honor that reaction. And then they move into the intentionality of these steps. And sometimes, we need support to help us with that reaction and with our readiness that right now, I'm not ready to be intentional, because it's kind of important for me to be angry for a while. I just I want to be angry. And that's human nature. And sometimes we need support and help to move us through that because all you're doing there is readying yourself to start doing this work. People often think that insight leads to action, but actually, there's this middle stage of readiness that I may understand the concepts. I may understand these four things. That doesn't mean I'm just going to linearly just move right into action. We then have to ready ourselves both kind of holistically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually for the work. And there have been times, you know, how it is at times when we've known what we need to do and yet we're not doing it yet. Ken WhiteRight. Dr. Kelly CraceIt's just we can often cause that to be a shameful thing. We blame ourselves or what's wrong with me for not doing that. We're just readying ourselves for it. And that's not linear. It takes a little house sometimes. That's why it's important sometimes to have support to help us with that. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education offers programs that help you reach and exceed your career goals, including the upcoming Certificate in Business Management program running from April 20th through April 24th. The program is taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg BusinessWeek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Dr. Kelly Crace, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Andrea Sarate](images/andrea-sarate-130-thumb.jpg)
![Workplace Strategy with professionals around table](images/andrea-sarate-130-thumb.jpg)
Andrea Sarate
Episode 130: February 1, 2020
Workplace Strategy
Your office, or physical workspace: It has an effect on your attitude, your outlook, and your performance. That's why companies and organizations turn to workplace strategists to help them design a space or facility that promotes excellence, collaboration, and wellness. Andrea Sarate is the Senior Director of Workplace Strategy for Colliers International - a commercial real estate brokerage firm. For 10 years, she's helped organizations get the most out of their physical space. She joins us on the podcast today to talk about workplace strategy, how it ties to productivity, and how the right work environment can lead to happy employees and a healthy bottom line.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Your office or physical workspace. It has an effect on your attitude, your outlook, and your performance. That's why companies and organizations turn to workplace strategists to help them design a space or facility that promotes excellence, collaboration, and wellness. Andrea Sarate is the Senior Director of Workplace Strategy for Colliers International, a commercial real estate brokerage firm. For 10 years, she's helped organizations get the most out of their physical space. She joins us on the podcast today to talk about workplace strategy, how it ties to productivity, and how the right work environment can lead to happy employees and a healthy bottom line. Here's our conversation with Andrea Sarate. Ken WhiteAndrea, thank you very much for joining us. A real pleasure to have you on the podcast. Andrea SarateI'm so thrilled to be here. It's an honor. Thank you so much. Ken WhiteYou're the first Executive MBA student, current student to be on the podcast. That's great. Andrea SarateThank you. Ken WhiteYeah, yeah. Andrea SarateI hope I represent my class well. Ken WhiteAnd I'm sure they will tell you. Won't they? Andrea SarateOh, they will. Ken WhiteYou have one heck of a class. One thing you and I have in common is on a regular basis we get to walk into Miller Hall, the home of the business school here at William & Mary. And as someone who's been doing that every day for six years, every day I walk in, I just say, wow. I mean, it has an effect on everything. Does that sort of wrap up what you do? Is that what companies are trying to do, and organizations are trying to do, make people feel good by the physicalness of the place? Andrea SarateThey are starting to, and that's what is making being a workplace strategist so exciting right now is that people have realized that workplace can be a wonderful tool to really positively impact business. And really help with that attraction and retention of top talent, the workplace. Glassdoor.com did a survey workplaces and the top three reasons that people either like or dislike their work environment. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrea SarateAnd their job. Ken WhiteSo what you do? You are a workplace strategist. Andrea SarateI am. Ken WhiteWhat does that entail? Andrea SarateIt entails the application of research and experience, understanding how people work. What do they need to work? What are their tools that they need and technology they need so that they can do their best work? My primary goal is to help companies create environments to enable their people to do great things. Ken WhiteHow does one become a workplace strategist? Andrea SarateWell, actually, that's a wonderful question because everyone comes to it differently. I myself am an anthropologist. So for the liberal arts majors out there, yes, anthropologists do get jobs in Corporate America. But a lot of people come through it as either facility planners and managers, or designers, interior designers, and architects. Anyone that has an interest in how the workplace is created can eventually become a workplace strategist. Ken WhiteWhat are some of the skills required? Andrea SaratePatience, a lot of listening. And I really think the most important one is a just innate deep curiosity about people. Who are they? What do they want? How do they work? And importantly, especially for me as an anthropologist, what is the cultural goals that you're trying to set for your company? You can influence culture. You can nudge it with a workplace. You can't build it or change it or create it, but you can kind of push it along. So if you want to improve the culture of your company or shift it a little bit, taking it to the workplace is a great place to start. Ken WhiteAnd so what's the process like? Can you take us through? Andrea SarateSure. Ken WhiteIs there a process that you generally put into place, or does it vary? Andrea SarateThere is, it is always tailored to the client, which is another reason I like the work is every client is different. Even clients I've worked with for several years as their needs and their people evolve and change over time, I had the opportunity to do more in different sites. For example, you spending time in Florida or in Texas? I like the Texas example best. Dallas and Fort Worth are 45 minutes apart, and they are so different culturally. Ken WhiteHow about that. Andrea SarateSo a law firm, for example, has an office in Dallas will create a very different environment than the law firm office in Fort Worth, even though it's the same organization. And so looking at that, the first thing I always want to find out is what's important to you. I would like to ask leadership, what keeps you up at night? And the answer is resoundingly getting the right people and helping make sure I keep them and give them what they need. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrea SarateAnd the workplace is such a great tool to help impact that. So the first is asking a lot of questions. Finding out what your goals are and then also looking, observing. I spend a lot of time in my client sites watching how they work, seeing what spaces they have, what they don't. A lot of times I'm working with people, for example, when they're relocating. Their lease is up, or they need to build a new headquarters because they've outgrown the one that they have. And I'll come in and help them figure out what does that space need to be like in the future. But you know that takes a while. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrea SarateThat might take a year and a half, two years. So part of what I love to do is also look at the existing space and figure out what are the missed opportunities you have right now. Since you're not waiting for the new building to make improvements, you can have some impacts. Now, my own office, I work for Colliers International in Dallas. We've got some wonderful space that no one is using. So the operations manager and I were looking at floor plans yesterday and making plans to remove some equipment and put up some walls and make little phone rooms. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrea SarateFor the brokers, which is going to be exciting. Ken WhiteSo you talk to the leadership. What about the folks who work there? Andrea SarateAbsolutely. I try. Ken WhiteAnd how do you do that? Andrea SarateI do focus groups and interviews. We start with a survey, so we get quantitative data about the workplace. But then I also do focus groups and interviews to get that qualitative data, and I always divide individual contributors from the people, managers from leadership. Because what I found over time is generally if your boss is in the room, you'll give a very different answer than if your boss is not in the room. Ken WhiteRight. Andrea SarateStill might be a good answer, but it's best to create that candid opportunity to speak. Ken WhiteWhat contributes to a good workplace design? How do you know you're on the right path? Andrea SarateWell, there's always the issue of capacity, but most importantly, and this is the big issue that a lot of companies are figuring out today is you need a diversity of spaces. You need lots of different kinds of spaces. We don't just sit knowledge workers or what we like to call judgment workers. We don't just sit in one place doing one thing all day long. We get up. We move. We go to meetings. We interact with people both physically and then via the web. Now we have colleagues in other places. Are we providing the right kinds of spaces to support all of those activities throughout the day? Thinking about human well-being is incredibly important. We spend a lot of time at work. It needs to not be terrible while we're there. We also want to make sure that we're connecting people. For example, do we have a bunch of tiny little refuel stations with a coffee pot and a tiny little fridge, and everybody eats at their desk? Or do we create a cafe that people can go sit in and have their meetings there when it's not just lunch? You have their one on ones and have those what we like to call social collisions, so I think that sounds a little violent. But those social moments that are the social glue that really holds all of us together and really is what makes a team makes a teamwork. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Andrea Sarate in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. If you're looking to raise your game and take your career to the next level. The Center for Corporate Education offers non-degree programs that help you become a more effective professional. Topics include business analytics, communication, leadership, strategy, accounting, and more. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with workplace strategist Andrea Sarate. Ken WhiteWhen you think of building you've worked on or a facility, you know that you think, man, that's just that was an A-plus. Can you give an example of why it was so good? What worked? Andrea SarateOh, gosh. Yeah, I built an office in Hong Kong, did it all via headset and Skype, which was pretty fun. Ken WhiteWow, yeah. Andrea SarateI was hoping to go but didn't get to, that was okay. And what was so great is they had been in kind of rented office space. It was super generic and didn't have anything to do with the company or the people. It was just bland space they were sitting in. The new office not only represented the brand of the company, but we engaged all the employees to come up with the names for all the conference rooms. Think about their decorations like what did they want at their desks to represent themselves and their family, and the office to personalize it a little bit, own it. And we also engaged a feng shui consultant because it was in Hong Kong, and we wanted to respect the culture there. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Andrea SarateSo I think it's important. Any office to be really successful has to be really thoughtfully considered of place. What you need in Hong Kong versus what you need in Stockholm. We built an office in Boulder, and you have to give them storage for all their mountain bikes. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrea SarateBecause they do that in Boulder. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrea SarateIn Stockholm, we had to give this huge locker room a shower facility. Because to take advantage of the limited daylight, they all go out at lunch and spend two or three hours, you know, skiing or cross-country skiing or whatever. And they all come shower and then they work at night once its dark again. That's not how they work in Virginia, for example. Ken WhiteRight, yeah. Can you tie a good design to productivity? Did you see results? Andrea SarateYou can. You can. Typically, it's tricky because a lot of those productivity measures are owned by H.R., you know, performance reviews and evaluations. However, in the times that we've been able to work with H.R. as a partner, we can see engagement scores increasing after a workplace project. That's also why post-occupancy survey is just as important as finding out what needs to be fixed ahead of time because then you can measure your success. Ken WhiteSo after they're in the facility for a while, ask how's it going? What if the answer is that, not great? You can obviously make some changes, right. Andrea SarateExactly. Ken WhiteAnd tweak things. Andrea SarateAnd you should. And that's the other important piece about workplace strategy and why I love my job. It's never-ending. You know, our tools and technology and how we work is changing all of the time. So you should always assume that with every workplace project, you're going to hopefully get 90 percent right and build and know that there's gonna be changing. Because what will happen is people will get in the new space and have new opportunities to work differently. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrea SarateAnd then they will, and then their needs will change. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrea SarateSo you're always checking in and working on it. If it's if you're doing it right. Ken WhiteAny parallels with generations and age of workers, younger workers like this, older workers like that? Andrea SarateYou know, that's a wonderful topic for discussion on LinkedIn these days, is the generations in the workplace. And I can say that it seems to be largely about life stage. Whether or not you're the demands of your family cycle, you know, are you going to get kids from school or daycare or pick mom or dad up from senior care? Those kinds of things, having that flexibility that again gets back to well-being. Are we addressing your needs as a person? Do our policies reflect that? And so that's really more of a policy issue, but it's absolutely about talent and people. And generally, as long as you're taking account that people have lives and other obligations. You'll be in good shape. Ken WhiteWe visit so many organizations here in the business school, and so many of them have a bunch of cubicles. Andrea SarateMmm-mmm. Ken WhiteWhat are they good? Are they bad? Do we try to fix them? What's your feeling? Andrea SarateWell, you know, what's funny about that is some people love their cubicles. And if you were to take them away, they would just flip out. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrea SarateCubicles provide some acoustic barriers. That's actually acoustic fabric that's in there or acoustic material in the cubicle. So that provides some assistance. But most people like to tack up personal items Ken WhiteRight. Andrea SarateAnd really customize their space, and having all those walls of your cubicle can let you do that. The biggest issue is really about having an ergonomic workspace that is supporting your physical self. So having adjustable height tables, ergonomic task seating, and importantly, individual task lighting. Not everyone sees the same way, and having a bunch of fluorescent lights in the room may not be the right level of brightness for all the different kinds of people you have in your space. So giving everyone a task light can go a long ways to helping people be productive. Ken WhiteHow about stand up, sit down? How much of that do you see and what are companies and organizations doing? Andrea SarateWell, really, adjustable height work surfaces should be standard. And the idea is that the human body was meant to move. It's not good to stand all day. Just good as it’s not good to sit all day. The idea, generally speaking, guidelines are that you want to be standing at least 15 minutes out of every hour since you have 2 hours total by the time you get through a regular workday. I like to call it the prairie dog effect. Like after lunch, you'll see one person stand, and then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, everyone else will start. They will be like, oh, right, my desk moves; I should get up. And so when you first implement adjustable height desking, you need to recruit your standing leaders, or you can put timers either in your outlook, your calendaring system. Or there's some systems where the desk itself will tell you; hey Andrea, you've been sitting for a couple hours time to get up. Ken WhiteInteresting. Andrea SarateA lot of options for that. Ken WhiteI've seen some conference rooms that have solid walls, some glass, some frosted glass, just considering laws and culture. What what's the way to go at this point? Andrea SarateTypically, glass is always welcome because you want the light from the windows to people to penetrate the conference room. But having that frosted band in the middle does allow for privacy because there are times if you're putting your financials. You don't necessarily, or maybe it's your performance scales. Ken WhiteSure. Andrea SarateYou don't want to have those. You want to be able to have confidential materials. So by having that, being thoughtful about confidentiality, having that be an option is a great thing. There are also some products that have the current, and there's a particulate sandwich within the glass. You can flick a switch, and it will go opaque. Ken WhiteNice, nice. Andrea SarateThat's pretty fun Ken WhiteTemperature. It's fun in this building where we work. Everyone wants a different temperature. How in the world do you deal with that? Andrea SarateIt's a lot of negotiating. There are some technological systems that you can have an app, and you can control what your temperature is. That gets really challenging from facilities management perspective. If everybody is messing with the thermostat, facility managers hate that. So typically, it's about balancing. Usually, if there are hot and cold spots, it's probably been a few years since your HVAC system was balanced, and you need to come back in and check them. Ken WhiteIf you have a crystal ball, what's coming down the pike? What's the next big thing in the next 5, 10 years that we'll see in your world and those of us who work in buildings that we'll see? Andrea SarateI think the greatest challenge we are still facing is telepresence. How are we going to solve the issue of the fact that our team members are all somewhere else? I'm my team is all located all over the U.S. So we have we use Microsoft Teams, for example. We all get on camera, and we talk and have our team catch-ups that way. But it is a little awkward. Most companies can have a lot of talent. They may have entire teams of software engineers, you know, in some other country in another time zone. How are you including them, when you're having those brainstorming sessions and your whiteboarding and collaborating? We haven't found a way to do that yet, well. There's a lot, but there are a lot of really smart people working on it. So I think that'll be the next thing. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Andrea Sarate. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education offers programs that help you reach and exceed your career goals. And the programs are taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg BusinessWeek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Andrea Sarate, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White, wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Katherine Rowe](images/katherine-rowe-129-thumb.jpg)
![Thriving Among Rapid Change with emerging butterfly](images/katherine-rowe-129-thumb.jpg)
Katherine Rowe
Episode 129: January 15, 2020
Thriving Among Rapid Change
She's an entrepreneur, an athlete, coach, teacher, scholar, and listener, and she's at the helm of America's second-oldest university. Katherine Rowe became President of William & Mary in the summer of 2018 - the first woman to serve in that role in the university's 325-year history. Since her arrival, Rowe's been focused on making William & Mary a university that thrives amid rapid change. One that successfully serves people and organizations for the long haul. She joins us on the podcast today to talk about life as a university president, the importance of cross-training, and how public liberal arts and science universities are preparing the next generation of innovative leaders.
Podcast (audio)
Katherine Rowe: Thriving Among Rapid Change TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. She's an entrepreneur, an athlete, coach, teacher, scholar, and listener, and she's at the helm of America's second-oldest university. Katherine Rowe became president of William & Mary in the summer of 2018. The first woman to serve in that role in the university's 325-year history. Since her arrival, Rowe has been focused on making William & Mary a university that thrives amid rapid change, one that successfully serves people and organizations for the long haul. She joins us on the podcast today to talk about life as a university president, the importance of cross-training, and how public liberal arts and science universities are preparing the next generation of innovative leaders. Here's our conversation with William & Mary President Katherine Rowe. Ken WhiteKatherine, thank you very much. You're busy, but you're spending time with us. I greatly appreciate it. Welcome. Katherine RoweThank you so much. I'm really thrilled to be here, Ken. Ken WhiteSo a university president. I don't know that people know what that job entails. What do you do for a living? Katherine RoweWell, every day is atypical. Ken WhiteYeah. Katherine RoweThere at least four things that I'm always doing in one way or another. One is that in partnership with our board, I am setting strategic direction for the institution. And in that process scanning the environment for incoming challenges and opportunities and then listening to our constituencies. The second thing that I'm doing is I'm deepening the relationships between this university and our external constituencies. Partners, alumni, donors, the legislature, the business community, and strengthening the relationships internally cause we're an institution that really cares about deep human connections. Ken WhiteRight. Katherine RoweThat's part of our business model. Ken WhiteAnd you said atypical no two days are the same, I assume. Katherine RoweThere's a lot of travel. I don't love airplanes, but I do love spending time with our far-flung alumni, and on campus. I am with students, with faculty, with staff, with senior leadership, connecting with our regional partners in the city and beyond. Ken WhiteHow long is a typical day? Katherine RoweOh, 10 - 12 hours, but I move fast, and I like moving fast. Ken WhiteWhat abilities should a university president have? What skills should they bring to the table? Katherine RoweYou need to be able to work between a good sprint and a good long endurance run. So it's partly a sprint sport, and it's partly an endurance sport, and as a lifelong athlete and coach, I have both skill sets. Ken WhiteYeah, let's talk about your background athletics, entrepreneurship. Um, yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself from that standpoint? Katherine RoweWell, I am somebody who has thought of myself as extending my range and cross-training across many different domains. So I am a coach and very competitive. I have had a very satisfying life as an athlete competing internationally as well as nationally. I started a business and learned how to build and run one. How to make a business case. And I think about marketing and distribution, and I am a passionate teacher and scholar. Those are parts of my identity that mattered a lot. And I draw on all of those aspects of my life in my current role. Ken WhiteIt's interesting that of all the guests we've had on the podcast so many entrepreneurs that have an athletic or a sports background right, it trains them. Katherine RoweThat's right. And they're incredibly close alignments between those modes of thinking. Collaboration is one, resourcefulness, thinking on your feet, seeking opportunity, systems thinking, looking at the pattern of play coming off halftime, and thinking how do I make an adjustment. What are they doing well? What are we doing well, and how do I maximize one and diminish the other? Ken WhiteEvery university has unique qualities. William & Mary is certainly unique. What do you feel is makes it a special place? What's it about William & Mary? Katherine RoweA couple of things drew me here. One was a large sense that in the challenges facing higher education right now, which are considerable, it's public higher education that's in the lead in innovating, thinking through the responses to those challenges. And I saw that in the William & Mary promise a way of making the cost of college predictable to students in the commonwealth. We're also deeply committed to liberal arts and sciences as a model. That idea of range and cross-training is really important to the way we think about developing citizens and professionals. And I was drawn to the unique mix of professional schools like the business school and our rich Arts and Sciences undergraduate experience that's fairly unique and certainly very unique in public higher ed. Ken WhiteCan you tell us more about Liberal Arts and Sciences? What why is that important to you? Katherine RoweWell, at a moment when as all of our listeners know, the workplace is changing very very rapidly. The ability to think across domains and to transfer what you know from one domain to another, to look around the corner and say what's coming, how do we change, and for what. For the sake of what do we change. Those abilities which are the ones we teach in a liberal arts and sciences curriculum. Those are among the most important success factors. I've been reading David Epstein's book Range, and he has a marvelous idea that modern work right now demands that ability to transfer knowledge and that breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. Ken WhiteInteresting. Katherine RoweThat's the I'm quoting him there. And I think that that's right. That's certainly been the experience in my life. And as I watch every, I think every member of my board in my small company was a liberal arts and sciences degree and humanities degrees, I believe. Ken WhiteYeah. Katherine RoweYeah. Ken WhiteIt was interesting somebody the other day found out that we have Business Analytics program and Katherine RoweYes. Ken WhiteThey said wow at a liberal arts school, and I said exactly. Katherine RoweExactly. Ken WhiteThat's why. Katherine RoweExactly. Ken WhiteIt makes sense. And once we had the conversation, you could see the light. Light went on, and they understood, of course. Katherine RoweYes. Ken WhiteWe don't want just people who can generate numbers. We want them to be able to communicate what those numbers, in fact, mean to the organization. Katherine RoweAttach the new domains and corpora that we're gathering of data at scale attach them to mission-critical questions for an organization or business. Ken WhiteYeah. Katherine RoweThat's how you gain value from your data. Ken WhiteYeah. Katherine RoweIf you can align it with those mission-critical questions and so it's that alignment that systems thinking, to go back to your beginning question, that I think entrepreneurship and athletics and liberal arts have in common. Ken WhiteYeah. Katherine RoweWe cultivate systems thinking. Ken WhiteIn addition, in terms of your entrepreneurship background and innovation. What other pieces of that life do you pull in to use in your presidency? Katherine RoweWell, I certainly use my life as a parent. We were just talking about that. I have the playdate rule for meetings. Which is that you always end before people are finished because at the moment when they're still excited about the work, and there's a sense of energy about the work ahead, that's when you close the process down and say let's meet again next week. Same principle for playdates that I've used my whole career. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Katherine Rowe in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. If you're looking to raise your game and take your career to the next level, the Center for Corporate Education offers non-degree programs that help you become a more effective professional. Topics include business analytics, communication, leadership, strategy, accounting, and more. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the president of William & Mary Katherine Rowe. Ken WhiteYou've placed considerable time and energy and effort in the strategic direction Katherine RoweYes. Ken WhiteOf the university for those who are unfamiliar. Can you tell us about what you've done so far and where you hope to go with that process? Katherine RoweIt began my first month on campus, which was listening to the campus think forward. We called. We held this long series of open conversations for the whole community, asking as you think over the next decade and more about the work you do. What's changing and what we heard back very powerfully was everything. So the very first conversation was with faculty about changing ways of knowing, modes of knowledge, and we said what's changing in your discipline, and it was a humanities faculty member who put his hand up and said everything. Who my students are, the technology I use in the classroom, the questions I ask, the context for our learning, what students bring in into the classroom, the content we teach. Everything's changing, so the next question became after that series of conversations, how do we pursue that insight into the necessity and omnipresence of rapid change. To me, we needed a theory of change. That's one of the roles of a leader. Certainly, the university president is to say at a high level what is it that we're engaged in and for the sake of what. Why do we change? We change in order to advance what we value most. And so I spent some time working through that idea in the service of what do we change. Right now, we're engaged in strategic planning, starting with the big picture external question. What's changing in our external environment? And once we've settled on our sense of what are the dominant trends that are facing higher education and facing our predominant constituency students, then we'll begin to develop some strategies to address them. Ken WhiteIt's interesting almost everyone in business I talk to and say what's up. It's change. I mean, there's not an industry that isn't faced with it. Higher Ed certainly. If you had a crystal ball, any idea where higher education will be in say 10 years say undergrad education. Where do you see that in a decade? Katherine RoweIt absolutely is. We're certainly hearing it from business leaders. Ken WhiteRight. Katherine RoweThe number one thing. First, they say I need some tech skills, but I need adaptable tech skills. And then the number one thing that they asked for is great writing skills. Writing is not a soft skill. It is a craft and an art, and it is a practice, and it's much slower to learn than quantitative skills. Ken WhiteYeah. In terms of the way, higher education looks right now universities where students come for four years and live in a residence hall and so forth. Do you see that changing over the next couple of decades? Katherine RoweWell, we're interested in expanding the flexibility of that model. For example, at William & Mary, we have a dual degree with St. Andrews, one of the rare joint degree programs in the country. We are looking at how we use the summer for undergraduates. We're going to be piloting the concept of a summer and intensive summer minor computer science first. So what's a super high value minor that you could get in a single summer. Data sciences might be another one. Environmental sciences might be one. What's a super high value minor 15 to 18 credits intensively in a short period of time. That gives you a boost on some area that you want to move into as you're exploring your passions. Ken WhiteYou're the first woman at an institution that was founded in the sixteen hundreds to be the president. Katherine RoweYes. Ken WhiteDo you think much about that? And if so, how? Katherine RoweThe most exciting part of that for me is that when I walk into a room and people are meeting me for the first time; it's an invitation to the question. What else do we want to change? And I'm a longtime reader of Hannah Arendt, wonderful 20th century, such a philosopher who spoke about the importance of thinking about what we're doing. That simple sentence. Think what we are doing. The invitation to reflection on what we are doing, why we're doing it, what matters, and how we do it. That's what the difference in a new kind of president can mean in the conversation in the room. So I think of it as an invitation to think what we're doing and ask what might we want to do differently. Ken WhiteI've been in large rooms a couple of hundred people in the room, and when you're introduced and when you get up there, they're juiced. Do you feel that? Do you see it? Katherine RoweYeah, I do. Ken WhiteThat must be incredible. Katherine RoweIt's incredible. It's such a privilege. Ken WhiteYeah. Katherine RoweThis is an amazing place. The students, the faculty, the staff, and leadership that I get to be partnered with. It's thrilling to be part of this community. Ken WhiteYeah, it's sort of like no other job and no other sector. Katherine RoweAbsolutely. Ken WhiteIt seems to me, yeah. Katherine RoweAbsolutely, I said earlier on our business model in higher ed is about long term relationships. If we do our job well, we have a relationship with a human being for maybe decades, right. Ken WhiteYeah. Katherine RoweAnd so we think in terms of the investment that compounds over time in relationship, in knowledge because knowledge is another compounding investment. And then in their prosperity personally and the prosperity of their communities. We're in it for the long game. And it's thrilling to step in as somebody new to this amazing institution and be able to talk about what it means to be part of a three hundred and twenty-seven-year-old institution. We're always in it for the long game, and we innovate. We've led a number of innovations in higher ed, and we want to lead some more. Ken WhiteAnd as it's speaking to an alumnus, I assume they're saying the long game; that's what I want to hear from my alma mater because they care about me in my 40s and my 50s and 60s. Katherine RoweYes. Ken WhiteSo does that. What will we have to be offering programs and working closer with that group as they age and mature? Katherine RoweWe will. The fastest-growing population of learners in the country are adults, especially adults with degrees already. So as we think about what is a world-class university in the 21st century, it's a place where you return to, to learn, and lots of different modes. I think the business school here has been very exciting in the ways it's explored that and thinking about blended degrees online and in person. And then thinking about adults as an important part of our community. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. I mean people are living so much longer they’re so much healthier they want to learn. Katherine RoweAnd the workforce asks for it. And our lives as citizens ask for it. To be complex problem-solvers, we need to be reactivated in the way we learn over and over again. Ken WhiteIf someone listening either works in higher education or doesn't and says I'd love to have her job someday, I'd love to be a university president. What kind of advice do you have? Katherine RoweCross-train, cross-train. You are developing skills and domains that you don't think about. You don't recognize. Many of my strongest skills as a manager, for example, developed in the process of coaching young adults and adults, and I love that I love the I love creating leadership culture. I love working with senior leaders and being their partner and think about how they grow and how we together grow the institution's success. So I would say cross-train, take that lesson of range. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Katherine Rowe. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education offers programs that help you reach your career goals, and the programs are taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Katherine Rowe, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Sarah Levitt](images/sarah-levitt-128-thumb.jpg)
![Your best year ever with 2020 background](images/sarah-levitt-128-thumb.jpg)
Sarah Levitt
Episode 128: January 1, 2020
Your Best Year Ever
A new year. A fresh start. For many professionals, it signals a new beginning, such as seeking a new job or promotion. For others, it's a time to set goals. Goals that can make the upcoming year your best year ever. Sarah Levitt is a leadership coach. She works with CEOs and executives of Fortune 1000 companies and senior leadership teams. In addition, through her Making Magnificence Project, she's met with top leaders to capture their leadership and success journeys. She joins us on the podcast today to share with us what she shares with senior leaders: The importance of presence, influence, authenticity, and how to make the year ahead a great one.
Podcast (audio)
Sarah Levitt: Your Best Year Ever TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Amazon Music/Audible | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. A New Year, a fresh start for many professionals it signals a new beginning, such as seeking a new job or promotion. For others, it's a time to set goals. Goals that can make the upcoming year your best year ever. Sarah Levitt is a leadership coach. She works with CEOs and executives of Fortune 1000 companies and senior leadership teams. In addition, through her making magnificence project, she's met with top leaders to capture their leadership and success journeys. She joins us on the podcast today to share with us what she shares with senior leaders. The importance of presence, influence, authenticity, and how to make the year ahead a great one. Here's our conversation with leadership coach Sarah Levitt. Ken WhiteWell Sarah, thank you very much for joining us. First of all, Happy New Year. Sarah LevittHappy New Year to you and thank you for having me. Ken WhiteOh, it's our pleasure. It's 2020. That isn't that hard to. That's hard to get in my mind, 2020. Sarah LevittThe beginning of a whole new decade. Ken WhiteHow about it. Yeah, yeah. Sarah LevittThat's crazy. Ken WhiteSo you know this is the time of the year where a lot of people take a look whether they're aspiring leaders, they are leaders and say you know this is the year. I want it to be the best year ever. How with your clients, how do you help them make that happen? Sarah LevittThe first thing that we look at is what the best actually means. So most of my. And that's, and that's an important distinction. So most of my clients are either CEOs or senior executives who are running companies. And so best is important to define. What does that mean? Are they up-leveling to an elevated role, and what does performance in that role mean? If they're a CEO, typically best means growth as it does for any anybody. Both for the organization and for themselves. Ken WhiteI see. Sarah LevittSo you know in an ideal world a CEO grows with their organization. Ken WhiteMmm-hmm. Sarah LevittSo the first thing is determine what is best and then how can we accelerate their trajectory to get there. What do they have? What can we leverage? And then really it's a matter of what external resource if they want to use one, is best suited for that. Ken WhiteHow do we determine those goals, I guess? Sarah LevittYeah. That's a great question. The bottom line is they're always related to growth. This is the business world. Ken White:Right. Sarah LevittAnd in some way it's going to come down to growth and leadership is directly tied to that. You know we want to have the right person leading with the right vision and focus. We want to have the right team in place, right people in the right roles and all the oars have to be in the water. I mean, it's an overused metaphor, but really, people have to be rowing in the same direction, trusting of one another, and able to execute. Ken WhiteSo what's the best way for the leader to know that everybody is in the boat rowing at the same time? Sarah LevittRowing in the same direction. So I'm gonna turn that around. Most often, they know when they're not. Ken WhiteGot it. Sarah LevittBecause again, getting back to growth, two things are typically not happening or not happening well, and that's projects aren't being delivered on time. So it's time and budget right. So projects aren't being delivered on time. Deadlines aren't able to be met in a timely manner. And there might be budgetary overflow. Ken WhiteSo then if we're gonna reach out this is gonna be the best year ever the first thing we do then is really look at performance and Sarah LevittAbsolutely. Ken WhiteUltimately the bottom line and growth. Sarah LevittYes. So what do we want? Right. What do we? How's everything going kind of a check-in. What do we want to move the needle on? For the individual leader. This is key for the individual leader and for the organization. So what are the business outcomes that we're looking to drive? And that's typically again not to be repetitive here. It's going to be related to growth. So capturing more market share, getting there first, beating the competition, etc. Ken WhiteAs working with leaders, what are some of the more personal areas that a client or a professional might be focused on in the year ahead? Sarah LevittYeah. Ken WhiteTo improve. Sarah LevittYeah, absolutely. And I would say you know one of the things I discovered when I was interviewing leaders of all domains for the making magnificence project, which became magnificent leadership. One of the things I noticed that was a consistent theme, no matter the leader, no matter the domain they were leading in was this ongoing quest for self-mastery. So leaders really who are already performing well and those are the folks I work with. They're always looking to kind of take their success and the success of those around them to the next level. That is both external, as we've been talking about. Internally, it can be, and presence is so often used, but executive presence matters in a sense that a leader needs to be able to use their talents and gifts and abilities in a way that is focused pointed in the right direction in a confident and comfortable manner. So that there is resonance with whomever, it is they're interacting with. Sometimes we hear that described as authentic. Ken WhiteMmm-hmm, right. Sarah LevittSo that's one domain that is what I might think of as internal. Another is the capacity, and this is really key as people move up inside organizations. Influence becomes more and more critical because to get key stakeholder buy-in across multiple different audiences is a necessity for advancing initiatives. Ken WhiteMmm-hmm. Sarah LevittAnd so what I think of as influence is when I'm speaking to clients you know who are the three to five people that you need to be visible to? How do you need to be visible to them and align with them to get their buy-in? So those are kind of what I think of as the internal, but the comfort and confidence is key and then influence. Ken WhiteYeah, executive presence is such an interesting arena because we're all different. Sarah LevittWe are all different. Ken WhiteAnd I think we define it differently based on the person. Sarah LevittYes. Ken WhiteAnd then the audience is different. Everybody you're dealing with is so different. Sarah LevittYes. Ken WhiteAnd to ask the way I think of it is someone with presence is a great communicator meaning they know how to communicate to the various audiences. They know how to shift those gears. How important is that for the leader? Sarah LevittIt's essential, right. So that's what I think of as that. That's where presence and influence come together. So a leader's ability to be comfortable and confident in themselves across multiple audiences. Ken WhiteMmm-hmm. Sarah LevittSo that means being able to present well to the board. Being able to speak to shareholders. Being able to rally their team, for example. Have great relationships with their colleagues. Ken WhiteMmm-hmm. Sarah LevittThose are all to your point, Ken. Multiple different audiences and a leader needs to be able to relate successfully with each of those. Ken WhiteAnd we tend to think of those qualities that they go along with someone who's outgoing. But that's not always the case. Sarah LevittAbsolutely yeah. So what we're looking for is the ability to your point. To communicate and when I think of as really resonate and connect with whomever, a leader is in front of, and that does not necessarily mean someone who is super outgoing. It means being able to tap into, to your point a few minutes ago, what their talents and gifts are and what might make them different but be centered and grounded in those. Ken WhiteWe hear so much about authenticity. Sarah LevittWe do. Ken WhiteYeah. How do you define that? Sarah LevittI think it is a leader anyone's ability to make external what their talents and gifts are in a way that relates to people. So a lack of artifice and being able to relate to someone wherever they are whether that and a great leader, a great CEO is able to walk the halls, I'm always talking to my clients about this, walk the halls relate to folks at any level of the organization as well as the boardroom. Ken WhitePretty amazing what you find out in the hallway, isn't it. Sarah LevittIt is very and that channel going back to what you said a few minutes ago you know when I'm working with an executive in an organization one of the lines of communication that I look at and look for is there a flow of information from the front lines to the executives. Not just from the executives to the front lines. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Sarah Levitt in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. If you're looking to raise your game and give your career a boost. The Center for Corporate Education offers non-degree programs that help you become a more effective professional. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek for two consecutive years. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with leadership coach Sarah Levitt. Ken WhiteDo you see where the CEO maybe came up through a certain division was great in that particular area? Maybe 10 years ago they still feel they know what like the back of their hand but boy things have certainly changed. Sarah LevittThat can be the case. I often see actually this is an interesting kind of twist, so I often see that when an executive rises through the ranks inside an organization, there's a shift into leadership that has to happen that is internal to them. Because, at times, they are leading their peers. Ken WhiteYes. Sarah LevittAnd it can be difficult for the leader to assume that mantle of leadership which is part of executive presence. You know it's assuming that mantle of leadership, and it can be difficult for the peers. It's also critical going back to communication that leader be able to elicit dissenting opinion. And sometimes we see this showed up in my interviews for the making magnificence project. Sometimes we see when a leader rises from within. The people around that person are not as comfortable speaking truth. Ken WhiteAnd some of those are friends. Sarah LevittAbsolutely. Ken WhiteYeah. Is it lonely at the top? Is that is that true, in your experience? Sarah LevittIt really is. So it is you know, like authenticity and executive presence, we hear about these phrases because they are true. Because they're true for the experience. And lonely in the sense that you know a CEO or a senior executive is often dealing with highly confidential information. They have to put on a brave face when things may not be going all that well. And there are very few people that they can share the information with and get trusted input from. So that's often the role that someone like myself fulfills. Ken WhiteSo what we've been talking a little bit about executive presence. But you also mentioned influence Sarah LevittYes. Ken WhiteHow critical that is. And you said those through find those three to five people. Could they be peers? Sarah LevittAbsolutely. So those folks are key what I think of his key stakeholders so they can be peers their folks that you need buy-in from to advance your initiatives and the initiatives that are going to matter the most and where you add the greatest value. Ken WhiteSo new year moving forward, taking all this into account when should someone say to themselves maybe I should have a coach? When is the time for that? Sarah LevittYeah, that's a great question. So when I think of the folks that I work with who are already doing super well and are again kind of on this quest for continued growth and self-mastery, they are often swimming in the waters of having outside resources. So, however, having said that most often a trigger for me being asked or invited in to work with someone is that they are preparing for, they've been slated for succession, or they have just landed in a new elevated role, and frankly, they're drinking from a firehose. So that's a good trigger. Geez, I am ready to be promoted, or I've been slated for succession. That's a great trigger. Ken WhiteAnd my leadership coach will help me deal with this? Sarah LevittYes. Ken WhiteSo what are some of the things? Sarah LevittYes, so two of the things we've already been talking about right kind of executive presence. Ken WhiteRight. Sarah LevittAnd assuming the mantle of leadership being confident in one's abilities. Right. And we've talked about influence as well. There's also what I call controlled delegation, so the ability to offload in a way that is effective for the leader the person being delegated to the team member being delegated to and to the initiative, and that's a tricky process but one that has to happen. Ken WhiteRight. Sarah LevittAnd then building what I call a self-correcting team which also has to happen and that is I used to say can but a team needed to be high performing. And I've changed my thinking on that. A team really needs to be self-correcting. And by that, I mean it can essentially function without the leader. Ken WhiteInteresting. Sarah LevittYeah, that has to be able to happen, or that has to happen for the leader to do what they need to do strategically, which brings me to the last domain, which is having a strategic focus. So oftentimes we hear that you know when a leader gets into an elevated role they kind of have to change what they're doing that what got them there won't get. That's absolutely the case. Ken WhiteYeah. Sarah LevittAnd part of that is having a strategic focus. So someone might be used to being on the front lines and being the go-to person at 2 o'clock in the morning and getting the call and being the person who fixes it and puts out the fire. And that is no longer their role oftentimes, but they have what I call kind of the knee jerk yes reaction to yes I'm there. Let me put out the fire as opposed to finding and creating a deputy or a series of deputies who can do that for them. Ken WhiteSo we've made our minds up for this year, we are going to step up, we do step up, we get a bigger role, and become a leader. Is there, we often see, especially in print the term imposter syndrome. Sarah LevittMmm-hmm. Ken WhiteIs that real? Can people run into that? Sarah LevittYes. Ken WhiteAnd what can they do about it? Sarah LevittIt's very real. And I think it probably is you know I can't say for certain, but I think it's probably very real among people who are high achieving for the very reason that I put myself in that category for the very reason that we all want to do well. I've had clients many clients who have imposter syndrome. And frankly, when I work with them, we just set it aside, and we focus on what are the goals and what are the things we need to do to get you there and that success even incremental this those steps toward success begin to build that confidence. Ken WhiteYeah. Sarah LevittYeah. Ken WhiteGetting back to the coach. What's the relationship like. How does a leader and executive work with a coach? Sarah LevittYeah, that's a great question. So the first thing is in the selection process, and I think of myself as coaching is one tool that I use, but I think of myself more as kind of a trusted and strategic guide to those people in the C suite to help them achieve and accelerate their objectives. So the first issue is how to select someone how to select that person that you want to partner with. Ken WhiteMmm-hmm. Sarah LevittAnd I tell anyone who is considering working with me or anyone else that the first criteria is that whomever they work with should really feel like a fit in their gut. Ken WhiteMmm-hmm. Sarah LevittAnd by that I mean not that they're going to be your best friend which is different. Ken WhiteYeah. Sarah LevittBut like yeah, that's the person I want in my corner because, without that fundamental trust and foundation, the coach the executive coach can't speak truth which is which has to happen and, more importantly, the person being coached won't really receive it. So the first thing is yes, that's the person I want in my corner, and then I think the second thing to look at is does this person work in the arena in which I either am or am going. And can they show results so you know the waters I swim in are the C suite and for senior executives, they want to know that I've worked in that arena? Ken WhiteMmm-hmm. Sarah LevittRight and can demonstrate results. So I think those two criteria are. I mean, there are others, but I think those two are critically important. Ken WhiteAnd I assume like all coaches you may say some things the client doesn't want to hear. Sarah LevittYeah, I mean, that's a great point, yes. And I think I also say this as well. There is a real art to showing where someone may be getting in their own way to their own detriment. Ken WhiteMmm-hmm. Sarah LevittAnd I always tell clients I'm not here to cram anything down your throat. If you can get to where you want to go with the way you're doing things. Fantastic. Ken WhiteRight. Sarah LevittYou know there is no standard here to which we are aspiring, but if you think you can't or if you can't continue to just do things the way you've been doing them, then let's talk. Ken WhiteFor those who are aspiring leaders. They don't have the ability to have a coach they want to have a great year ahead. How do they improve? How did they get sort of the help that they ordinarily don't have at their disposal? Sarah LevittYeah. So that's so I often and always recommend mentors for anybody. So whether that's a senior executive and you'll find that many many most senior executives have mentors along the way have had them. So that's the first thing is to find a mentor. I would say that can be someone inside the organization or outside the organization. But having someone who has experience again in the domain in which this person is in my world that's business experience is helpful. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Sarah Levitt. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education offers programs to help you reach your career goals, and the programs are taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. Ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Sarah Levitt, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, happy, and productive week and, of course, from all of us here at William & Mary. Happy New Year. |
![Neal Batra](images/neal-batra-126-thumb.jpg)
![Other centric communication with data flow](images/neal-batra-126-thumb.jpg)
Neal Batra
Episode 127: December 15, 2019
Other-Centric Communication
With communication going for you, anything is possible. Without it, nothing is possible, no matter how talented and ambitious you may be. That passage comes from "Positioning," the classic marketing book. And while it's been decades since the book was first published, those words about the importance of communication are more relevant than ever. Neal Batra is a consultant with Deloitte. He's a Principle in Deloitte's Life Sciences and Healthcare practice. Much of his work as a consultant revolves around effective communication. During a recent visit to William & Mary, Batra talked with MBA students about communication and how to become an outstanding other-centric communicator. Afterward, he sat down with us.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. With communication going for you. Anything is possible without it, nothing is possible. No matter how talented and ambitious you may be. Well, that passage comes from "Positioning," the classic marketing book. And while it's been decades since the book was first published, those words about the importance of communication are more relevant than ever. Neal Batra is a consultant with Deloitte. He's a principal in Deloitte's life sciences and health care practice. Much of his work as a consultant revolves around effective communication. During a recent visit to William & Mary, Batra talked with MBA students about communication and how to become an outstanding other-centric communicator. Afterwards, he sat down with us. Here's our conversation with Neal Batra. Ken WhiteNeal, thanks for taking the time to be with us. Yeah, we're great to have you here. It was fun to sit in earlier this morning; you spoke to first-year MBAs. And it was fun to sit in on there, and we're going to talk today on the podcast much about what you spoke about in class, and that is communication. But before we do consulting, what's your world like what do you do? Neal BatraYou know it's a large industry in lots of sort of cuts and takes around what we do. But I think the at the heart of it we're solving urging client problems and the reality is that they tend to be complex in nature because frankly if they were straightforward and relatively easy, they would do themselves right. Organizations are talented, and they've got lots of good people, so consulting from our perspective and my perspective, in particular, is I need to come in, and I need to break the problem down in a different way. I need to reframe the narrative in a different way. But there's likely to be real work to be done for you to see it differently. And I think that's the heart of it. I think it's what's so interesting about it for me is that there's real progress being made. You feel like you're sort of addressing a challenge and a need. So it's nice going to work every day and feeling needed, I guess. Ken WhiteSo every time I've worked with consultants, my teammates and I say they're bringing a fresh set of eyes. That's what you're doing. Neal BatraYeah. That's what you're doing, and you're, and you're using the experiences you have from your previous life in your previous roads to apply that, to see it potentially differently. And so it's an interesting career in the sense that every minute you stay in it, you're more valuable than the minute previous. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Neal BatraBecause you've had a different experience, you've had another conversation you've seen it different, or you've seen a different problem, you know. And as the world evolves and changes and as that speed sort of accelerates what's wonderful is that you know these consulting organizations are oriented and designed to adopt and bring in that new thinking and new tech. And we become in many ways a filter back to the marketplace and to our clients on how to apply it. Ken WhiteWhat skills does a good consultant have or should have? Neal BatraYeah. You know you gotta listen. You got to listen. You got you know I think that's a critical element here. I think content competency is critical. I think you need to know what you're talking about, and you know you can define your expertise and your space as narrowly as broadly as you like, but obviously, you need to be credible in that space. And then, communication skills. Right. So I think it's content it's listening, and I think that ultimately is being able to translate those insights and that work in a compelling way that motivates action. And the challenge so often is that organizations may have an analysis, but they don't actually know how to act on it, or it may have unaddressed concerns or risks or challenges that a very good technical analysis may have addressed. But you may not have touched on the emotional elements that gets people to actually act differently. And so there's a you know I don't wanna get too dramatic here, but there's a psychological element here which is it's not just the technical answer. Oftentimes it's the human answer, and it's the emotional answer, and the people answer, coupled with the technical answer that actually gets you over the line. Ken WhiteYou said something today, and it was couched in consulting, but when I think of literally every career and every sector, it resonates there, and you said communication is the secret sauce. You know why? Neal BatraSecret sauce in the sense that ideas are what move everything, and you can have the most technically efficient analysis, as I said. But if you can't actually communicate it, bring it to life, and motivate folks to do something different, you know what are we doing here. And progress isn't made. So you know if you look at pretty much every great leader and every great change you've had a narrative and a story that folks have sort of grabbed onto and that's moved, people. And so communication is a secret sauce because to say simply that the steak could be great, but if it doesn't sizzle, no one's buying it. Ken WhiteRight. Neal BatraSo the sizzle matters. Ken WhiteYou talked about the three foundations of communication in class today storyline, the slides, and the delivery, and I thought this is so transferable for literally everyone listening so that we'd walk through that. You talk about the storyline when you is this. Is this where you start in terms of communication with the client? Neal BatraYou know I think the storyline in many cases so direct answer direct directly. I think the answer is no on that I think the storyline is where you start to get your own thoughts in order. And so as I approach a challenge and a question and an issue, the storyline is how I begin to make sure that I'm breaking this problem down accordingly. I know what is a data point versus an interim summary versus the sort of macro organizing thought. And as I work that storyline, as I work that narrative, I think my communication narrative comes into light and comes into focus. And oftentimes those are those become similar things as you sort of iterate on them, but sometimes they're different the analysis may be one thing, but the way you tell that story may be radically different depending on the audience in the situation. Ken WhiteAnd that was my next question where does the. So it's about you to get you situated that how does the audience come into that? Neal BatraYeah. And then I think that's the nature of what's being asked because there have been instances where you know we'll be asked to come in and speak with an executive or two and we're working for a very narrow audience with a very specific ask. And the way you engage in this story you engage on in those really intimate settings may be less formal, perhaps more casual in nature, more stick and move in terms of bouncing around. You can have an unstructured conversation between two people that's easy, but there are other instances where I may be advising a full team of 10 15 20 execs. And then you need a little bit more structure to engage on that because I need to make sure that as I'm walking a broader group through a set of ideas, is it resonating is that landing. Do I have vehicles for them to actually ask questions back or challenge ideas and helpful of you know appropriate way? So I may communicate differently there. Ken WhiteSure. Neal BatraAnd versus you know a large conference you know I'm a I'm speaking at a conference in a couple weeks. The Financial Times conference in New York, and you know that's an example where I'm going to be in front of a large room. And so how do I tailor my message to my narrative there. We need to probably tailor in a more rolled up simplified way so I can actually project a set of you know maybe complex ideas to a large audience. Ken WhiteYeah. So not only audience but you brought up, setting today you were talking about a certain individual in the message and knowing when the question was. How would that play at a conference room table? Neal BatraThat's right. Ken WhiteSo even the geography of geography matters. Neal BatraRight, you know, and what's interesting is frankly timing matters. So you know the geography matters in the sense of what's the nature of the room and the conversation. Are you in front of the room presenting and standing up? Are you at a table having a dialogue as a peer? You know that that dynamic changes perhaps how you set it up. But frankly, even the context of the folks you're talking to and what they're you know coming out of a room from and walking into your room. And where's their mind wheres their mindset you know I've had clients in the past where I'll start work with them right after potentially an investor call that you know didn't go well. And so they're going to come in, and you know they're going to be awfully anxious, and they're gonna be very near term focused. And so if I'm having a long term conversation with a team they just came off an investor call, I better start that story very different. I'm going to try to reset their aperture to be more broad because I know what they just focused on was part of the next six or 12 months in terms of what they just had a conversation on. Ken WhiteWhen you when you're talking about developing that storyline, you mentioned the executive summary and writing one. What is that, and what role does that play? Neal BatraYeah, you know I think it's the quote-unquote answer. And it's you know a classic sort of structure which is you want to tell folks what you're about to tell them because in many cases there's real urgency with senior executives to sort of understand where are we. What are you telling me? And then, I can probe and dig on the elements that either I don't understand, or I want to learn more about, or I'm challenging. And so I need to actually get them the answer quickly and then you know again it's a conversation, and so I need to be a good participant in that conversation and make sure that I'm sort of honoring what the interested parties interested in. And so I can continue playing out my story, or I can sort of once you know the whole narrative we can probe in particular areas and spend energy there. And so I've had instances with executives we're told all sort of give the exects summary and tell them a quote-unquote answer and a three or four you know supportive points and action items that I think come with and we might spend the next hour on only one element. You know Neal, I buy the top line comment. I buy the three out of the four elements. Tell me more about why you're recommending x. Why do you believe that? What have you learned? Give me some context right, and then we'll engage in a discussion that may be more educational nature or maybe more like I don't know if I can sell that culturally or maybe I don't know technically if my organization can pull that off. So what would we do there? Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Neal Batra in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary School of Business. If you're looking to raise your game and give your career a boost. The Center for Corporate Education offers non-degree programs that help you become a more effective professional. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine for two consecutive years. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Deloitte's Neal Batra. Ken WhiteYou mentioned time, and I've had this question asked a lot of me, and my boss will only give me a minute. Or what if the client only gives me 20 no matter I'm prepared for 20? I've got a minute. How do I handle that? Does the summary come into play then? Neal BatraThat's exactly where the summary comes into play because if you know your cascading points, your organizing conclusion, the sort of next tier down of supporting content, and then the data that sits below that. Look, you should build tell a story in a minute or in an hour depending on how much time you have and how long you want to linger on those points so classic consulting common is this. Tell me how much time I have? And I'll get you an answer and I'll, and you know the way we tell that joke is I'll get you an answer now. The credibility of that answer may be. Give me a week versus a month versus a year. But you know that the narrative is the same. Point is if you give me a minute, I'll get you the story and the answer. It may not be satisfying from a detail perspective, but if all you've got is a minute, I can get the main points you know points across. Ken WhiteYeah. Neal BatraGive me five minutes; it'll be that much better. Ken WhiteRight. So from storyline, you move the slides, and are you doing most of your communication and presentations quote-unquote still on slides. Powerpoint. Neal BatraYou know I use the slides to make sure I'm prepared and my team's prepared, and we know what we want to say. So I use as a vehicle to actually work my thinking. And then depending on the audience, I might use slides, I might use a placemat, which is a single page that I could lay out a couple of slides or a couple of key thoughts and sort of have a single page. There's not a lot of flipping, and that sets up an environment and exchange that's you know more of a dialogue and a more comfortable back and forth dynamic. You know I've done meetings where I'll walk in now you know I'll put on the screen five bullets with each you know three or four words saying we're going talk about five topics and we'll have a whole conversation off the back of that. Again it's situation dependent. And in some cases, it's complexity dependent. All right, if you're dealing with a hypercomplex topic, oftentimes pictures and visuals help move that along. Ken WhiteSure. Neal BatraAnd allow folks to sort of follow the story. It also depends on your audience and how technical they are versus the ability for them to sort of be top-down and broad. Ken WhiteIn terms of whether or not you present a deck to the client. Do you have a preference? Neal BatraNo preference for me. You know I think as I said you know we're building the deck because that's that helps us get our thinking square. Ken WhiteYeah. Neal BatraAnd ultimately, when a client's paying for work, they need a deliverable that actually they walk away with. Ken WhiteRight. Neal BatraSo some type of content's gonna be handed over. But I've had you know projects where the final deliverables are a three or four-page Word document just summarizing in a narrative and in a memo type structure. So happy to do that as well you know and again as and as the world gets more technical and more digital and more analytic oriented you know I've seen deliverables recently where we'll hand over models or hand over an app or other sort of digital products will be the quote-unquote deliverable and answer versus a PowerPoint deck. Ken WhiteA question I often get is I have my deliverable, and it's a deck of 50 slides, but you know I presented it I put it together to be projected onto the wall. What do I do if I want them to read it? How do you how do you do that? Neal BatraYeah. So I think you need to write that document a bit differently, right. So the way you project or the way you'll build a PowerPoint presentation to a large audience and have that be more of a presentation you might have more whitespace, fewer words, more bullet oriented something that allows a large room to consume that information and feel like they can follow you versus a sit down read deck you might actually have more content in there. And you may bring more of your main supporting materials into the primary body as opposed to appendix. So I think the way you structure the document is a bit different; you know we mentioned today one of the classes that you know if you're at the C-Suite audience, and you've got more than ten slides you probably doing it wrong. Ken WhiteRight. Neal BatraRight. Ken WhiteFor that audience. Neal BatraFor that audience, right. For that audience for that situation, that's not to say your appendix may not be 50 slides. Ken WhiteYeah. Neal BatraRight. But the main thing I'm going to talk to you about are these ten ,and I think I can have the entire conversation on these ten, but I have the backup if I need it. Now you may go a level down in the organization, and frankly, you may have a 30 slide presentation same presentation, but you bring far more content into the body because that audience requires that level of detail, and they're gonna want to get to that level of specificity. So again, always situation-dependent. Ken WhiteAnd audience-driven. Neal BatraAnd audience-driven. Ken WhiteYeah. Neal BatraThat's right. Ken WhiteAnd then you finally you talked about delivery and the importance of delivery in the audience and listening and understanding. What are some of the things that you try to focus on when it comes to the delivery piece of it? Neal BatraI watch for body language frankly in response quite a bit because what I'm consistent trying to do is I'm trying to engage a change in action. All right, I'm looking for some movement on the back of this work, or the intellectual exercise is fine, but if we don't do things differently than we're all wasting our time. Right. So I'm looking for connection on the ideas, and both the verbals and nonverbals is that tells me something about whether this is actually motivating them to actually move in a new direction. And if we're getting there and if I'm seeing that you know I want to continue that that sort of dynamic and if I'm not seeing that I'm going to switch it up. Ken WhiteRight. Neal BatraAnd I'm going to do a sort of rapid assessment of me and my team trying to figure out is the issue with the content, the recommendation, or actually the story and how we're telling it. All right. And you have misses right you have dynamics where you walk in, and you think this is gonna be a high-level conversation and they want three levels of detail down. Ken WhiteMm-hmm. Neal BatraThat's a different has a different deal, and we didn't necessarily you know that's a four-hour conversation we have 30 minutes. So how do we manage that? Ken WhiteYeah. Neal BatraSo you know it's a tricky animal to sort of get this dynamic right, and you know you heard today we spent a lot of energy explaining to the room that the dynamics of the meeting and knowing those and being clear on those is critical. Right down to instances where we'll have some of my folks go into a room the night before I take pictures, so we're all crystal clear on how big is the room, where you know what's the shape of the room in terms of how folks are gonna be sitting, where will we be presenting? Will I be able to see the pages that I'm presenting to or do I need to know them cold. All right. That kind of dynamic in that preparation, I think, facilitates a more natural conversation, and you know gets you there. Ken WhiteMight be an unfair question there all of this is important. Is there one element that someone who's trying to become a better communicator connect with that audience a little better. Is there one place they should start or one area in which they can focus? Neal BatraYou know it's interesting. I got this question actually after one of the classes, and I think if I had to give you one thing, I think it's genuine. I think it's a genuine belief in what you're saying because I think people sense when you're putting on a show. I think people sense when you're not genuinely supportive of the recommendations you're making and when you yourself at a personal level are not vested in that. I think that comes across, and so the ability to bring your true self to the conversation, engage in a meaningful way in a way that's really honest about you, I think, is step one. Ken WhiteRight. Neal BatraObviously, you want the right answer, and you want to do the work correctly, and those sorts of things, but somebody who does all those things and lacks passion and a genuine sense of self when they bring it tends to fall flat even if everything else is right. Ken WhiteAnd I think that that genuineness leads to likability. Neal BatraYeah. Ken WhiteAnd then you've got a bit of a connection there. Neal BatraAnd then you've got a bit of a connection and look. This is a you know lots of conversations these days around technology and us it removing you know the human to human interaction, but you know I would argue that everything is more human at this point. A lot of the activities that used to pull us away from engaging I would argue you're going to see automation emerge around, and you're gonna get more collaboration of more of humans more people working hard problems. So I actually see it going in a very different way. Ken WhiteRight. Neal BatraYou know you always see those pictures of folks on subway platforms and everyone's heads down looking at their phone and everyone was like tsk tsk tsk. Look at the world, getting more disconnected. But then you see a picture from the 1930s everyone's on the train in their heads buried in newspaper. So like I don't know. I'm not really worried about it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Neal Batra. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business the Center for Corporate Education offers programs to help you reach your career goals, and the programs are taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Neal Batra. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a safe, restful, and happy holiday. Take care. |
![John Osborn](images/john-osborn-126-thumb.jpg)
![Prescriptions, pricing and policy with lab equipment](images/john-osborn-126-thumb.jpg)
John Osborn
Episode 126: December 1, 2019
Prescriptions, Pricing & Policy
Americans like their prescription drugs. According to WebMD, the number of prescriptions filled for Americans rose 85% between 1997 and 2016. That's four times the population growth during that same period. While many Americans count on their prescription drugs, many also have an unfavorable opinion of the pharmaceutical industry. John Osborn is a senior advisor with the Washington office of the international law firm Hogan Lovells. Osborn recently visited William & Mary as a guest of the Schroeder Center for Health Policy. He spoke with students about the pharmaceutical industry, drug pricing, and health policy issues. Afterwards, he spoke with us.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's leaders and subject matter experts from a variety of businesses and sectors. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Americans like their prescription drugs. According to Web M.D., the number of prescriptions filled for Americans rose 85 percent between 1997 and 2016. That's four times the population growth during that same period. While many Americans count on their prescription drugs, many also have an unfavorable opinion of the pharmaceutical industry. John Osborn is a senior advisor with the Washington office of the international law firm Hogan Lovells. He's spent over 20 years with leading life sciences and healthcare companies. Osborn recently visited William & Mary as a guest of the Schroeder Center for Health Policy. He spoke with students about the pharmaceutical industry, drug pricing, and health policy issues. Afterwards, he spoke with us. Here's our conversation with John Osborn, senior advisor, Hogan Lovells. Ken WhiteWell, John, welcome to William & Mary. Thanks for joining us this morning. John OsbornThanks, Ken. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteWhat brings you to campus this time? John OsbornWell, I went to William & Mary as an undergraduate. My daughter graduated in 2013, and I've become involved with a public policy program, I'm on the advisory board, and one of the professors here asked me if I would talk a little bit about health policy. And that led to a lecture yesterday. Ken WhiteYeah, and I attended it away. It was absolutely fascinating, and it's why we ask you to be on the podcast, so thank you for being here. I thought one of your first questions was interesting. You asked the audience, do you have a favorable opinion of the pharmaceutical industry? What kind of a response do you get from people when you ask that? John OsbornWell, you know most of the time, and perhaps you know not surprisingly it's not they're not a lot of hands that go up when you ask whether you have a favorable impression of the industry. And the specific topic that I was focused on yesterday had to do with the life sciences industry, the business model that that industry uses and the concerns that are headline issues right now, around the high price of drugs, and what hits me although I do kind of know that there's been a lot of negative headlines over the years and that their reputation is not great. But what hits me and what I then remind the audience is that you know at the same time that people are frustrated with what they see as a high price of prescription drugs. They also should remember that this is an industry that has over the last quarter-century made incredible breakthroughs and that we now have patients who are able to live and to live reasonably healthy and happy lives when they have HIV or rheumatoid arthritis or breast cancer or other kinds of cancers. The industry's played an instrumental role in doing that. So it's striking to me that given the role that it plays, which may not be well understood that you know people generally still have a largely unfavorable sense of it. Ken WhitePeople tend to it seems to me jump on the pricing issue, is there a pricing problem in the United States? John OsbornYou know it's there is a pricing problem in several respects. I think for me anyway there's a pricing problem you know to use the economist phrase in a microeconomic sense that even after President Obama's Affordable Care Act there are still many people in this country who don't have insurance, there are many people who have health insurance, but they might have a very high deductible, or they might have fulsome you know widespread coverage for drugs. There are people who really have they just have an illness where the particular remedy is so expensive that it is backbreaking. And so I don't deny any of that. I also think the industry has done some things that you know we can get into that in a little bit that hasn't helped its cause and has led to really hurt its reputation. But I would say at the same time I try to highlight if you look at the macroeconomic trends the larger trends over let's say 50 years you've been going back to the 1960s the number of prescriptions that are filled with low-cost generic drugs is strikingly high. It's close to 90 percent overall the amount of coverage notwithstanding what I just said about some people lacking coverage the vast majority of Americans do enjoy drug coverage whether that's through the relatively new Medicare Part D for retirees whether it's through Medicaid for low-income folks whether it's just through their employer-sponsored insurance plan. So most people do have coverage, and most of the expense of drugs is paid not out of pocket but by these plans. And the other thing I guess to keep in mind is that while there are headlines around these very expensive innovative new cures things like gene therapies and immunotherapy to treat certain kinds of cancers, I mean these are things that have taken decades to develop. They're often for a very limited number of patients. And so the price is high when it's first introduced. But they also represent truly extraordinary biomedical innovation. So I think if you think about all of those larger trends you would look at the big picture and say wow this isn't a this is not a bad picture. Ken WhiteInnovation costs money and in it. And is it difficult to get investors in the pharmaceutical arena compared to other businesses? John OsbornYeah, I mean, I think it is it remains a challenge for early-stage life sciences companies. You know a compound will often get developed perhaps with government funding at the NIH or with the university research grant, but it needs to be developed. It needs to be studied with patients in the clinic, and that's done by companies. I don't think that we should spend a lot of time shedding tears for the likes of Merck and Pfizer and the well-known old large companies, but I just saw this week a piece that's out with reference to a lot of the early-stage biotech companies some of whom themselves make these great discoveries all this stuff doesn't come from the Mercks and the Pfizers of the world and it is hard for early-stage companies to get funding. It's become harder in the last let's say 10 to 15 years just because of the rise of Silicon Valley, the opportunity to invest in software companies, perhaps even in-app companies for your phone. They don't have the regulation; they don't have the expense. And so if you're a venture capitalist and you're looking at where to put your money, it's not that we don't still have specialty Life Science venture firms investing in early-stage biotech, but you know dollars. You know there's a competition for those dollars, and it is difficult in relative terms, and so the specter if you will of a kind of you know relatively significant change that would limit the prices that companies can charge is probably going to have an adverse effect at least on the early-stage companies we're looking for capital. Ken WhiteAnd failure rate. I mean, this is this takes a while. Failure rates fairly high to get to something that's successful correct? John OsbornIt is part of the equation. I mean, that's also part of that dynamic about why is it hard to get money well because it's really expensive and it's really risky, and it's hard. I mean fundamentally even with all the advances and even with people referring to the 21st century as the biology century. We still don't know as much as you might think about the fundamentals of human biology is probably most evident when you study a neurodegenerative disorder like Alzheimer's which is afflicting so many but in big-picture terms, Ken, we've got let's say there's a thousand compounds that get identified in the laboratory is perhaps having some utility either inhibiting something or fostering something in the body in the biochemistry that would be useful as a drug. Only a small number of those are going to go into the clinic even into Phase 1 to see if there's a safety or toxicology issue. And from Phase 1, only a third of those make it to the large scale study that you need to get approval and only 10 percent actually become drugs, so you're probably going sort of on the order of you know a thousand to hundred to thirty to ten. And so if we could reduce the cost if we could get better at that process that that would be a very good thing. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with John Osborn senior adviser with Hogan Lovells in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. For the second straight year, Bloomberg Businessweek has ranked William & Mary as the number one MBA program in America for learning. The faculty who teach in the MBA program are the same faculty who teach in the programs offered by our Center for Corporate Education. If you're looking to raise your game, consider the center's upcoming programs. The Certificate in Business Management and Business Analytics for Strategic Leaders both programs taught by the faculty ranked number one for learning by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with John Osborn of Hogan Lovells. Ken WhiteYou mentioned generics. I think people assume there's a generic drug for every brand name drug. Is that close? Is that accurate? John OsbornThere are a lot of generics. I think of you know to the extent that you're a skeptic about the value of the industry. And that's certainly fair. One of the things that I try to emphasize to people is that as a society, we've kind of made this implicit bargain, which is to say you know we support and have patent protection and regulatory exclusivity for a brand new innovative drug. And after about 10 to 12 years, that exclusivity goes away, and generics are entered. And that's the bargain we make that you pay a lot in the early years. But the presumption is that there will be relatively cheap generics that will enter the market. And that presumption was then made more explicit in 1984 statute that Congressman Waxman and Senator Hatch develop, which gives specific incentives under the law for generics to challenge branded companies and to then enter the market with a limited amount of exclusivity themselves. You know all that said it is also true as you, as your question suggests is also true that there are a lot of off-patent branded drugs that still don't have generic competition. Sometimes they've had generic competition, but the company making the generic version doesn't stick with it. Sometimes there are supply problems and quality issues. The FDA identified under former commissioner Scott Gottlieb's tenure, which ended recently. This was one of the initiatives that I did you know I'd give credit to them for highlighting about 500 commonly used drugs that are off-patent and that do not enjoy generic competition. So it's a real opportunity. And it goes against this kind of fast hidden bargain that I describe this is the assumption that well OK we're going to kind of put up with these high prices for a while because we really do value biomedical innovation but also because we know down the road there's real consumer advantage in all these generics. Well, of course, that only happens in our system. You know if there is a company out there willing to step up and get the generic approval, so that's kind of what's going on in that space. Ken WhiteAre we taking you pointed out 1960 as sort of an interesting time to benchmark? Are we taking more prescriptions as Americans today versus 1960? John OsbornYes, absolutely. And of course, there's been extraordinary innovation there. There's so many new medicines, both biologics, and small molecule pharmaceuticals, then we had then. There are many more medicines. The overall rate I mean what's often cited as a genuine concern is the percentage of our overall health care spend that goes to drugs. And then the percentage of our total GDP that goes to health care. So the latter number is a real concern, and I think those because it's approaching 20 percent even after the ACA I would say this even with the amount of overall the aggregate spend on drugs there is a relationship between the investment as a society that we're making and the spending that we're making on drugs and the overall spend on health care for a long time just worth mentioning that the Congressional Budget Office which does a lot of good analysis on all kinds of things including health care spending by the Federal Government, of course, they came out I think it was at the end of 2012 CBO for the first time recognized formally. And one of their estimates that if you're evaluating different proposals to cap spending on drugs into you know effectively limit the use of drugs, you should also recognize the relationship between spending on medicines and spending on other health care hospitalizations and other services. And that kind of I guess that really in a way ratified what the industry has been saying forever, which is wait a minute. OK. We do things, but we're part of a larger ecosystem of health care, and we should think about the use of prescription drugs in the context of wellness and in the context of total spending on health care. Ken WhiteWhat's happening on Capitol Hill? What's being discussed? What are lawmakers trying to do in terms of pharmaceutical and drugs? John OsbornWell, the focus right now is on a bill H.R.3 that's in the House of Representatives that was introduced as you can tell by the number three introduced very very early in this Congress at the beginning of the year. And of course, we're heading into an election next year. And I guess by congressional standards in the calendar time is running short to do much. And there's also, of course, a continued division between the House of Representatives and the Senate but all that said H.R.3 is a bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi supports. And it's really been labeled the speaker's bill although there are a number of people that are in favor of it. There are some interesting provisions, one of which would seek to undo the prohibition in Obamacare that doesn't allow the government to negotiate directly with drug companies to reduce their prices. This would, in fact, allow that, and it would direct HHS the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate for up to 250 pricing on up to 250 drugs. I think there's a target now of 35, which I guess doesn't sound like a lot of drugs; it's targeting the very high price drugs to make sure we're getting good value for those. It would also buy some mechanism, apply those government negotiated prices to private-sector plans that qualify. And then there are different aspects of it to sort of make this work. There are there is a debate going on as to if companies decide that they're not interested in negotiating. Do we compel them by forcing a discount upon them? Do we have reference pricing, and other provision would actually look at a basket of prices for drugs that are available in this in half a dozen other countries outside the U.S. and would reference our price to them? And there are provisions around limiting the amount of price increase that you could put on on a drug and having that be rebated back as you now do under Medicaid. So you know the industry, I think, is genuinely concerned about some of these provisions. I think it understands that they need to be responsible. And there have been a number of industry initiatives themselves about you know limiting price increases. There have also been industry initiatives around value-based contracting. Some companies have started to negotiate provisions in which if a drug isn't effective. If it turns out that it doesn't work as intended that the price would be refunded. So it's not that the industry is insensitive to the Ferber and the political winds out there we'll see if some of these things get traction. But you know my sense is you're probably going to have to wait until the results of the election in November 2020 to really see how this plays out. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with John Osborn of Hogan Lovells. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is offering programs to help you raise your game. The programs are taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty ranked number one in the nation for learning by Bloomberg Businessweek. For information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, John Osborn, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Hester Peirce](images/hester-peirce-125-thumb.jpg)
![The SEC with sec connections](images/hester-peirce-125-thumb.jpg)
Hester Peirce
Episode 125: November 15, 2019
The SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission was established eighty-five years ago to regulate the commerce in stocks, bonds, and other securities. The mission of the SEC is three-fold: To protect investors, to maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and to facilitate capital formation. The SEC is led by five commissioners, each nominated by the President of the United States, with consent by the U.S. Senate. Hester Peirce is one of the commissioners. Peirce recently visited the William & Mary Law School as a guest of the Center for the study of Law and Markets. Before speaking with students, she sat down with us to discuss the SEC, her role as commissioner, leader, and communicator, and how she became known as Crypto-Mom.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. The Securities and Exchange Commission was established 85 years ago to regulate the commerce in stocks, bonds, and other securities. The mission of the SEC is threefold to protect investors, to maintain fair orderly and efficient markets, and to facilitate capital formation. The SEC is led by five commissioners, each nominated by the President of the United States with consent by the U.S. Senate. Hester Peirce is one of the commissioners. Peirce recently visited the William & Mary Law School as a guest of the Center for the Study of Law and Markets. Before speaking with students, she sat down with us to discuss the SEC, her role as commissioner leader and communicator, and how she became known as crypto Mom. Here's our conversation with SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce. Ken WhiteHester, thank you so much for being here. Before we start our conversation, you normally like to give a disclaimer before we get rolling, and please, by all means, do that. Hester PeirceAll right, I do and thank you for the chance to be here. It's wonderful to have the chance to have a conversation. The things that I say represent my own views and not necessarily those of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or my fellow commissioners. Ken WhiteGreat, well again, thanks so much. Well speaking of the commissioners and what you do when someone meets you if they knew nothing about the SEC, what would you tell them the organization does? Hester PeirceWell, I've had that experience a lot. So first I have to say it doesn't do football which disappoints most people, but then I usually tell people it regulates the stock markets. And it regulates financial professionals who give you advice about investing. Ken WhiteAnd your role as a commissioner? Hester PeirceSo there are five commissioners, one of whom is the chairman and I'm not the chairman. So as commissioners, we really have purview over everything the SEC does in the sense that we vote on enforcement actions, and we vote on rulemakings. And we have oversight over what the agency is doing though the staff reports directly to the chairman. So given that we have broad voting powers, we sort of have to be aware of what the agency is doing in lots of different areas. Ken WhiteHow do the commissioners work together? What's that like? Hester PeirceWell, an interesting facet of that is that we have a Sunshine Act, which prevents more than two of us from talking about substantive things at the same time unless we're doing it in a public forum. So we tend to try to avoid being together more than two of us together at a time which makes interesting dynamics. You have to, you know, talk to one person, and then you take that, and you talk to someone else. But we have very cordial relationships across the commission. An interesting thing about an independent regulatory agency like the SEC is that we're politically balanced. And so there's always going to be diversity of viewpoint on the commission. And I think that's really valuable and one of the reasons I love being on a commission because I really like the back and forth and I like hearing the different perspectives. And I think it leads to better policy stability across time. And really when you think about the job that we're doing. Sure, you're going to have different views on how things might best be done. But we all agree that the capital markets are vital to our economic health and to the prosperity of Americans and people all across the world frankly. So we're all committed to that same general objective. Ken WhiteInterest the Sunshine Law never occurred to me. How interesting. Yeah, and why not. Hester PeircePeople really hate it. Ken WhiteHow about that. Yeah definitely affects the way you interact and communicate. Hester PeirceI shouldn't say hate it, but I mean it does change the dynamic. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. You mentioned the staff reports to the commissioner is that the 4000 employees you mean that are across the nation in the various offices? Hester PeirceYes, so they report up to the chairman. He has the ability to kind of set the agenda at the agency and definitely takes input from the rest of us. But ultimately it's his call what goes on the agenda. Ken WhiteDo you interact with those folks? Hester PeirceWith the staff, yeah. Yes, all the time, yeah. Ken WhiteThat's a lot of people spread way over across the country. How do you do that? Hester PeirceWell, so partly we've got great video technology, we've got great ability to communicate that way. And so when we have meetings, for example, to vote on enforcement actions, you can have people from all across the country participating in those meetings. But I also spend a lot of time on the road and often we'll stop in and visit one of the regional offices. And so I've gotten to know people that way to talk to people on the phone a lot. Ken WhiteSo my guess is most 7-, 8-, 9-year-olds are not growing up thinking when I do grow up, you know I want to work for the SEC. What were you like as a kid? What did you want to do when you were little? Hester PeirceSo oddly, I wanted to be a securities analyst. That was one of the first. You know we all cycle through lots of things we want to be. I wanted to be a professional flute player, but I didn't play the flute very well. But I loved tracking stocks on graph paper. I would graph out I get my dad's Wall Street Journal, and I track every day, and I loved that. So I thought oh being a securities analyst would be really interesting, but I ended up at the SEC instead. Ken WhiteYeah, but it's in there that if you were there and there. Oh, that's great. What do you like about your role? Hester PeirceI love the ability to weigh in on these big policy questions and think about ways that we can make our capital markets, even more, the envy of the world than they are. So what really drives me is the belief that there's unlocked talent in our country. And so part of the way do you unlock talent is you get money to fund people who have good ideas, and then those people build businesses they hire other people. And so we can see that you know I'm from the Midwest and we can see that in lots of places there's a lot of growth going on, but there are other places where there isn't as much growth. And what can we do? It's not because people don't have good ideas and it's not because people aren't hard-working. It's because we haven't done a good enough job building the infrastructure the capital markets infrastructure for them to be able to contribute what they have to contribute to society and, therefore, to do better themselves. So that's really what gets me up in the morning and gets me excited about my job. Ken WhiteThere's got to be something that's a little frustrating or something you necessarily don't look forward to. What aspect of the job is that? Hester PeirceYeah, certainly, there are frustrations, so I come at the job as a believer that regulation government regulation isn't necessarily the first and best answer to every problem that we see in society. So when I see a problem I say all right is the market solving that problem already. If so, maybe we don't need to do anything if it's not, and the problem's not going to go away on its own. Let's do something, but let's do it in a way that we're taking into account the unintended consequences of what we're doing. Because often, government regulation can have really really harmful effects. And so I want us to try to game through what those are in advance. So one of the frustrations for me, of course, is that once you get a rule on the books, things can change a lot, and it's really hard to undo that rule. And so we end up in a situation where innovation is leaps and bounds ahead of where the regulation is. And then people who are trying to innovate come to us and they say we've got this great way to serve people and we can't do it because of your rules. So one recent example is, I was talking to a big financial company that wanted to communicate with its clients using all kinds of very creative and modern technologies that we would expect them to use. You know mobile phones, virtual reality type things. And so they're thinking about how to do this, and then they're thinking it's going to run up against an SEC rule. And that's a shame because obviously the investors I know most of them would rather get their disclosures in a mobile way rather than paper. And so we need to move the regulatory mountains to allow that to happen. And then I think the firms will go ahead and innovate. Ken WhiteBut that takes time. Right. I mean, it's just nature of the beast sort of. Hester PeirceIt does, but I think people on the investors don't really understand that because they're getting every other aspect of their life, they're getting served in the way they want to be served. But because the financial industry is so regulated, they can't be. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Hester Peirce of the Securities and Exchange Commission in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. As a leader, your ability to create capacity for innovation in your organization relies on getting the right data, interpreting the results, and making the right decisions. Well, the Center for Corporate Education is offering the three-day Business Analytics for Strategic Leaders Program in Washington, D.C., in March. The program is designed for forward-thinking executives with the responsibility to implement strategy and grow the business. To learn more about Business Analytics for Leaders, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Hester Peirce of the S.E.C. Ken WhiteNow you had to be confirmed, you what you went through the process, and most Americans have spent maybe 10 minutes watching C-SPAN and watching that and saying Thank God I didn't have to go through that for my job. What's that process like? Hester PeirceSo I had to go through it twice because I didn't. I failed the first time. So you know it's an interesting process, and I think it's a really important process because the Senate's job, it's the president's job to nominate, and then the Senate's job to advise and consent. And so they really need to spend some time with you as both in that public forum, but also you meet with some senators before that happens or after. And I think it's really important for them. They have important views. And when I'm in the seat I'm in now, my directives come from legislation that Congress writes, and so they want to understand. Hey, is Hester going to put this legislation into practice? And if so, what is she going to be thinking about as she does it? So, all in all, I think it's a really important process, and I appreciate that they were willing to take the time with me. Ken WhiteHow do you prepare for something like that? That's not a normal job interview. Hester PeirceYeah, I mean you spend a lot of time thinking about the different issues that are facing the agency in some ways you're limited in what you can do because you can't prejudge issues and I can tell you this certainly now that I'm in the role I'm in. You often don't have all the facts at hand. You might know an issue from one perspective, but when you get into the agency, you see, oh, we've gotten all kinds of different views from all kinds of different people we really need to think about all of these. So that makes the job fun, but it makes it much harder to know what you're going to do on the outside. Once you get on the inside. Ken WhiteI think people who know you follow you are aware of what you and your associates do would probably label you as a communicator. You write you're on social media. You give talks. Where did that come from? You're very transparent. And many leaders are not. Why do you embrace that way of communicating? Hester PeirceWell I think it's important for us to I mean we work for the American people and so if we can communicate with them, we should. Now obviously, there are limits on all of our time. And so there's a tremendous amount of reading and meeting with folks internally and externally to try to work through things. So but we all I think try to get out there and meet people and talk to people, and you know frankly I know that some people are going to look at what I'm doing and they're going to say we think Hester is not doing a very good job and I think that's great. I like to hear that feedback from people about what I can be doing better. And so I figure if I'm transparent, it's easier for people to tell me that they don't think I'm right. That's not always fun to hear. But I think it's important for someone in my job. Ken WhiteYou are out there in terms of talking today you're at William & Mary Law School going to talk to some students you've addressed many different audiences. Is there a certain message you try to get across a lesson or a goal? Hester PeirceWell I love talking to students because I think often especially when they're in law school they're thinking about their career it's an exciting time of their life. And I love getting them to think about hey maybe there's a career for me in securities law whether it's at the SEC, or whether it's in industry, or at a law firm working on securities issues. But also just more generally thinking about the value our capital markets play in their lives now and in their future lives and thinking about how they can maybe contribute to that. A lot of law students are very idealistic, which is wonderful, and I want to show them you know part of that idealism can really be worked out through the capital market system, which is can be a great transformer of people's lives as we talked about before. And so this idea that you can radically improve people's lives using the capital markets as a message. I like to convey. Ken WhiteThose who you have a bit of a fan club. They've tabbed you with the name crypto mom, but that's cool. I assume you like that. Hester PeirceI like it because I'm not a mom. I wasn't a mom until I became crypto mom, and you know I figure hey now I've got a lot more kids than I ever thought I would. Ken WhiteHow did it happen? Hester PeirceOh, I wrote a dissent about we were considering an exchange-traded product that was based on an underlying Bitcoin underlying. And I wrote a dissent. And so they deemed me, crypto mom, because of that. But I, you know, I think the broader point is just the point I was making before we're sometimes pretty slow when it comes to innovation. And we're dealing with a generation that really has some interesting ideas about how to solve problems. And so let's let them do that in a way that's consistent with our regulatory framework and protects investors but also allows them to do that. And we've been slow on that front at the SEC. Ken WhiteWho are your role models in terms of leadership and public service? Hester PeirceWell I mean I think there are so many good models out there and so I look to everyone from you know my father to professors I had in law school to people I work with at the SEC who have been so dedicated have been there for some of them had been there for years. Others have come through and been there for a short time but just have been really influential. I even you know I enjoy working with Chairman Clayton, and it's been such a pleasure to work with someone who's so committed to making sure the agency works effectively, carefully, and just methodically through issues that have been on our agenda for a long time. So you know I really respect and look up to that to that in him as well. It's really a difficult job that he's in, and I just it's been a pleasure to work with him. So he's one of my role models. Ken WhiteI often ask our guests because leadership & business is the podcast. How much passion do you have to have for your work to be effective? Hester PeirceWell, I think that's true for any job you really need to be passionate about it, and you need to see it in the bigger picture cause obviously we all just have a small role to play. But there is a bigger picture that we're trying to accomplish, and if we each see our little role as being part of that, I think it's exciting, and it makes you want to go to work and try to do it as well as you can and try to contribute from your own background and experiences. I mean, I think that's part of the beauty of having diverse participation cause then you've got people coming from all different perspectives and bringing what they have to the table, and that's makes us more effective. Ken WhiteAnd that's our conversation with Hester Peirce. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is offering the Business Analytics for Strategic Leaders program in March in Washington, D.C. It's taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. For information regarding that and our other programs, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Hester Peirce, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Anshuman Vohra](images/anshuman-vohra-124-thumb.jpg)
![Entrepreneurial Success Part 2 with person celebrating](images/anshuman-vohra-124-thumb.jpg)
Anshuman Vohra
Episode 124: November 1, 2019
Entrepreneurial Success - Part 2
If you were with us for our last episode, you hear the story of entrepreneur Anshuman Vohra and how he founded Bulldog Gin which became the fourth best-selling gin in the world. After selling Bulldog Gin in 2017, Vohra was trying to write the next chapter of his entrepreneurial life. That chapter is on its way to a happy ending. Today on the podcast, we share the second of a two-part conversation with Vohra. He tells us about the events that led to his new venture - a premium certified organic beverage called Halo Sport. He also shares lessons learned and advice for other entrepreneurs.
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Anshuman Vohra: Entrepreneurial Success Part 2 TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. If you were with us for our last episode, you heard the story of entrepreneur Anshuman Vohra and how he founded Bulldog Gin, which became the fourth best selling gin in the world. Well, after selling Bulldog Gin in 2017, Vohra was trying to write the next chapter of his entrepreneurial life. That chapter is on its way to a happy ending. Today on the podcast, we share the second of a two-part conversation with Vohra. He tells us about the events that led to his new venture, a premium certified organic beverage called Halo Sport. He also shares lessons learned and advice for other entrepreneurs. Here's our conversation with Anshuman Vohra, founder of Bulldog Gin and Halo Sport. Anshuman VohraAfter we sold Bulldog. I don't know what to do, and so I didn't have a whole lot to do other than that. I kind of went from being this very intense entrepreneur who worked all the time to having nothing to do. So I just said what is it one thing I wanted to do after college that I didn't get to do. Back in the day, it was kind of a rite of passage for all the second tier or third tier tennis players like me to go to Europe and bum around for a couple of years after college just play clip tennis. Really just hang out and play tennis once a while. My parents were having or not having any of that, and so I said hey I moved to Barcelona to play kind of the over 35 senior tennis circuit. It's a bit of a mild indignity to be called a senior at just over the age of 35, but I put my ego aside and started playing tennis there every day. Didn't set my alarm at all just woke up when the sun hit my face was on the courts from 10 to 12 every day and did nothing but play tennis and have a good time, and you know it was pretty amazing. And one day on the tennis court I, sometime that summer it must have been July of 2017 it was 2 p.m. It is 90 degrees, and I've not played tennis outdoors. 2 p.m. 90 you weather since my days in Williamsburg, let me tell you. And so I was significantly dehydrated. I was losing to some guy I should not have been losing to so what I did or any half smart tennis player does when they're losing I when the other guy gets momentum I took a 10 minute injury time out went over to think I grabbed like a Gatorade or Powerade, red Powerade or something and I think I felt worse after drinking it because it's a sugar crash you know. And I just remember thinking I was like, How is it that I used to drink this in college? I think I don't know if you still are, but we used to be sponsored by either Gatorade or Powerade, and I said why is it that 20 years later it's still the same. These sports drinks. Whereas the world how we hydrate, how we eat, how we drink, how we work out most importantly is totally different. People want healthier fresher now. Back in college, the workouts were bench press squats and bicep curls. I didn't know anybody who does that as their elusive workout. Now it's boutique fitness. People are really focused on what they put in their body. There's a societal war on sugar. So kind of later on in 2017 I had the unfortunate experience of slipping on the tennis court fractured my ankle had to have surgery back home in New York and so I was immobilized for three months. Let me tell you. Being immobilized for three months gives a lot of time to think about what you want to do next. So I put my tennis plans on hold for a while, and I started conceptualizing my next venture, which would be kind of the next generation of hydration. Gatorade and Powerade kind of dominated the 80s and 90s and mid-2000s you had package coconut water that came out people said Ken WhiteYeah, that's right. Anshuman Vohralet's be healthier quote-unquote, and then kind of 2013 2014 people said well-packaged coconut water has the same carbs and sugar content is Gatorade and Powerade even though it's quote-unquote natural. And people started just drinking like enhanced waters that had water with electrolytes. So I said What is the next generation hydration look like. And I didn't want to do a water brand because it's very it's impossible to differentiate anymore in water, but there is an abundance of opportunity in the hydration space. I said, what would I want the next generation of hydration look like, i.e., what is missing from those enhanced waters or from those coconut waters or from the traditional sports drinks? And I noticed that at each inflection point in the movement away from sports drinks to coconut water and then from coconut water to enhance waters coincided with increased awareness and education on the part of the consumers. So perhaps the biggest tailwind we're riding at the moment is a societal war on sugar. So the functional thing that we're trying to solve at the moment is to keep people hydrated and hydrate more efficiently and effectively than water. So Halo, in a nutshell, is certified organic using organic lemon juice base. We don't have a coconut water base, so you don't have the polarizing coconut water flavor, and you don't have the sugar content that comes from coconut water. We have more electrolytes than Gatorade. We have two grams of sugar naturally occurring in a bottle. Only 10 calories and only two grams of carbs per bottle. And we have no color as you in Halo you seeing it's just the color of lemons. I mean, we don't have any artificial colors. Plus, we have antioxidants vitamins, so I said you can get all of that in one bottle. There's no need to have a bottle of Gatorade anymore plus one water to make for your vitamins plus one water to make you smart. You have a Halo that gives you all of that in a beautiful package with a great name and only three dollars on the shelf. Ken WhiteAnd it still goes down easy. Anshuman VohraSuper as you taste, it's super easy. You don't have to combine it with water. It doesn't have that's that heavy, syrupy taste doesn't have that polarizing coconut water taste, and in my humble opinion, it tastes better than water. There are times in a day. So we're going for all-day hydration, and one of things about hydration is people don't eat you need to be hydrated the hour of day you're playing tennis but also the remaining twenty-three hours a day. And I found the American consumer doesn't want to drink water all day myself included. I'm happy to drink water, but there's ways to hydrate that taste better and more effectively. But you no longer and I can't say this strongly enough need that exorbitant sugar content to be hydrated. That's not helping you get hydrated. It's the electrolytes the antioxidants vitamins that are helping you get hydrated. So what we're focused on is all-day hydration. The next generation all-day hydration that's Halo, so we started selling in retail in June of 2019 in New York, and we're available on Amazon, and our plan is to kind of expand nationally next year. Ken WhiteFantastic. So Bulldog, you obviously liked gin. You knew it that was very important to you and Halo. You're an athlete, so there's a lot of passion here. Is that important for an entrepreneur to be passionate about that product? Anshuman VohraYeah, I don't know any if there is one thing that you know I met entrepreneurs are considered super smart. Others who are considered super hard workers. Others who are considered lucky. But I can tell you every single one of them is passionate because you cannot go through the amount of pain that you do on a daily basis unless there's some higher force some higher calling. You know people often now that you obviously some people say some entrepreneurs may say they do it for the money others for the prestige others cause they hate their day job. To me, it's about the passion. I saw something wrong with the way the world was in gin before, and I said I have a high conviction level that it can be done better. And herewith Halo the lights were blinking bright red and like you know why is it that 20 years later there is a duopoly on the way people hydrate and its science has shown us and the way people eat and drink today is so different. I don't know anybody who drank the drinks or usual sports drinks today who says oh great I'm so excited to have a ton of sugar and this artificial green and blue color right. I mean, I know anybody who says that so that passion is really my driving force. Anything I do having that passion and let me tell you that passion. It's all-consuming, and you kind of need that as an entrepreneur, in my opinion. Ken WhiteAthletics, too, I mean, as an athlete, there's a lot of similarities. Did that did you being brought up as an athlete. And the drive to win and at tennis too. There's no teammates that's all on you, so that had to drive you. Anshuman VohraThere's a great irony there. Tennis is an individual sport. I've always been a pretty competitive guy. You know coming to really living alone starting the age of 14 really you learn how to toughen up pretty quickly. I will tell you though that being a tennis player at William & Mary specifically beyond the bond that the students here form it's a smaller college it's kind of ensconced in a small town and a great part of the social life is not just going out to party, but it's hanging with highly literate and intellectual folks like yourselves with high-quality backgrounds. I learned how to be a team player on the tennis team, which is ironic for an individual sport. But you'd never whether you were the first match that finished or the last match everyone stood there and watched you. You’re rooting for your teammates no matter what, whether it's raining or shining, you would travel together on these buses. I remember our allowance for meals was ten dollars for dinner that we were splurging. Hopefully that things have changed now for the students today. But being a college athlete at William & Mary taught me the teamwork skills that you know I kind of use every day today. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Anshuman Vohra in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. Regardless of where you are on your career journey, if you're looking to accelerate your progress and give your career a boost. The Center for Corporate Education delivers programs that prepare you for greater responsibility, whether it's leadership, communication, strategy, analytics, managerial accounting. We offer programs for professionals who want to do more and be more, and the programs are taught by William & Mary's outstanding MBA faculty. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the founder of Bulldog Gin and Halo Sport Anshuman Vohra. Ken WhiteYou said it's obviously not a clear and easy road being an entrepreneur whether or whether it doesn't work or it does work resilience. How do you stay up? What you're what keeps you going? Anshuman VohraPassion and the belief that despite I mean, I kind of know that I'm going up against multi-billion dollar companies that control distribution that you know can destroy us if they wanted to in a second right. But it's the belief that no matter what happens that you're going to make it happen. You know ultimately if you view things, people always say you know this is this a matter of life and death to you I said no. It's far more important than that. You know this is my reputation on the line. I kind of want to make sure that I like doing that job well done. I don't like losing, and I know that I'm pretty convinced that with Halo just like always with Bulldog before, if enough people try it and are able to buy it that we'd do pretty well. So I think same thing with Halo. I love the hustle. Maybe that's the New York in me says you know I'm going to make it happen against all odds so. Ken WhiteSo is failure not an option? Is that sort of the Anshuman VohraThat's a cliche that a lot of people say I think about that. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that. I just think about how empty I would feel if I didn't succeed. And that is a pretty big driving force, you know. But I like the victory doing Bulldog was a life-altering outcome to say that I could do the fourth largest premium in the world is still sometimes I have to think about that. That's pretty cool to say that I want the same thing with Halo. I want to be able to say that you know, like when Julius Caesar, when he came back to Rome once and said Veni, Vidi, Vici, I'd like to be able to say that for Halo as well. Ken WhiteYou said when we first started talking about your first few years out of school that first job that it sounds like you got lucky you got. You had a good foundation there. That first job was important to your success, and what you learned there it seems. Anshuman VohraYeah, I'm happy I didn't go to med school like Mom and Dad would have wanted and going to JP Morgan being an analyst and then mergers and acquisitions group. I'll tell you it's the best education. I would say the best education one could have in a practical sense. After four years at William & Mary taught me the skills I use till today to write a business plan to think strategically when one company buys another or when one company wants to break itself up. What are the reasons why would the CEO want to do that? When would a CEO want to do that? But most importantly, I sold a lot of companies when I was a J.P. Morgan, and I got to see entrepreneurs who had an idea and had a high conviction level, and so no, I think make that idea into reality. Nobody ever taught me in college that that was a skill I never thought that I wish there was a class that taught me that that was a skill that you could make happen. But I thought that these guys were just ludicrous and so crazy and they had this entrepreneurial zeal that just they were so relentless that they made it happen I said I was wonder if I was smart enough or had the work ethic to do it, but it was that education here at William & Mary coupled with the very very very transferable skill sets I learned in JP Morgan as an investment banker in general that continue to help me. Ken WhiteYou've met some students today at William & Mary. I think you'll meet some more after you and I are done talking. There are a number of students, and this is the we're seeing this across the university students in the United States who say I want to be an owner of a business. I want to be self-employed at some point. The research shows that there's an uptick there. What kind of advice do you have for that 20-year-old, right? Who thinks I'm not sure what my dream is, but I want to be that successful entrepreneur. Anshuman VohraWell, first of all, I love living. I love being a citizen of I love living in a country where you know the American Dream or being an entrepreneur is a possibility. Let me just start off by saying that there's many countries in the world that don't offer, and I love living in a country where there is not a stigma attached to failure that you can't get out of where in some ways people say you failed once. That does mean you can't do it again. So when I'm a as I've mentioned earlier fervent believer in the American dream and so I'd say for those who want to do it like all things. I got seduced in entrepreneurship by seeing sort of the folks who were successful hold and lifting up the trophy right, so to speak. Great because I'm the type of guy who for 10 minutes of glory will work for 10 years arduously to make it happen or assiduously I should say to make it happen. But there's a lot that goes into it that people don't get to see. I wish Bulldog was all just partying and hanging, or Halo is just you know drinking this and playing tennis. But there's a lot more that goes into it. So I'll tell you that you'd really have to be introspective before you start. And I would ask yourself how you feel whether you're a man or woman wanting to start a business. How do you feel when there's a stressful situation in your personal life? How do you deal with, are you somebody who's calm? Do you get overstressed? do you. Are you unable to sleep? How do you deal with stressful situation because you're going to find those occurring multiple times a day? So you have to want to understand. Do you have the agility mentally and physically to do kind of one get beyond that, or do you get in your own way, and that's only you can answer that question? Secondly, I would say that you know a 20-year-old wants to be an entrepreneur with few exceptions. That's not a good idea. I think there's a lot of maturity and life experiences you need in your 20s before you become it. In many ways. Listen, I had six years as a banker before I became an entrepreneur. In retrospect, I wish I'd had 10, but the entrepreneur calling there's no there's no formula right it doesn't show up the day you're ready you go to war with the army you have not the one you want right. So I would say getting some work experience is a really good idea. Working in a team understanding cause chances are as an entrepreneur, you have to deal with that. I'd say one thing I did right of the many mistakes I made was I waited till the conditions for success were right in that I held down my banking job for as long as possible to make sure we'd raise the money for Bulldog before I left and started. That was really both strategic thinking but also out of necessity; I wouldn't have been able to support my life with no salary pay rent etc. And so I knew I needed to make sure that everything was ready that I left banking on a Friday and Monday morning I started you know Bulldog, which is what I did. There's also a pretty big contrarian bet to leave investment banking in 2006 that was not many people left in '05 '06 '07. But I kind of you know Sinatra said you know he did it my way and there's enough things in my life where I said I want to take the road less traveled so I would say make sure the conditions for success are right. People get seduced by you know the success stories etc. which is great. Right. We live in a country where those happen all the time, and we're blessed. Everyone has a shot at that, but I would take your time to think about what it is you want to do and what is it that you're solving and is your what you're offering so unique and so distinctive that you'll be able to get it out there and perhaps the other thing if you're developing a product and/or a service for that matter. I was always told people were like hey if you build it they will come. I was like I was I was like great let me just create the greatest bottle of gin or let me create the best hydration beverage ever. With conviction, I believe I've done that. However, the problem then becomes I wish I'd known that was only 1 percent of the battle that getting it out onto market. Getting it distributed in all these places get gaining awareness like ninety-nine percent of the battle nobody had ever told me that. And so you have to realize that just creating the party is one element of it but then getting it out there and managing the team to do that at the right time it's a pretty harrowing process. You really really really really really have to love what you do and have the passion for it. Otherwise, it's very difficult to succeed because, as an entrepreneur, the highs are the highest highs that you will ever have in your life. There is not a day in banking. My greatest day in banking was one-thousandth of my greatest day as an entrepreneur. That being said, my lowest day in banking. I would much rather had that than you know the four days a week that I was super low as an entrepreneur when nothing seems to be working right. You're going against society. You're going against all the forces of structure that have existed for decades, and somehow, you're foolish or arrogant enough to believe that you can make it happen. However, that passion keeps you going. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Anshuman Vohra. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. Whether it's for you or your team. The Center for Corporate Education and it's William & Mary MBA faculty can design and deliver a program that helps you raise your game, fill the gaps, and advance your organization's goals. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Anshuman Vohra. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Anshuman Vohra](images/anshuman-vohra-123-thumb.jpg)
![Entrepreneurial Success Part 1 with person celebrating](images/anshuman-vohra-123-thumb.jpg)
Anshuman Vohra
Episode 123: October 16, 2019
Entrepreneurial Success - Part 1
He's an entrepreneur with an interesting story that has a successful outcome. Anshuman Vohra founded Bulldog Gin. As CEO, he quickly took it from startup to the fourth best-selling gin in the world and the fastest-growing gin. Bulldog is distributed in over 100 countries. An agreement in 2017 led to an eventual sale of the brand, but that's not the end of Vohra's entrepreneurial story. After the sale of Bulldog Gin, he has moved on to disrupt the world of sports drinks and hydration by creating and launching another new product: A premium certified-organic beverage called Halo Sport. Vohra joins us on the podcast to talk about his entrepreneurial journey. Today we'll hear part 1 of his story as he tells us about Bulldog Gin.
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Anshuman Vohra: Entrepreneurial Success - Part 1 TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. He's an entrepreneur with an interesting story, that has a successful outcome, Anshuman Vohra founded Bulldog Gin. As CEO, he quickly took it from startup to the fourth best selling gin in the world and the fastest-growing gin. Bulldog is distributed in over 100 countries. An agreement in 2017 led to an eventual sale of the brand. But that's not the end of Vohra's entrepreneurial story. After the sale of Bulldog Gin, he has moved on to disrupt the world of sports drinks and hydration by creating and launching another new product, a premium certified organic beverage called Halo Sport. Vohra joins us on the podcast to talk about his entrepreneurial journey. Today we'll hear part one of his story as he tells us about Bulldog Gin. Here's our conversation with Bulldog Gin's founder Anshuman Vohra. Ken WhiteAnshuman, thank you for joining us. You've had a busy day already. Thanks for sitting down with us and sharing some of your time. Great to meet you. Anshuman VohraGreat to be here, Ken. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteNice to be back on campus? Anshuman VohraVery much so. I always love coming back here. Ken WhiteYeah. What were your days like at William & Mary? Anshuman VohraWell, I'm a William & Mary class of 2000 and finance major, and I got to tell you I was just giving a talk to Professor Herrington Bryce's class. The exact class I took 20 years ago. You know it doesn't particularly excite me to say that I took it 20 years ago, but my days I played D1 college tennis. I had the privilege of representing William & Mary in tennis. A lot more buildings nowadays and the kids have a lot more laptops and more communications stuff, but the ambiance is not really changed, there's the air of camaraderie. And I say the fall spirit, fall is in the air, but you know when it's 90 degrees it doesn't feel like fall. Let me tell you I woke up in New York this morning it was 51 degrees and I come here. But I will tell you whenever I come here, when I speak to people like you, Ken or Dean Pulley, it reminds me of the reason I went to William & Mary, and I remain such a part of the community. There's an element of love that you feel for William & Mary folks that is only apparent to people once they graduate. And I'll tell you when it when we get into later in my life where the different touchpoints have been that I've been very grateful for it. So glad to be back. Ken WhiteYeah, great. You know one of the first things I heard when I came here, and you and I were just talking before we started recording this is my sixth year. I had a colleague say you know it's an honor to work here, and most people truly feel that way. So it does it's a special place, yeah. Anshuman VohraTotally with you on that. Ken WhiteYeah absolutely. So you've got a couple great stories. The Bulldog Gin story, how do you even start that? Can you share it with us and that whole incredible ride? Anshuman VohraYou kind of sound like my dad when I first told him I wanted to launch my own brand of gin. So a quick primer on me. My father was a career diplomat, and so I spent the first kind of 14 years of my life between Vietnam, Nigeria, D.C., Tunisia, and India. And then, I moved to Florida for high school came to Virginia. I came to William & Mary in 1996, graduated in 2000, and you know kind of late 90s kind of my junior year and senior year I realized I wasn't gonna be a pro tennis player, which was sad. I kind of knew deep down it was not going to happen, and it's never an easy point to accept when you've been playing tennis four hours a day for your whole life. And so at that point in time, the smartest folks went to Silicon Valley, the heart of the tech bubble, and the second smartest went to Wall Street. And you know I had traditional Indian parents who were like you know you should be a doctor, and I was like Mom and Dad I feel like we've we have a monopoly on medicine and engineering. I'd like to expand beyond that. And they're like well, why do you want to be a bank teller? I said no, mom there's other things that happen in J.P. Morgan besides being a bank teller. I want to be an investment banker, and so they finally became comfortable with that. And it was a great training ground, Ken. I did MMA, I was mergers and acquisition analysts at J.P. Morgan for three years, and in three years, another couple of smaller investment boutique investment banks. Learned a ton about how to analyze companies value. Companies think strategically about what they have to do and why they do what they do and when to sell when not to sell when to buy. But ever since I came here at the age of 14 I always kind of I've been a huge sucker for the American dream, and I was like you know I believed in it then, and I believe in it fervently at the moment, and I was like you know I wanted my shot at the dream. I want to I wanted to put everything on my shoulder and see if I could do it. I'd always thought of successful entrepreneurs as these like mythical creature as I was like I was wondered could I be one of them. I looked at folks like Elon Musk, who's my personal hero. It's not fair to compare yourself to him because I don't believe he's human. Ken WhiteRight. Anshuman VohraThere's human, I mean, that guy is not me. He breathes a different air than we do. But I looked at other folks, and I was like what is it that. What are the characteristics that made them the man or woman that they became? Was it a great and significant intelligence, you know the ability to work harder than everybody else, were they smarter than the other folks, were they did they work smarter? You know I thought about it. Did they hustle harder? Were they in the right place at the right time? And I said maybe it's just a combination of all of those, but more than all of that the preparation was that they showed up to play. You know part of the game is you know I don't know that Bulldog would have been the success it would have? I can tell you it would not have been a success if it was if I had not showed up to play. If I'd still remained as an investment banker after college and follow the beaten path, that's where I would have been. In my favorite poem that I used to read in my high school English class was from Robert Frost. You know the road not taken always the part. There's that poster, and it had the two roads that diverged in the woods. I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. That always resonated with me, and I said if I'm going to do this, you know this game of life, which I'm yet to understand exactly. I was like I kind of want to be the guy who took the road less traveled. And so I didn't have a whole lot of skills outside of a little bit of finance. One skill I did have was drinking gin and tonics, you know, with the tremendous really skilled. At that, I should confirm my dad imbued me with a love of gin and tonics when I was 16. I think we were in Malaysia at the time it was the summertime. He said son, you're a man, and it's time to celebrate your manhood. Ken WhiteRight. Anshuman VohraKind of like the Hindu Bar Mitzvah if you will. And he goes. Are you ready? When your old man makes you a proposition saying you're 16, you're a man, are you ready. I go sure dad, I've read some magazines. I've seen some stuff on the Internet. I think I'm ready. He had a very different idea for what my coming out party would be. And so that night he gave me some scotch, this black liquid, he poured like a thimble full and gave it to me, and he drank the rest out of the bottle himself. I'd never had alcohol before he said drink scotch. This is what men drink. So I drank it, and I threw up for about four hours. Ken WhiteOh, wow. Anshuman VohraIt was the most vile and disgusting thing I've ever had. And it was some no-name local brand of Scotch. Most people say your dad obviously didn't have a whole lot of respect for you if he gave you such crappy local made. And so I was like yeah, I guess you I think is I don't even remember what it was just so so terrible. And then the next Sunday Saturday he was like let's do it again. I said, no way. I thought this is some devious trick on his part to make me hate alcohol. If it was, then he's a very smart man cause it worked. But next Saturday he gave me a gin and tonic, and I fell in love with it. And I said ever since then the gin and tonic if I'd be the only guy going to Paul's, or the College Deli, or the Green Leaf everyone else was getting beer and I was I'd be the guy getting gin and tonics. And fast forward to my time in New York. And then J.P. Morgan we'd have three-martini lunches I'd always be the guy getting gin and tonics. My colleagues would be getting vodka sodas, vodka tonics as the case may be. And one day, the bartender took us to his bar, and he said look we have twenty-two brands of vodka, a blue bottle, and a green bottle of gin, and this is reflective of what people drink. You know it's a vodka dominated world. This is two thousand and maybe two thousand three-four somewhere around there. He said, so people just drink vodka no gin anymore. And I was like wow. So I went back to the office, one of the few times on a Friday afternoon, that I was excited to go back to work, and I said, hey, why is it that I always thought people drank a lot more gin. So I researched it, and as it turns out up until 1965, people drank a lot more gin in the U.S. than vodka. It was only after 1965 where people started drinking brands like Stolichnaya, Finlandia, then Absolute, of course, Grey Goose, Belvedere, and today Tito's, for example. But in that continuum from 1965, the inflection points in that whereas from Finlandia to Stolichnaya to Absolute coincided with people viewing vodka more as a badge as you know as a reflection on who they are. Like the suit they wore, the watch they wore, the car they drove. In gin meanwhile was stodgy and old and Victorian and not something people got excited about. The other problem with gin was the taste; it's 47 percent alcohol. The American palate is used to drinking alcohol at 40 percent, and also gin is just vodka flavored juniper at its very essence. And so a lot of brands had excessive Juniper in my opinion and juniper is kind of an acquired taste. Juniper is what gives gin that pine tree sort of smell. And so, I was like, maybe if I can market it and position it like a modern edgier stylish gin. People would be interested. I would be. Cause I didn't know a single person in my cohort who woke up on a Friday morning said hey, let's go out to the club tonight and get a bottle of Gordon's. Ken WhiteRight. Anshuman VohraIt's not something that excited folks and nothing wrong with Gordon's for those who like it, but it wasn't part of the Zeit Geist of you know the nightlife of the era. And so that's kinda how I said, man. So then it became a bit more then it became almost an infatuation for me. I was like, how can there have been such a spectacular fall in 50 years. It got to the point where not only did vodka outsell gin, but it was 10 to 1. So you went 50 years from Gin outselling vodka within 50 years to a 10 to 1 ratio of vodka outselling gin. And I was like, what's the reason for that. So as I researched it, I came to the taste, and the marketing, the brand positioning, and so I said maybe I think I can solve those. So I found a couple of, I emailed I'm a huge Anglophile, I emailed a bunch of distilleries in the U.K. kind of the birthplace of modern gin, and nine of them didn't respond one of them did. They said we love your idea. They said let us send you some samples, and I wanted a gin that was 40 percent alcohol, lighter on the juniper but infused with these exotic botanicals like licorice, lavender, lotus leaves, poppy, white poppy, dragon eye which is a cousin of the lychee fruit, almond, lemon, orus. And so we found this exotic blend of 12 botanicals from eight countries. We decided we were going to use British wheat, British water, British labor, British soil distilleries are making gin for two hundred years world's foremost distillery. They sent me samples one day to my office. I was often the most popular guy on the floor on a Monday. I received 12 bottles of gin. But these guys were so good. One of those bottles of those twelve is still the liquid that's used in Bulldog today. They hit it on the first try. That's how much I love what they did. Then a couple weeks later, I found an ad agency that said look we'll do all the branding, design the bottle for you, and they said we'll do it all on the come, nothing upfront. We'll take a percentage of revenues over a couple of years. I was still holding onto my day job out of necessity, and I was like wow. So we got this branding opportunity we got the liquid that tastes great. I was like I feel like somebody is hitting me over the head say doing it, but what I did need is some start-up capital to make it happen. I couldn't have funded it myself, and I wasn't ready to quit my job until the conditions for success were right. Til we had money in the bank. So I went to all my tennis friends at William & Mary and said guys I need to invest in this company, and they're like. Can we see a business plan first? I said no, but I said you've got to trust me. I'm not sure I would have trusted them, but they were you know as an example of the gratitude I feel towards William & Mary's. Those guys took a chance on me, and that's how we started selling in 2007. I named it Bulldog out of my reverence for Sir Winston Churchill, who is my political hero, and the British bulldog spirit that he embodied about the Keep Calm and Carry On Self-Reliance the perseverance and I said if I want do a British gin he's probably a pretty good guy. He himself was you know drank a lot of everything, but he's my favorite quote of his is how the gin and tonic right started. Most people don't know this as a medicine. 150 years ago, the British soldiers in India were dying of malaria. There's no real preventive no cure at that point in time, but the way to prevent it was to eat the quinine bark, which is why when you see tonic water, you say contains quinine. Ken WhiteYou bet. Anshuman VohraAnd so some smart ass just said hey, I'm having quinine which you can't have on its own in water why don't I just combine gin and hence the gin and tonic was born. So being Indian, it has a nice you know resonance to me. So the gin and tonic. So I was like my favorite quote from Sir Winston Churchill was the gin and tonic has saved more lives and minds than all the doctors in the Empire. He wasn't really lying when he said that. And so we started in 2007. We started selling in Europe really in Spain in 2009. God bless Spain, Viva Espana, they changed my life because the Spaniards started drinking gin like you know I guess they just demand and drinking water for gin. When you go to a bar in Madrid or Barcelona, you see them drink a gin and tonic out of a huge oversized cognac snifter big ice cubes. They don't have a spray gun for tonic or soda. It's just out of the bottle. But these beautiful garnishes Bulldogs with a pink grapefruit I mean it's just a fantastic thing, and we started selling in Spain. So we were in that point and time we were in New York, and Spain couldn't find a way to expand within the U.S., but Spain is such a leader in gastro trends that with Spain came Portugal, Italy, the rest of Europe. And the spirits industry for those who don't know is dominated by European companies Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Campari, mon Hennessy as examples and kind of in 2012, 2013, 2014 we started talking to some of the big guys cause we're seeing some success in Spain. Being to distribution deal for Bulldog in around the world with a company called Campari they're large Italian they're the fifth-largest spirits company in the world. Their signature drink is a Negroni, which is one part Campari this orange bitter one part vermouth, sweet vermouth, Cinzano they've never had their own gin. And so I was like you know one hundred and fifty years every time somebody orders a Negroni one of their competitors have been getting a piece of the action which is interesting. Ken WhiteYes. Anshuman VohraSo we did a deal with them. They're a pretty imaginative forward-thinking group of folks who say that we'd love to partner with you. Did a deal with a distributor around the world starting in 2014 at that point in time we were in like 20 countries doing like 600,000 bottles around the world, and with their help, you know two or three years later we were in 130 countries. Doing I want to say a couple million bottles and today, you know they acquired us in 2017 in Feb 2017, and today Bulldog is the fourth largest premium gin in the world. We'll do about close to around three million bottles in probably a hundred and sixty hundred seventy countries. And one of the fastest-growing brands, so that was a great outcome I was really happy for me personally and for my friends on the tennis team for everyone who invested. Ken WhiteWell, that's part 1 of our conversation with Anshuman Vohra, founder of Bulldog Gin. And that's our podcast for this week. In two weeks on our next episode, we'll hear the second part Vohra's story as he tells us about his new venture and his new product Halo Sport a premium certified organic beverage that's changing the hydration category. That's next time on Leadership & Business. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is offering the Certificate in Business Management program this fall. It's taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. For more information regarding that and our other programs, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week on Anshuman Vohra. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Jennifer Engelhardt & Scott Troxell](images/jennifer-engelhardt-scott-troxell-122-thumb.jpg)
![Virtual Reality at Work with lady wearing VR goggles](images/jennifer-engelhardt-scott-troxell-122-thumb.jpg)
Jennifer Engelhardt & Scott Troxell
Episode 122: October 1, 2019
Virtual Reality at Work
Virtual Reality. While many of us think of video games when we hear the term, VR has evolved, especially in terms of its use in the workplace where its impact on productivity is significant. Organizations and sectors employ virtual reality to, among other things, improve peoples' mental, physical, and financial health. While VR is helping employees, it's having a positive effect on the bottom line, too. Two professionals on the leading edge of virtual reality join us on the podcast today. Jennifer Engelhardt is a Principal with EY, and Scott Troxell is CEO of Virtuous Reality. They're with us today to talk about the ways virtual reality is becoming commonplace at work and beyond.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Virtual reality. While many of us think of video games when we hear the term. VR has evolved, especially in terms of its use in the workplace, where its impact on productivity is significant. Organizations and sectors employ virtual reality to, among other things, improve people's mental, physical, and financial health. While VR is helping employees, it's having a positive effect on the bottom line too. Two professionals on the leading edge of virtual reality join us on the podcast today. Jennifer Engelhardt is a principal with EY, and Scott Troxell is CEO of Virtuous Reality. They're with us today to talk about the ways virtual reality is becoming commonplace at work and beyond. Here's our discussion with EY's Jennifer Engelhardt and Virtuous Reality's Scott Troxell. Ken WhiteJennifer, Scott, thank you very much for being here. It's great to have you here. Jennifer EngelhardtAbsolutely. Scott TroxellThanks, so glad to be here. Ken WhiteAnd Jennifer, you're a two-timer now. Right. Jennifer EngelhardtI am. I am indeed. Ken WhiteThis is the second time, yeah. It's great to have you here. We'll start with you, virtual reality, when you're at cocktail parties in the neighborhood, and people ask you what it is. How do you define it? Jennifer EngelhardtYou know at its most simplest form I think it's a computer-generated environment and it can be used. I mean I think when people think about it, they think about their kids down in the basement you know playing video games which in fact it does quite well. But when we think about in the context of improving patient outcomes or improving even your financial results, it really can help with everything from helping soldiers and veterans with PTSD and suicide prevention. You know 22 veterans kill themselves every day. So how can we use virtual reality as a means to help them cope with those traumatic you know those traumatic memories all the way to the corporate side. When we look at financial wellness, physical wellness, and emotional wellness and how those wellness factors can contribute to financial results. Ken WhiteScott, what do you do in this space? You and your company, what do you, what's your role? Scott TroxellWell, I would just add to what Jennifer saying. Like one of the neat things that virtual reality for me is the immersive nature of it. So with virtual reality, you are actually in the scene. So you know you watch TV, or you go to a play there is either a frame or a proscenium arch. When you go into virtual reality, you put on this headset, and you can look up, look down, left, right, all around, spin around in your chair, and you are in a completely new environment. You are no longer in whatever room you were in when you donned that headset, and you are now on a moonlit hillside or on a beach somewhere in Tahiti. Ken WhiteIt's a great way to describe it for someone who hasn't experienced it because of the headset that you put on you are really there. Scott TroxellThat is, and that's the magic of it for me. Ken WhiteYeah. Scott TroxellAnd it's, and it's an auditory experience as well. You're surrounded you're if you're on that moonlit hillside you're hearing the crickets chirping all around you, you hear an owl off in the distance hooting in a while. And interestingly, you turn in your chair that owl stays in that same space. There's ambisonic sound, and I won't go too technical, but that segue way is to your question about what we're doing with breathr. The company is called Virtuous Reality cause we're using virtual reality to help people live a more virtuous reality and be stronger and more resilient. Breathr is just what it sounds like. It gives you an opportunity to take a breather go into VR, slip on this headset in the midst of your busy day and be whisked away to a serene, tranquil environment where you can sit and just take a breather, or meditate, practice mindfulness, prayer, whatever you want to bring to it. You're in this immersive environment, and it becomes a mini-vacation in the middle of your busy day. Ken WhiteYeah, and it's I think you almost have to try it to really get it, right. Scott TroxellYes. Ken WhiteBecause it is truly immersive when you have the headset on. Scott TroxellYeah. Ken WhiteI mean, you're there. Scott TroxellYou can talk about it till you're blue in the face. It's one of these new technologies that until you do it, I'll tell you all about it, and then when you put it on and try it the first time people say wow oh look over there, look down here, I can oh this is amazing. Ken WhiteYeah. So it is so new. How do you get into this? Scott TroxellIt's well interestingly I've always been into meditation and mindfulness, and it's something that I wanted to be able to bring and share with the world. I feel like there's just so much stress and anxiety in the world today, in business, in the military, veterans, students here at William & Mary, and elsewhere there's a lot of anxiety and pressure. And I wanted people to be able to experience what I experience and how can I get to it. My partner and co-founder, John Harrington, was doing work with the National Library of Medicine and doing work in virtual reality. Where he was creating genome strings so that they could actually go down into ultimate subatomic levels and play with the human genome. And he said, have you tried virtual reality? You've got to try it. I did it. I've found myself attracted to this one app where it took me to a mountain top in the Cascades somewhere and Ken as soon as I was there, and I'm looking around having that experience I just described, and I said I just want to sit down and meditate. And in fact, I sent him away, and I did I spent like 15 minutes meditating, and I was able to go deeper faster by virtue of just blocking out my environment and being in that space. And I came out of that, and that was the epiphany moment, I went to John and said we've got to bring this to the world. My hypothesis was that it helped me go deeper faster, but I really thought people who didn't meditate and who hadn't done it before and maybe having a hard time getting into that. This was going to help them be able to experience real meditation the first time out, and so we built it. It took a year, and the hypothesis bore out. People love it. It's working for them, and they want more. Ken WhiteAnd it's a heck of an alternative to a 10-minute walk right outside the office or down the hall, isn't it? Scott TroxellYes, it is. Ken WhiteWow. Scott TroxellAnd it's like the equivalent of you know you ever go on. When's the last time you had a vacation? Ken WhiteYeah. Right exactly. Scott TroxellWhere did you go? How did you feel afterwards? Come back feeling recharged and refocused? Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Scott TroxellWell yeah, do that in five minutes at the office. Ken WhiteJennifer, what are you doing in this space at work? Jennifer EngelhardtSo we are looking at wellness from those few perspectives that I mentioned before. I think, historically, companies have really focused on physical wellness. Ken WhiteRight. Jennifer EngelhardtSo you've seen the rise. Like if you look at HR, you see the rise in pay gym memberships and things like that. Financial wellness so people who are financially stressed, you know any sort of stress or anxiety can limit productivity and creativity. So for example, when I joined EY, I was given a financial advisor that helps me not only with my own professional needs, being in a privately held company partnership, but also with my other financial needs. And then the one that's the newest one that's out there is around emotional wellness, and that's exactly what Scott's company brings to the table. It's really about helping people to get to anywhere wherever they are on that on that spectrum of mental health. So it could be all the way down with like veterans all the way to students to people who just need to recharge. If you think about everybody knows where they were on 9/11. I don't think I had like a normal workday for at least four weeks after that. So how can we quickly get people back to a mental place where they're not just getting by but they're really functioning, and they're being creative, you can not be creative and innovative if you're stressed and anxious. Ken WhiteRight. Jennifer EngelhardtAnd so the research has shown us that when we are have wellness and all in all three categories, we are more creative, more productive, we're more innovative. And so that's what I'm helping companies with. Ken WhiteYeah, that's so key that you said stress limits creativity and productivity. I don't think we think much about that. Jennifer EngelhardtYes. Ken WhiteYou know we push on through. Just get her done. Right. I don't think we think a whole lot about that. Give us an example of an organization doing something in the space that you think is just terrific. Jennifer EngelhardtSo it runs the gamut, so I have one client who's using VR for onboarding. And so when you go into their New York office, they're a global pharmaceutical company, when you go into the New York office, they allow you depending on which office you are to do a virtual tour of that office. They allow people to explore different career paths using virtual reality. So it's almost like a mixture of the VR and then the gaming component, so you make certain decisions. It's actually a very simple decision tree, and based on those decisions, you can go into different departments and meet some of the mentors, all virtually, and then all the way to things like business resiliency. So working with another client to they're preparing for things like you know God forbid an active shooter. How do we quickly get the EMT teams back to the place where they can function again after a traumatic event? How can we also simulate to a new employee? These are the I was talking to a business resiliency officer. They did a study about how many people walked past the closest exit for a fire. You don't really think about that until it actually happens. Ken WhiteRight. Jennifer EngelhardtAnd we need to be prepared for those things. So there's so many different applications. I mean, in my own personal life, my daughter was my daughter's a teenager she was having an existential crisis the other night. Over I don't know Lululemon shorts or something. And John had let me borrow the breathr, and I said go upstairs take a bath I'll make you some tea put the breathr on. She goes, Mom; I'm not gonna do that, I said, try it. So she sits and sits down five minutes later she's just you know she doesn't want to give it back. So it can really help people you know just relax, and then also there's so many different applications you can have people who are afraid of public speaking. A lot of people. You can be in a simulated environment where you have 200 avatars staring at you. Some of them are sleeping, some of them are bored, checking their watches, some are listening intently. You know so that you can practice that and overcome those anxieties to get you to a better place to be more productive, innovative, creative. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Jennifer Engelhardt and Scott Troxell in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. If you are looking to raise your game and give your career a boost. The Center for Corporate Education is hosting the Certificate in Business Management program from October 21st to the 25th here at William & Mary. In the five day program, each day is devoted to one important business topic, including communication, managerial accounting, business strategy, operational effectiveness, and leadership. The program is taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation on virtual reality in the workplace with Jennifer Engelhardt and Scott Troxell. Ken WhiteScott, we're seeing a lot in the military space as well. What can you tell us about some of the things that how military are using and veterans and first responders? Scott TroxellYeah, and the well military, it's interesting you say because they are largely responsible for virtual reality being where it is today. Because they were the early adopters, and they had the big bucks to throw at it 30 40 years ago. I mean, it really started with flight simulators in World War 2. Where the very first sort of virtual reality machines when they had to train thousands of people to be able to fly the planes and continuing throughout. They use it for training so that you can go into different scenarios without having to have live ordnance and big spaces and teamwork and that sort of thing. And now they're using it for things like treating PTSD, TBI, Post-Traumatic Stress. One of the things they use for immersion therapy so they will recreate the scene where you had your trauma. And so by its one thing that therapists do that help you imagine being back in that scenario and knowing that you're safe and nothing's going to happen so that you don't keep replaying that video in your head. Ken WhiteRight. Scott TroxellIs what's happening. So they'll recreate that in, put you actually in the Humvee in VR so they can experience and know you're going to come out okay. There's interestingly there's a study that's been done where they compared that with mindfulness training and meditation because for a lot of military they don't want to go and do that reversion therapy. Ken WhiteSure. Scott TroxellGo back and experience that again for understandable reasons. They found meditation and mindfulness techniques was to be equally beneficial. And so what we're doing with the VR and that goes to post-traumatic stress. But it also affects stress, anxiety, all of that. A lot of these things you have probably heard this the answer or an answer tends to be meditation and mindfulness can really help with that. Problem with that is not everyone; a lot of people feel like I can't just sit and meditate for five. I can't close my eyes and stop my mind and think about nothing, which is not really what it is. You're just not engaging with your thoughts. But that's another whole story. But so what VR does and what I'm bringing to it is that by blocking out those distractions and giving you a cool new environment to focus on helps people go in and experience and get to that mindfulness and meditation and let it do its work in the workplace, in the military, veterans, students. Jennifer EngelhardtAnd to level that point on the veterans, there's a company that's made a simulator that includes VR, and it also includes the smells like after an IED exploded and the vibrations. So they created this environment called Virtual Iraq, and it is very real, and it's actually pretty controversial. I mean the immersion therapy. You're right. Every patient has a different needs a different therapy. But the idea is when they are in that environment, and it's very very real then they're sometimes they're walking on a treadmill with you know with the VR set on you know the idea is that when they're immersed in that and walking through that with a therapist in the room. They are desensitizing themselves to that stressor. So there are so many fantastic applications to human health outcomes to you know just corporate outcomes you know the bottom line just there are so many possibilities out there that VR will bring us as a society and as you know as corporate citizens as well. Scott TroxellAnd you make me think of an interesting point about VR that we haven't touched on yet. And just when you're talking about haptics and that's the other sensations besides video and audio. Feeling it and it feels very real when Jennifer says that you can't like overstate that. It's a neat thing about VR when you recall your experience in virtual reality. You recall it as if you were actually there. So, in other words, your brain does not distinguish between virtual reality and actual reality. Ken WhiteRight. Scott TroxellSo you're actually creating those memories, and from the early days of people, you know they put on the VR headset, and you stand them up on the edge of a cliff. They know they're in a room, and there's a floor in front of them, but they will not step off that cliff in VR. Ken WhiteYeah, there is something about the headset. Like you said early five minutes, what can possibly happen to me in five minutes come on. Scott TroxellYeah. Ken WhiteUntil you try it. I think you have to try it. Jennifer EngelhardtYes. Ken WhiteActually, to truly experience it cause it is hard to just put into words, so it is you are somewhere else. You know when you have that on what you mentioned bottom line Jennifer, what are companies and organizations seeing, or are they? What kind of benefits? Jennifer EngelhardtWell, the benefits are so significant that there are companies out there that are paying their employees or offering different incentives to get them to get to have better physical, financial, and emotional wellness. The insurance company Aetna for example. I'm wearing a Fitbit and tells me how much I sleep every night, which is sometimes depressing. Ken WhiteRight. Jennifer EngelhardtBut Aetna pays their employees for getting a certain amount of sleep every work night. And the idea being that better-rested employees are more productive employees and so they can earn up to I think 300 dollars a year if they are recording seven hours of sleep per night. So that's I find that very fascinating, and then they're investing a lot more in things like we have a program at EY called EY assist and if you have any sort of crisis or need some medical, mental health assistance that is all there. But companies are investing in that very very heavily, and it's becoming an area that we're spending a lot of time in our consulting world. Ken WhiteScott, a manager a leader who's not, does not have VR in the organization. What advice do you have for that leader that manager at this point? Scott TroxellI'd say it's time to get up with the times and you may have when you hear about VR, you may hear that it's the next big thing. And then it's not, and then it's the next big thing, and then it's not. People are referring to the consumer market, and as Jennifer mentioned earlier, it hasn't taken off with the gamers and the gaming, which is what the first thing I think a lot of people think of in terms of VR. But the real power of it and the real applications are in some of the things that Jennifer mentioned with training and treatment. And then especially also in mindfulness and meditation and the things we're bringing to it. It is the way of for future. It's not going away, and it's time to get on board. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jennifer Engelhardt of EY and Scott Troxell of Virtuous Reality. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is offering its Certificate in Business Management program later this month. It's taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. For information regarding that and our other programs, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guests this week, Jennifer Engelhardt and Scott Troxell, thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Beth Comstock](images/beth-comstock-121-thumb.jpg)
![Courage, Creativity and Change with person shaping brain](images/beth-comstock-121-thumb.jpg)
Beth Comstock
Episode 121: September 15, 2019
Courage, Creativity and Change
According to Forbes, she's one fo the world's 100 Most Powerful Women. She's been named to the 100 Most Influential CMOs list, and she's a member of PR Weeks' Top 20 Most Influential Communicators. She's Beth Comstock, most known for her almost three decades at GE where she served as Chief Marketing Officer and later Vice Chair of Innovation. Her latest project is her award-winning book "Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity and the Power of Change." Comstock visited William & Mary in late August where she was the featured speaker at the school's annual opening convocation. During her visit to campus, she sat down with us to discuss effective communication, leadership, and the power of change.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. According to Forbes, she's one of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women. She's been named to the 100 most influential CMOs list, and she's a member of PR Week's top 20 most influential communicators. She's Beth Comstock, most known for almost three decades at GE, where she served as chief marketing officer and later vice-chair of innovation. Her latest project is her award-winning book, "Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change. Comstock visited William & Mary in late August, where she was the featured speaker at the school's annual opening convocation. During her visit to campus, she sat down with us to discuss effective communication, leadership, and the power of change. Here's our conversation with Beth Comstock. Ken WhiteBeth, thank you so much for taking time to join us. It's absolutely great to have you here. Beth ComstockSo happy to be here. Thank you. Ken WhiteAnd you'll be speaking later today Beth ComstockRight Ken WhiteTo the university. Beth ComstockThe convocation. Ken WhiteThat's quite an honor. Beth ComstockOh, it is, I'm so delighted I'm thrilled. Ken WhiteAnd I know you as a communicator you always practice you always prepare that's the way to do it. I'm assuming you're really ready. Looking forward to today. Beth ComstockI am. I mean, I do practice I'll be practicing right up until the minute I get up there, but there comes a point when you just have to say okay I've done all I can do and you have to just be there and enjoy it. Ken WhiteYeah. Beth ComstockAnd I once I learned through a lot of bad speaking, I used to try to race the clock, and it was more like I was speaking to the clock, not the audience. And just with enough practice, you just try to connect with people there; in this case, it's particularly poignant because I was in the audience once too. Ken WhiteYeah. Beth ComstockAnd so to remember back and say well what would I have wanted to have heard when I was 18 19 20. So I it really resonates with me this time. Ken WhiteThat's great. And I've been checking the weather; it's going to be a beautiful afternoon. Beth ComstockYeah, I'm looking forward to it. Ken WhiteWe're gonna have a great day. So when we started the podcast, we already gave you your intro, and we told our listeners about your background, and so forth. So they know who you are and where you're from. When you were growing up, did family and friends, would they have ever seen you doing this having the career you had? Beth ComstockNo, I my family would they're as surprised as I am that I ended up in business and doing having the longevity I had in big business. I grew up a small-town Virginia girl. I came to William & Mary because I wanted to go to medical school, so I majored in biology. I left here because I thought I wanted to be a science journalist. So I had already deviated, and the quest for journalism is what got me into media. And then that communications marketing and then I got into business so it was a very unexpected path and no one's more surprised than my family my funny you were talking earlier about speaking my dad will sometimes say I can't believe that's you up there talking he's heard me giving speeches, and I'm shy. I'm an introvert, and that's something I've really had to work at. So I think forget what I have done in a career my dad just can't believe I can stand up and talk to groups of people. He just doesn't never thought that would be me. Ken WhiteIt's always good to impress Mom and Dad. Beth ComstockYeah, exactly. Ken WhiteThat's always a good thing. So you are known as a high-quality communicator. There are textbooks we use you're in them and videos you've done with G.E. and other jobs you're in there. What's your approach to communication and its importance in someone's career? Beth ComstockWell, I've been at it for a while. I spent the early part of my career as a storyteller communicator in some ways I think I have always been that. Part of it is just practice early on in my career I actually went out and found people to give me coaching advice. To help me be a better speaker. To help me get over my fear of speaking my public speaking fear. I mean, I still get it tonight beforehand even though I'm ready I'll have a pit in my stomach. And so you what you have to do is just practice practice like anything practice practice, and you need to get feedback. I'm big on feedback loops, so you need people that say ugh ugh you know you do ugh all the time stop it stop it. You're scratching your elbow every time you say that word why. Like you look dumb. Ken WhiteRight. Beth ComstockAnd you have to be willing to fix that. Ken WhiteYeah. Beth ComstockSo I think it's those two things and the last thing I'd say is communication is the connection. If you're up there to get a grade, you know I you can't get up there and say okay I want them to think I'm better than Oprah. I want to be you know better than Michelle Obama. That's not going to why are you here and why are you here. You have a message you want to make a connection. If you're that sincere and you're that honest, you're going to do well. Ken WhiteThroughout your career, you in the things I've seen storytelling is a big piece of communication. How do you approach stories? Why are they a part of when you communicate with people? Beth ComstockI'm glad you raised that. I think story is almost everything we tend to think stories what we do at the end. I saw this a lot in business from a communications and from also from a marketing perspective, it's like I've got this great product now get me a story. I've got this great product now go tell people and launch it. Well, know stories; it's your strategy. So to me, I came to realize story is strategy. It's wherever you come from. What problem are you solving? Where are you going? And that works for a person, for a product, for a business. And I often would test my colleagues when they'd come in from a business strategy perspective, and they'd say we have this great idea I'd say okay let's write it up as a story often we'd write it as a press release. Ken WhiteSure. Beth ComstockOkay. And if it held up okay, you got something. Ken WhiteYeah. Beth ComstockAnd if not, if you can't tell a story about it. I found this with entrepreneurs. One of the questions I love to ask entrepreneurs is, what's your story. Weirds people out. What do you mean what's my story? Ken WhiteRight. Beth ComstockWhat's your story? Ken WhiteYeah. Beth ComstockWhat I'm looking for is what's your passion? Where did you come from? Why did you have this idea? Why should I buy from you? Invest in you. So I think those are the things that story answer for people it's a way to make a connection. We don't remember facts as much as we remember an authentic story. Ken WhiteAnd today we have to be so efficient when we tell stories we don't have a lot of time. Beth ComstockYeah, we don't. Ken WhiteSo we've got to hook them, you know pretty quickly. Beth ComstockYeah, I think social media is a good training ground for that I often challenge people you know luckily Twitter is going up to two hundred and forty sixty characters now. Ken WhiteRight. Beth ComstockSo if you can, you know it's just like can you put a headline in a tweet? Can you try to tell your story in as few words as possible there was that I don't know if it's true? Ernest Hemingway supposedly wrote you know six six-word story baby shoes never worn. Right. I think those things are really powerful to get you to focus and be as dramatic and as succinct as possible. Ken WhiteYeah. When we teach it here, we encourage our students to hook them hook that audience as quickly as possible. Beth ComstockHow do you do that? What's what. How do you do that? Ken WhiteYeah great. That's great. You you've had a phenomenal career at GE, and this is probably a terribly unfair question a highlight that stands out something you're particularly proud of that you've done with the team with the organization. Beth ComstockI guess I'd say that answered in two ways one and just I'm particularly proud to have worked with some amazing people. I mean and it's not the big famous CEOs or whatever it was the teams I was part of. And we had a commitment, especially toward the end the teams I worked with in innovation in marketing we had a commitment with each other we said we're gonna do our best work. We don't know how long we're gonna be together. We're gonna take risks. We're gonna try things we're gonna be first at things, and so we were really proud of the work. Did it all work? No. But I wish everyone could have that experience. And my second thing would be I think being part of a cleantech revolution in a very established company we launched what we called eco imagination. It was very forward-thinking at the time. Now not so, but it was unexpected, and it was meaningful, and I'm really proud that we persevered with that. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Beth Comstock in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. If you're looking to raise your game and give your career a boost. The Center for Corporate Education is hosting the Certificate in Business Management program from October 21st to the 25th here at William & Mary. The five-day program devotes each day to one important business topic, including communication, managerial accounting, business strategy, operational effectiveness, and leadership. The programs taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty the faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the author of "Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change," Beth Comstock. Ken WhiteYour book. Why did you write it? Beth ComstockI wrote it because I. My husband said that he thought I was always going to write one. I wasn't so sure, but I just had a passion to share some experiences. I taught a class at GE at our learning institute, and every month, I'd go, and I love this class. But I always people sort of there was this fear in people afraid to take a risk afraid to try something they wanted to know like where did how did I. What did you do when you encountered this, and I realized that people especially early to middle of their career often the middle of the company a lot of pressure and they need some encouragement they need some permission granting and so to me it was to say hey let me just take everything I learned and try to share with you the failures I could have called it fail forward. But I called it imagine forward because I'm not sure fail forward was a good marketing campaign. Ken WhiteRight. Beth ComstockBut that's what I tried to do to say you know what you kind of blunder your way to success. And let me share with you how I managed that. Ken WhiteAnd you also talk about change. Beth ComstockYeah. Ken WhiteIn the book, why does it seem that so many people are reluctant to change? Beth ComstockWell, one change is just happening so much in every corner. I mean one of the lines I love that in the book that I took from a colleague just this notion that the world will never be slower than it is right now. Right. Like we're sharing this moment, can I. Well, congratulations. Right. We're sharing this moment of change, and that's daunting. Yet we're adaptation machines we're human we're meant to be adaptable, but we want to control change, and we don't. And so that was another part of writing the book was trying to say you've got to get to see change early you're not going to change often, but you can at least learn about it understand it get good at pattern recognition open yourself up to discover those are the things I feel really proud of. Making part of my career practice if you will. Ken WhiteYeah, I mean, you're talking about your experience you're changing in a huge organization. How do you even get your arms around that and approach? We've got to change the way we're doing business with so many people. Beth ComstockWell, what you don't do is you just don't say dictate. We are all going to change, and everybody is gonna do it this way. Those things don't work. You know command and control hierarchy that's going that's gone. What has to happen is people have to see the problem that's trying to be solved. They have to have time to understand it. So I spent a lot of time trying to connect the inside of my company to the outside where the world was changing. Bringing in outsiders what I would call sparks who could spark a different perspective doing things I love called Field Trip Fridays where you go out take an afternoon with a team to go out and find something weird discovers a startup. Go talk to a professor learn things that are different and try to do that together. So I think that's part of what companies need to do is one tell a story. This is why the world is changing and why we're going to be impacted. Our customers are going to be impacted. Now let's figure out what that means for us, and let's give ourselves room to figure it out together. Ken WhiteYou have five obstacles that you had to overcome when creating change in the book, and I thought I'd mentioned each of the five, and if you could tell us a little, but one was self permission change begins with you. What does that mean? Beth ComstockIt's just a mindset shift. You know there's always an excuse of why I can't do something my boss won't let me. I don't have enough money. The board will never go for that the list is on, and those may be true. But what I learned and I know from my own experience those are alibis we're afraid. So you just gotta give yourself permission to take a risk on something. Okay, maybe you don't need to pitch the board your idea the first time, but hey go pitch it to someone down the hall. Ken WhiteRight. Beth ComstockMaybe they'll like it and work with you on it. Ken WhiteDiscovery, embracing, inquiry, and curiosity. Beth ComstockThis, to me, is everything. I just I think you have to open up your aperture you have to get out in the world where change is happening to what we talked about, and you're getting good at pattern recognition. The first time you see something, you start to say that's interesting. Second time you ask is that a coincidence and third time I just declare it's a trend. I mean, that's how we got into cleantech when I was at NBC how we saw streaming video before others saw it. These are what companies need to do, and I think individuals need to do. Where's the future going well get out and find things that are kind of weird. Ask yourself what's going on there. Ken WhiteAnd one two three not wait too long. Beth ComstockRight. Right. I mean a good exercise is to think back maybe five or 10 years ago to something that seemed crazy that's now commonplace. I mean, this is more than five years. But getting in the car with a stranger. Ken WhiteRight. Right. Beth ComstockYou know it's Uber and Lyft and everything right like at once that seemed really absurd. Now it's commonplace. Ken WhiteYeah. Beth ComstockWhat's happening today that you're like, oh my God, that's so crazy. Blockchain Bitcoin is something that smart people are talking about. There are a lot of these things out there. It's your job. I think to keep pace with change to discover these things. Ken WhiteAgitated inquiry facing the tension head-on. Beth ComstockYeah, this is a fancy phrase for conflict. It's the ability to beat up your ideas just because you see something and think you have a better idea doesn't mean it's good. And so it's inviting in people who are going to give you feedback beat up ideas hiring people on your teams for innovation who don't always agree who have different perspectives. So it's about conflict Ken WhiteStory craft developing a powerful narrative. So the organization understands. Beth ComstockYeah, and I think it's to what we said story is so critical. Where are you going? You can. I once worked with a CEO who said, you know, like why are you here. Because we're gonna get 10 percent growth. And I was like okay. You mean everybody's waking up every day saying let's go get 10 percent growth. No. Why are they here? What is there? And you hear a lot today on purpose. I mean, it's much more narrative. It's much more here's where we're going in the world. Here's the problem we're trying to solve. Here's why we're uniquely qualified. And so I think story is just you remember we talked earlier. You remember stories better than you remember pure facts. Ken WhiteAnd you start the story internally and then go externally? Does that matter? Beth ComstockI don't know that it matters, but I think the story has to resonate internally, or it's never going to resonate anywhere. And I learned that from marketing too often people just give me a slogan first off I think slogans are kind of over now anyway because it's so cluttered, but internally it has to resonate and it has to be simple enough that people can repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. And so when customers hear they can say hey, is this really what it's like to work here. Oh my gosh yeah. That's we were all about imagination. Ken WhiteYeah. Beth ComstockWe're all about speed to delivery, whatever your unique value and purpose is. So people are able to articulate it. Can they tell the story? Ken WhiteAnd we know how powerful and influential employees are now. Beth ComstockYeah. Ken WhiteThey're out banging the drum customers listen. Beth ComstockYeah. And the opposite. If it's not true they're going to they're gonna rat you out. Ken WhiteCreating a new operating system develop leaders who will embrace and inspire the vision. Beth ComstockWell, I think this is really just getting to action and that that's a systematic approach and that you've got to create mechanisms for experimentation. You have to fund and protect new ideas and the people who have them. I think this notion of failure is a big concept that we don't talk enough about everybody's like you fail fast fail small like it's really cute it's hard work do you allow time to do that. Feedback loops giving people enough feedback. So there are things you can do at a team level at an organizational level to make sure you can get there faster, and that's mostly what I'm talking about there. Ken WhiteIf there was one piece of the book that you want, if they could don't, people could only read one section, one area one theme one take away. What is that? Beth ComstockIt's to make room for discovery. I just think we we're I'm worried about it right now. I'm worried about it in the world. We're in a world of productivity optimization data always more data we have so much going on we can't get through the day. And here I am saying no, but you have to pick your head up and make room to figure out what's next and new. I argue how can you not because one day it's going to smack you in the face and you're going to be way behind the game. So I really believe you got to open your eyes open your aperture get out see patterns find things that are weird start to embrace that and make it. It can only take 10 percent of your time it does. I guarantee you if you go through your calendar today, you will find at least 10 percent of your time is committed to things you already know how to do in meetings you don't really need to be a part of. You can delegate that to someone else. You're afraid you're gonna miss out a lot of fear-based activity for yourself. Get out figure out where change is happening, and you can get it at least get a competitive edge. I'm absolutely convinced this notion of speed to learning is a create is a competitive advantage for individuals and companies, and you only do that by getting out learning and trying things. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Beth Comstock. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is offering the Certificate in Business Management program this fall. It's taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. For information regarding that and our other programs, this fall visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Beth Comstock. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Margaret Liptay](images/margaret-liptay-120-thumb.jpg)
![Resilience with flower coming out of cracked dirt](images/margaret-liptay-120-thumb.jpg)
Margaret Liptay
Episode 120: September 1, 2019
Resilience
We've all been there. At various points in life, everyone faces a major problem or tragedy. A life-threatening illness, a significant other dies, or a job is eliminated. Whatever the specifics, it's next to impossible to go through life without facing major setbacks or trauma. Dealing with that requires resilience. Margaret Liptay is a certified leadership coach. She partners with leaders, CEOs and executives to help them become more effective in their roles, and a quality necessary for success is resilience. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss resilience, why it's important, and how you can become more resilient in your work and professional lives.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, we've all been there at various points in life. Everyone faces a major problem or tragedy, a life-threatening illness, a significant other dies, or a job is eliminated. Whatever the specifics, it's next to impossible to go through life without facing major setbacks or trauma. Dealing with that requires resilience. Margaret Liptay is a certified leadership coach. She partners with leaders, CEOs, and executives to help them become more effective in their roles in a quality necessary for success is resilience. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss resilience, why it's important, and how you can become more resilient in your work and professional lives. Here's our conversation with leadership coach Margaret Liptay. Ken WhiteMargaret, it's been a while since you've been on the podcast. It's great to have you back. Thanks for joining us. Margaret LiptayThank you, Ken. It's great to be here as always. Its a joy. Ken WhiteYou know I thought I would start off with something I was thinking about as I was actually walking downstairs to meet you. Years ago, I was offered a position, and they said you just have to meet the chairman of the board just for a meet and greet, and then we're done, and I said fine and met the chairman, and he looked at me, so I have one question. Tell me about a time when you were fired, and I hadn't been fired, and I said I don't have anything for you. I've not been fired at least not yet. Then he said that's disappointing. I said, why is it disappointing? He goes, I want to see how resilient you are. And I never even. That never occurred to me. And resilience was so important to him. He wanted to make sure if you're going to be on this team, a leader on this team, you better know how to bounce back. Resilience might be something we might not think about that much, but it's important, isn't it? Margaret LiptayAbsolutely. It's important to everyone. It's important to leaders. It's important to those who are being led. It's important to shareholders. It's important to anybody that you do business with. And it's really important on a colleague to colleague situation. Ken WhiteHow do you define resilience when you think of that? What are some of the words that come in mind? Margaret LiptayWell, let me give you a textbook definition. Ken WhiteAh, yeah. Margaret LiptayAnd then I'm going to put the Margaret Liptay spin on it. How does that work? Ken WhiteThat's great. Yeah. Margaret LiptayOkay. In a textbook word. Here it goes. Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant forces of stress. For example, family problems, relationship problems, serious health issues , workplace challenges, disappointments, and financial stressors. Resilience means bouncing back and moving forward through difficult experiences. So I look at resilience. There's two points I look at resilience as resilience allows you to change your relationship with what's happened. You don't deny what's happened, but you don't let the memory of what has happened take total control over you. And I just saw a quote recently which to me encapsulated resilience. And I'd like to share it with you. Ken WhiteYeah, please. Margaret LiptayThe quote is life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain. It's by a woman by the name of Vivian Green. And the more I think about resilience, can you ask me what my point of view is on it. I think that sums it up. Resilience gives us the ability to change the story around what's happened. We have to face it realistically and move on. But it gives us the ability to see it in another way. And it gives us the ability to stand in that storm, work through that storm, being that storm, but yet dance in the rain. Ken WhiteThat's great. Margaret LiptayAnd I just love the concept of that because the storm doesn't always pass immediately. A storm, you know, Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret Liptaywe talk about it as a memory. You know resilience, you need to you know change your relationship to the memory, but sometimes that memory sticks with you. That's the way our brains work. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayYou know our brains are active all the time, and things are bouncing around in there all the time. So you really need to accept your reality. And then I love the idea of dancing in the rain. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayAnd make something about it work for you. Ken WhiteSo some people are good at it. Some people aren't. Are we born with resilience? Margaret LiptayNo, we are not born with resilience, but the beauty of resilience is we can learn it, we can be taught it, we can recapture it if it gets temporarily lost, and we can pivot around it. And let's just use the example of a baby because actually resilience starts thriving within us early on. But the problem with resilience is that you don't really know you have it until you need it. So you start having it when you're actually a child. Think of a baby. A baby is walking across the room. Maybe it's only going six feet, and there's someone on the other side saying come on honey come on. And so that baby gets targeted on where it's going, and it sees that something unconditional is waiting for it on the other side. And so it starts to move forward. It falls down, and then you say get up,get up, you encourage it and get up, and the baby gets up and continues on. Well, the reason the baby continues on is because again, there's some focus there's something waiting for it at the other side; it knows it's not alone. But the baby isn't saying gee I have resilience. So you really start having resilience and understanding resilience and learning resilience at a very young age. And so what's really important from the time your very little is to start learning about resilience, and what it is, and how you can grow that muscle more all the time because let's face it it won't be as easy as just having your mom six feet away from you in life. Ken WhiteRight. Right. Margaret LiptayIt's going to get trickier. Ken WhiteYeah, I mean, if you live, you're going to run into something. I mean, that's life right. And so you've got to deal with it. But how can people improve? What can you do to build it? Once you're a professional and an adult. Margaret LiptayWell, there's a lot of things. One of the things that seems to me to be so clear and yet we don't do it. The brain is active all the time. Even when we're sleeping, the brain is active. So the brain is in motion all the time. So what's a requirement to really build your resilient resilience is to get some rest. If you don't get rest, your brain gets foggy; it gets fatigued just like the rest of you. What happens when your brain gets fatigued? Everything goes haywire, and it's been proven there's research around this that if you multitask from 60 to 90 minutes straight, your brain does get fatigued, and therefore, you get brain fog. When you have brain fog, what happens. You make mistakes; you're not resilient; you don't bounce back. You have emotional hijacks. You make silly errors things that should be relevant, lose their perspective. And so you spend more time on irrelevant things than relevant things. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Margaret LiptayOperating around managing your brain's rest is really important. Staying calm is very important. Putting down technology walking away from the digital world for a while is really important because that stimuli coming at your brain all the time. Go outside, take a walk, watch a bird, look at the flowers, just be for a minute, just be, and focus on one thing. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Margaret LiptayIn addition, in terms of how do you build your resilience, you've got to do something that gives you purpose sometimes even beyond your work. Work should not be your sole purpose for living. I don't think it is most people's sole purpose for living, so you have to find a purpose beyond yourself and beyond your work that'll build your resilience. Also, you have to have courage to do new things, to be vulnerable, to go into your boss and say I'd like to try something new, give me a new opportunity, I'm willing I'm able I want to do it and then if you fail so be it. Failure is the greatest teacher in the world. But that'll build your resilience so that next time if something goes awry or you're in a position that isn't the right fit for you, you won't feel so discouraged, you won't get paralyzed, you won't get stuck in the storm. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Margaret LiptayYou'll just say okay I'm going to dance in the rain and move on. So those are just a few things Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayThat that whole concept of refreshing your brain as you refresh your body is very, very important to building your resistance. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Margaret Liptay in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. Are you investing enough time in advancing your career? If it's time to grow your business acumen or revitalize some outdated skills. The Center for Corporate Education has the program for you. The Certificate in Business Management. It's a five-day program that includes the essential topics found in our highly ranked MBA program, and it's taught by our MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. It's designed for professionals seeking key concepts and tools that will enhance your career. A full day is devoted to each topic communication, accounting for managers, business strategy, operational effectiveness, and leadership. The program takes place October 21st through October 25th. To learn more about the Certificate in Business Management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation on resilience with leadership coach Margaret Liptay. Ken WhiteThere was an interesting piece in the most recent issue of Harvard Business Review regarding how people should react when a colleague is facing a tragedy, and they're trying to be resilient. In fact, the article is called when a colleague is grieving how to provide the right kind of support, and it explained what a leader should do. A colleague should do what direct reports should do, and basically, the bottom line was be supportive. So when you see somebody dealing with a trauma or a tragedy in the workplace, be supportive. What are some effective tactics you've seen that people embrace when a colleague or a boss is in distress at work? Margaret LiptayWell, I can tell you a few things that I wouldn't do, and I'll give you a funny example. So in my own life, when I was coming along in my career, I was approached about moving out of a position that I was in that I absolutely loved it and asked to take on another position that was a brand new created role, brand new in so many ways. And they said we think you'll be great for this job. But of course, because I was young and not quite as experienced, I started perseverating and awfulizing about they're trying to take me out of my current job. Now they're putting me in this other job. Oh, my goodness. You know I was having a real pity party, I felt down. I accepted the other job, but I felt I was you know leaving my people and a friend of mine called and she said Margaret I heard about what's going on with you, and I feel awful. I just feel so awful for you. And I said Jean, why do you feel so awful. And she said well they didn't invite me to take on your job. And so I feel awful. So what I'm getting at there, is there are people around you who will lack self-awareness. And so what you really need to do in situations where you're highly stressed, you have a tragedy, you have a challenge, is surround yourself with real people, real friends. People who are interested in you are unconditional about you, like the little baby, you know. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Margaret LiptayPeople who are interested in where you're going and where you're headed. And that's I think that's a key that relationship building that connection with other people. And don't say to somebody, oh, I feel your pain. Oh, I've had a similar experience. In fact, I've had the exact same experience. That's not always comforting. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Margaret LiptayWhat's more comforting is a hug or just someone to sit next to you. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Margaret LiptayAnd just say, how are you doing? Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayThat's more comforting. The less said, the better. But knowing that there is someone there. I mean, when was the last time you got a hug from your cell phone? Never, so to know that there's a real person there who's not telling you about them but is really there for you is a very important part of building resilience around any kind of tragedy or disappointment. Ken WhiteLeaders. Why is it critical for them to be resilient? Margaret LiptayWell, getting back to what we said earlier. Think about it. If a leader is not resilient, they get brain fog. They are in a state of disarray. They are not operating in a leadership capacity. They perhaps get emotionally hijacked, so they abuse themselves. They abuse their staff; they abuse the people around them. They say things they shouldn't. They do things they shouldn't. They make bad decisions. So everything I mentioned before about young professionals coming along applies to leaders. They need to sort of detox from technology. They need to take a time out. They need to rest their brains because the more that they do not do that the more chaos organizationally that they can create. The good news and bad news about emotions is that they're contagious. So if your leader is you know out of whack and is not operating in a leadership capacity because of stress because of their own personal issues that impacts everybody that impacts the staff that impacts people's reactions that impacts your retention that impacts the culture of the company. So it is so critical for leaders to take all the same advice you know and being a leader. That's one of the loneliest positions in the world. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Margaret LiptayThe higher up you get, the fewer people you can trust. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayThe fewer people that want to come visit you frankly. So, as a result, you really need to have those real solid relationships. You need to do the same things that everyone else does. They need to find something bigger than themselves. They need to get outside of themselves. They need to find some something that's other; that does not cause the fatigue that is wearing them down. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Margaret LiptayAnd we've all been there. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayAnd we know how it impacts our ability to make decisions. Ken WhiteYeah absolutely. You mentioned courage a little while ago. What's the link between courage and resilience, or is there a link? Margaret LiptayThere's I think there's a very direct link. Courage is like a muscle. So the more you try to do things that require courage. I think the more it helps your resilience. So to me, courage is not ignoring fear. It's accepting fear. So to do a podcast that's a little fearful for me. So I accept it. I love it. I want to do it. I enjoyed partnering with you. So what you've got to do was overcome fear. And how do you overcome fear through your courage? And it's a muscle much like resilience. If you don't keep doing things that you're fearful of, then you will never overcome that fear so that you can move forward. So, for example, a colleague of mine once said when we were going through a big merger and acquisition. She said I'm just going to stay below the radar. I'm going to stay out of everybody's way. And I said boy I'm taking a different tactic. I'm going to go meet every new executive we have, and I'm going to find out what this new organization offers. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Margaret LiptayThose were two different things. She was afraid. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayHer fear paralyzed her. I was not afraid, or I was kind of, but I said, what the heck. What do I have to lose? So on you go. So that's where there is a very distinct relationship between being courageous and using that courage to sort of motivate your resilience. And I think the more resilient you are; the more courageous you are because you're not afraid to fail. Ken WhiteDo we really have a choice? Don't we have to be resilient? What's the alternative? Margaret LiptayThat's a really good question. And sometimes in spite of the fact that you have to be resilient for one reason or another, you don't have it either it's too soon after a tragedy or too soon after a trauma, and you're not healing, and maybe you need additional help. Sometimes you're alone. You don't have those resonant wonderful real relationships. Sometimes your brain is in a fog, and you can't get it out of there. Sometimes you're awfulizing and catastrophizing and perseverating, and it's the same thing over and over again. You're digging yourself deeper and deeper. There's many reasons why we get stuck. What you have to understand, or hopefully, a loved one around you will recognize that you're stuck and over time. And the thing about resilience sometimes it comes incrementally not exponentially. So if you get a little bit at a time, you get some movement forward, or you can move out of that memory, or you can move forward and maybe put one shoe on to go dance in the rain, not both shoes on. Little by little, you'll get there. But I think what happens is sometimes your expectations for yourself doom you to failure, and therefore, the message here is that you have to start working on resilience at a very early stage in your life and your parents with young children. And then, from there, everyone has to work on their own resilience so that they can when that tragedy comes and it will. And when that awful thing happens that there are tools that you have inside of you to move forward. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with certified leadership coach Margaret Liptay, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with business and leadership development programs taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. If you're interested in learning more, please visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Margaret Liptay. Thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Todd Boehly](images/todd-boehly-119-thumb.jpg)
![Leadership, Business and Baseball with baseball and glove](images/todd-boehly-119-thumb.jpg)
Todd Boehly
Episode 119: August 15, 2019
Leadership, Business and Baseball
While many professionals become successful by focusing on one business or one sector, Todd Boehly has taken another route to success. He seems to be into everything: An entrepreneur, philanthropist, businessman, and investor. Boehly's been active in a variety of sectors including media, professional sports, insurance, real estate development, and entertainment to name a few. He's involved in organizations like the Los Angeles Dodgers, Pizza Hut, and Dick Clark Productions. Boehly's the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Eldridge Industries, a private investment firm founded in 2015. He recently visited William & Mary to take part in the annual Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit. He took a break from the event to sit down with us to talk about his experience building businesses, his investment philosophy, and how he sees parallels between leadership, business, and baseball.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. While many professionals become successful by focusing on one business or one sector, Todd Boehly has taken another route to success. He seems to be into everything an entrepreneur, philanthropist, businessman, and investor. Boehly has been active in a variety of sectors, including media, professional sports, insurance, real estate development, and entertainment, to name a few. He's involved in organizations like the Los Angeles Dodgers, Pizza Hut, and Dick Clark Productions. Boehly is the co-founder chairman and CEO of Eldridge Industries, a private investment firm founded in 2015. He recently visited William & Mary to take part in the annual Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit. He took a break from the event to sit down with us. To talk about his experience building businesses, his investment philosophy, and how he sees the parallels between leadership, business, and baseball. Here's our conversation with the chairman and CEO of Eldridge Industries, Todd Boehly. Ken WhiteTodd, thanks for taking the time to do the podcast with us. It is a pleasure to finally meet you. Todd BoehlyIt's nice to be here. Thank you very much. Ken WhiteNow you're here for the Women's Stock Pitch Leadership event. This is something that you've been involved with from the get-go. What is it about the event that attracts you? Todd BoehlyListen, I think it's a unique opportunity for us to continuously bring the real world into the business school. And one of my frustrations going through the business school and really with academia generally when I was a student was not really understanding how that experience would connect with the real world. So our ability to continue to educate the students on what to expect when you get out of college to have a little bit of a leg up, or an edge, or at least a comfort level with the next step is really what we're been trying to do. And I think by having multiple teams compete in an environment where they're presenting their presentation skills are being observed, their knowledge for the facts are being observed, how much work did they put into the product upfront is pretty clear. And you know as you start to realize you need to continuously be evaluating these things from lots of different perspectives. When you're thinking about an investment to see the teams start to be able to come together and you know you can really tell which teams have put the hours in and which teams haven't. Ken WhiteRight. So you know students today you interact with them you see them. How, in general, are business school students, college students today versus you and your peers when you were in school? Todd BoehlyI think broadly defined, the sophistication level of the student has gone up dramatically. I think if you ask yourself why you have a world where for us and the Class of 96 here at William & Mary when really e-mail didn't really start till 95 or 96. You know we were in a world where communication was not fully distributed the way it is today. And because it's so distributed, the knowledge and the information that you know people can access is completely different. And you know I remember my term papers in high school or really whatever my three sources said, one of which would have been an encyclopedia. Ken WhiteYeah. Todd BoehlyAnd the idea that that was what we were working with versus the abundance of information that people have today. I think that that's seeped its way into the younger ages, so people are getting sophisticated more specifically or more early in their lives. You know, because all of that is right available at their fingertips, and I think that expresses itself in universities and students as well. Ken WhiteA great point. I haven't heard it, that's a great point. When you were in school, did you know what you wanted to do professionally? Todd BoehlyNo. Ken WhiteHow did you find your way? Todd BoehlyTrial and error. Ken WhiteYeah. Did you have mentors? Todd BoehlyYou know I had a William & Mary student who was a fraternity brother of mine named Scott Mackesy, and I think one of the things that Scott was very successful at was getting a lot of us interested in finance and Wall Street. And so if you look at how many Lambda Chi Alphas who were at William & Mary that ended up coming to New York, which was kind of a uniquer place to go if you're at William & Mary. A lot of us really followed on the path that Scott charted, and then he was super supportive of helping us transition to New York such that you know he was able to get four or five of us employed early on or job offers early on and then help you know another four or five of us. So Scott was really instrumental in helping us navigate out of Williamsburg into New York City. Ken WhiteTell us about Eldridge Industries. Todd BoehlyDiversified portfolio of businesses, you know, and one of my goals is to own businesses that when some do better, some do worse and when do some do worse, some do better. So, for example, one of the themes that you're seeing right now real-time Eldridge owns an insurance company called Security Benefit when rates go up. Financial institutions do better. So you know rates were rising last year, and Security Benefit had a record year. Now with rates coming back down, Security Benefit also owns a very large stake, and Eldridge own a large stake in something called Essential Properties, and Essential Properties is a publicly-traded triple net leasing REIT. And so when rates are going down. Essential Property stock price has been going up. So the idea is to have a portfolio of businesses that you know can continuously outperform as a group. Recognizing that some of the businesses are going to help the other businesses in environments where those businesses might be doing not as well as other businesses. Because we're trying to set up a long term platform that you know continues to grow regardless of economic cycles. By being you know very well diversified and in multiple businesses today, we're about twenty-five hundred employees at all the businesses about a hundred at Eldridge itself. We also operate twelve hundred Pizza Huts and 400 Wendys. So if you look at all the employees, including the ones you know within the store environment, we're closer to 40,000. Ken WhiteWow. Some of the guests we've had on the podcast some are subject matter experts, leaders, entrepreneurs some of them have said you know my philosophy is I want to know one thing I'm going to put my eggs in that basket and be that expert and I feel good that way. That's not you; you're you've a wide range. How do you balance that? Todd BoehlyThe key is to have good teams and you know one of the things if you look at you know in the 70s, for example, the Los Angeles Dodgers had you know Ron Cey at Third, and Russell at short, and Lopes, and Garvey and you know you knew that those guys were going to perform at a certain level night in and night out. My team a lot of which has been with me for decades now I know that they're going to perform day in and day out. So it allows me to then have the flexibility to go investigate new areas, and generally, when we're looking at something where we don't have any exposure, you know we recognize that we're the outside looking in. So one of the things we like to do is to make small investments to get to know something know and understand the environment to become more of an insider through our original investment. And then if we continue to like what we see, then we feel like okay, our odds are better now because we have all this new knowledge you know, and if we see opportunities, then we can move more aggressively to continue to grow. You know, with a little strategy that you know, we kind of think about as feeding the stars and because investing is really just about finding probabilities that have better risk-reward profiles than average. And if you can find a better probability, then you're certainly interested in putting more capital behind it because you know again it's all in my opinion very much an odds game because you can't predict what's going to happen day in and day out. Ken WhiteRight. Todd BoehlyAnd if you start assuming that you can, you know, then that's a challenge. The other thing that we're very active in is in secured lending across different asset classes. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Todd BoehlyWhether it's intellectual property or triple net real estate or equipment leases or secured loans that are broadly syndicated to corporates throughout the U.S., you know those are asset classes that we like because they're all contractual rate of return they become very predictable. Ken WhiteRight. Todd BoehlySo they help you kind of plan for the future. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Todd Boehly in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. If you're looking to raise your game and give your career a boost. The Center for Corporate Education hosts professional development programs that provide busy executives, emerging leaders, and teams with the tools needed to compete in today's business environment. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Eldridge Industries, Todd Boehly. Ken WhiteYou've mentioned baseball a couple times opening day. Here we are. This is one of the greatest weeks of the year, right. We've got the NCAA tournament going on. Baseball opens up. You're involved with the Dodgers. How'd you get involved with baseball why Todd BoehlySo we had looked at various investment opportunities within sports, and you know when it came available, we became very interested in the idea that the Dodgers were something that were could be very valuable. And I think if you look at kind of the themes that historically you know we've been interested in as investors you know we know media very well. We know real estate very well. We understand you know what a team dynamic in a human capital business is and when you really break down what is a baseball team in light of what how the MLB works because one of the things that the Dodgers have is you own your national excuse me your local broadcasting. So each major league baseball team negotiates their own media deal. And of course, L.A. is the second-largest media market in the world and are in the US, and we thought that that would be a good opportunity because the media contract was coming up for renewal the year after we bought it. So we thought people were underpricing the media value that was embedded in the renewal of that contract. You know, at the same time, we have our own stadium, which is one of the larger in baseball and has more sell-outs now than probably any other team, and we have the highest home attendance and the highest road attendance. So you know by getting really good energy back in the team when we bought the team and then by having the media contract come up the next year we were well-positioned to set the team up and now what we've done is really build up our farm system and really what we do is we're trying to put together the 25 person team that has the best probability to win. And again, it's another portfolio. And if you look at it, you say okay I have somewhere between 12 and 13 pitchers on the roster I have 12 or 13 position players. You know I need to be able to handle lefties. I need to be able to handle righties I need to be able to handle this. I need to be able to handle that that ultimately comes down to is your portfolio deep enough to deliver on the various things that might get presented to you. So you know to us it's a it's another kind of portfolio business. You know obviously, we're also super passionate about it because which is why we wanted to get into it anyway. Ken WhiteSure. Todd BoehlyBut we also think kind of very systematically about what it is that you need to do in order to win over long periods of time. Ken WhiteYeah. Todd BoehlyAnd you know a nice thing about the Dodgers is they're in a major market. So our odds of being able to be set up to win over long periods of time the market affords us better odds than average. Ken WhiteOne of the guests we had on recently was Thomas Tull. He leads Telco, and he much like you. He's part-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, he was in Legendary Entertainment so movies, and we talked a little bit about what's what are they. What are the similarities between dealing with athletes and artists and actors, and he felt there really were some? He said these are different types of people, and it puts you in a people business, which is very different. Todd BoehlyYeah. Ken WhiteHow do you see those because you've been in both? Todd BoehlyListen, I think that that's can be extended to finance, it can be extended into movie and film production, that can extended into anything that's a human capital industry where you have to motivate talented, educated people to get from point A to Point B you know and try to do it in the most efficient way possible and recognize that it's all just people getting along. So you have to be able to set a tone to how you want that kind of engagement to be. And for example one of the things that Dave Roberts has done very well is owned the clubhouse right, and he's gotten the team to believe that you know he's all in on them right and when he they believe he's all in on them they're going to give him everything they got. Ken WhiteRight. Todd BoehlyAnd that's no different than any human capital business with a manager who is trying to lead a team from point A to Point B in a environment where nothing certain. Ken WhiteNo doubt. What's the next best thing in baseball? Next big thing coming down the road? Todd BoehlyNext big thing in baseball. There's obviously a lot of talk about pitch clocks and speeding up the game, and I think the number one thing that baseball is thinking about and should be thinking about is how do we continue to be the family sport and you know I think one of the things that we have is a really unique environment where you can take your family to a game, and it's relaxed, it's mellow, it's calm, it's also energetic, and there's massive spikes of energy when things go well, and there's horrible feelings of despair when things go wrong which starts to sound a lot like life right. So if you're in a position where you can start getting more and more families engaged because what we find is that the younger someone goes to a game, the more likely they are to be a fan. So we're spending time thinking about how do we continue to really engage with the community, engage with the children of the community. We've built tons of dream fields in L.A., so we have lots of this whole building of Little League fields and fields across L.A. through our during field program and our Dodger foundation. You also have gonna be the advent of a whole new era with sports betting. So you have an environment where you know three, three and a half hours at a baseball game sometimes can feel very long, and one of the things that we've done for children is there's a lot of play areas around so you can move out of the seats and engage them and have them have activities that don't just entail sitting there which is important but then for others for you know adults who are at the game the ability to really engage with you know in time betting on whether that's going gonna be a ball or a strike or a curveball or a fastball or who's going to hit the next home run or all of this stuff. The potential is unlimited. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Todd BoehlyIn an environment like baseball, where you have very precise things that are measured that can be agreed on with great certainty, which I think is going to great make for even great engagement. So hopefully you know what we'll do is a really good job of engaging the family and the kids and the and the camaraderie of going to a baseball game at the same time engaging the hardcore fans and oh my gosh is Kershaw going to throw a ball, or I mean a ball or strike here and will be a curve or will it be a slider and I think that will lead to more and more engagement for the sport. So I would say those are the two things we see is you know the things we need to do in order to continue to keep the game fresh and young, and you know right now one of the things we're grappling with is the average age of our fan continues to age. Ken WhiteYeah. Todd BoehlySo how do we continue to get, and I think that's through the family. Ken WhiteSuccess passion in a number of areas for someone who wants to pursue a career and a life like that. What kind of advice do you have? How do you embrace a larger portfolio and succeed? Todd BoehlyWell, again I guess I would say that the first thing you need in order to transition from one environment to another is to know that the team in the environment that you're transitioning from is strong and ready to lead and able to handle complicated environments and moving around too quickly I think is is a challenge from being able to become an expert in one area. I mean, I spent you know 15 years almost at Guggenheim doing kind of the same things generally day in and day out of course across a portfolio of businesses and building different teams within Guggenheim. And I think I've been able to now take that and apply it across different industries and you know always think about how to calculate your risk so you don't take event risk where it wipes you outright because I don't want to be able to say oh that one thing could happen and I'm toast right. That means I shouldn't do that one thing right. So continuously you know as we get into new industries, we're looking at okay let's make a 20 million dollar investment in order to understand the dynamic or let's make a loan to this industry not in an equity investment because a loan comes with less risk generally. Ken WhiteRight. Todd BoehlyAnd by the way, if you don't like what you're in, it's easy to get paid off on a loan to unwind Partnerships becomes complicated. So one of our businesses early on was big lending business. And that gave us a really good front-row seat into lots of different industries. So by lending across industry, you know because the lender proposition is you know when it goes really well you get your money back when it doesn't go so well you still get your money back right. So if you're thinking about the trades, you're making one has cushion in it. And the other you're kind of chins more on the line. So you certainly want to have more knowledge when your chins on the line than when there's equity cushion to ensure you get your capital back. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Todd Boehly chairman and CEO of Eldridge Industries, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by email at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Todd Boehly, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Bradford Downs](images/bradford-downs-118-thumb.jpg)
![The Conqueror with film poster](images/bradford-downs-118-thumb.jpg)
Bradford Downs
Episode 118: August 1, 2019
The Conqueror
"The Conqueror." It's an inspirational documentary film about Jerome Conquest of Philadelphia. The death of his friend at the age of 17 inspired Conquest to stop fighting in the streets and instead fight in the boxing ring. The documentary follows Conquest between his day job as a maintenance worker and his evenings as a boxer. Bradford Downs is the producer of the award-winning documentary, but he's not like most producers. While production was taking place, he was pursuing his MBA full-time at William & Mary. He graduated in May. Downs joins us on the podcast today to talk about "The Conqueror," documentary filmmaking, and the commonalities between business and telling great stories.
Podcast (audio)
Bradford Downs: The Conqueror TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. The Conqueror, it's an inspirational documentary film about Jerome Conquest of Philadelphia. The death of his friend at the age of 17 inspired Conquest to stop fighting in the streets and instead fight in the boxing ring. The documentary follows Conquest between his day job as a maintenance worker and his evenings as a boxer. Bradford Downs is the producer of the award-winning documentary, but he is not like most producers. While production was taking place, he was pursuing his MBA full time at William & Mary. He graduated in May. Downs joins us on the podcast today to talk about The Conqueror, documentary filmmaking, and the commonalities between business and telling great stories. Here's our conversation with Bradford Downs, the producer of The Conqueror. Ken WhiteWell, Bradford, this is a first. We've recorded over one hundred and twenty podcasts, and we've never had one of our own students on. So welcome. This is great, thank you. Bradford DownsWell, thank you, Dean White. This is truly an honor to be on your platform part of these tribe podcasts and to be the lucky 121st. Ken WhiteThere it is. Yeah, but there's a reason right there. There is a reason you've just done phenomenal work. It's been so exciting to watch the documentary and see you take it around the country. You know I'm not sure there's a usual path to becoming a documentary filmmaker. But how did you, how'd you get here? What did you do? Bradford DownsYeah yeah, well, it's certainly is far from usual, but it's been a tremendously exciting and rewarding experience. And that is right. I had no experience at all. You know not only filmmaking but particularly documentary filmmaking funny enough as William & Mary undergrad here I studied environmental science and postgrad. I was working as a tour guide down on the Outer Banks, and you know I saw myself as a storyteller. But you know I was essentially working in customer service. However, while I was down there I befriended this incredible seasoned filmmaker who became a dear friend of mine and colleague Tim Blackwood, and in fact, I actually hired him as a seasonal tour guide, and after each season he would go off and make his documentary films, and you know he would screen them at Cannes. He'd be in France and all these premieres and always come back for a season of tours, and I always thought you know wow that's really cool. Ken WhiteYeah. Bradford DownsSo he came to me with kind of his next project idea. He was starting to shape up and was throwing these ideas and pitches at me, and it was actually much more than his next project. He was committed to come on this mission and venture and to produce these films through it. He'd actually started a company called Montague Cervantes and kind of the founding grounding mission of that was to find heroes and stories of people really on the margins. People you know real-life heroes, real-life stories of redemption that otherwise you know really wouldn't be told. And that was that kind of tremendous vision that he had there. And I was sold. So I joined forces with him and said you know what, however, this next documentary film will shape up I'm on board with you. Ken WhiteSo what attracted you to that the idea you can tell stories that weren't told the type of people the industry what got you excited. Bradford DownsOh well initially, you know it was you know wow that's really cool when to get into the entertainment industry. But it all came down to that mission to finding those real heroes out there. Those kind of raw redemptive elements. And you know I've always you know always had kind of a sense of exploration. I said, so let's go out there, and you know, let's find them and make it happen. Ken WhiteWhat's interesting you know in your MBA program you learn about businesses, and you better have a mission and a vision. It's all about that. And that's exactly what happened. You know, in this industry for you then. Bradford DownsA 100 percent Ken WhiteYeah. Bradford DownsThat was there was the calling card. Ken WhiteHow did you learn? How did this is there's a lot to learn. Bradford DownsOf course. Yeah well, it's a good thing I'm a fast learner. You're right. I had no experience prior, but like I said, you know I was committed to joining, you know my friend and now colleague to this mission and this venture to tell these stories. So I was given that call I was given that opportunity. So you know I'm a very hands-on person instead of you know wanting to get transition into the industry and through documentary filmmaking instead of going to film school I said let's just go do it. You know fast learner hands-on. And what I did have you know the entertainment industry in general and, more specifically, physically making a documentary film. It's a human being business. You know you're dealing with creatives, you're dealing with storytellers, you dealing with these stories in these subjects. It's all about the people and coming in from tour guiding and that customer experience I had that in balance. You know dealing and working and loving to work with people. So that was my number one asset. Ken WhiteAnd in terms of the technical pieces and how to do it all, you just did it as you went along. Bradford DownsYou just do it on the fly. Yeah, you just learn on the job. Ken WhiteHow did you decide to make the film about Jerome? Where did he come from, and how did you how do you get connected? Bradford DownsOh, it was I mean the day I met Jerome Conquest. It truly changed my life forever. You know we had this grounding mission you know with Montague Cervantes to go out and find these stories, and we found ourselves in an electric boxing gym in Philadelphia actually the iconic Joe Hand boxing gym, and there's these boxers around their sweating, their training. It's all too intimidating and then on his daily routine and grind Jerome Conquest walks in, and he allowed us to follow him around and learn about what made him tick. And his story and his community and friends and where he came from and we knew once with that window there and learning all of that that that struck the chord you know that aligned with that mission to go out there and find these kind of heroes. And we knew we had to do, and we're committed to whatever it would take to shine a light on Jerome Conquest. So literally the next day, we have our cinematographer flying in from L.A. and our sound designer flying in from Denmark, and it was kind of off to the races. Ken WhiteVery difficult to convince him to partner with him. How did that go? Bradford DownsInitially, it was you may call it fate, but it was pretty organic. Initially, you know we approached him with kind of that mission that humility with what we were about to find those heroes. And he is a real-life hero. He said if you're willing, you know to come into my world and show my world; then I'm absolutely on board. Whatever it would take. And throughout the whole process and still, even to this day, he always has this quote with us because you guys are stuck with me for life now, I guess. Ken WhiteYeah. You know I worked in local television way back when. And when you do that, I would see everything through a viewfinder. It was all if this isn't video-friendly. I don't want to do it. It was sort of the idea, and I. Are you the same when you walked into that gym? Were you saying ah this is this looks good? You know this is gonna be visually exciting. Bradford DownsOh absolutely. Knowing the electricity in the gym but just just just visually aesthetically the gym and the greater Philly area. And Jerome and his neighborhood is just it's just all so raw. You know we're walking around with our cinematographers from Los Angeles, and he's just lit up, you know he's so excited to be on this project and getting this kind of content telling this kind of story saying you know you can't production design this at all. Ken WhiteRight. Bradford DownsThis is all so amazing and captivating. Ken WhiteAnd then the audio I mean the sound of a gym a boxing there's gonna be great audio going on at the same time. Bradford DownsOh, bells and whistles punches and bags and sweat. It's I mean that that production values there even before you turn the camera on. Ken WhiteYeah. How exciting. So how about let's talk about funding. I mean we I think almost everybody knows somebody who knows a documentarian, but they don't understand the business. How does that happen? Where does the funding come from? Bradford DownsOf course. Yeah. I mean there's all kinds of exciting ways to finance a documentary you know you can partner with a brand, you can partner with a you know a Foundation a nonprofit all of which we look forward to approaching in the future, or you do kind of the entrepreneur route like we did. Timothy and then when I jumped on board helping him with it set up this venture Montague Cervantes we have this vehicle with that mission. You know let's run it all through a company go out there produce a film you know have it, own it, get it to film festivals. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Bradford Downs of Montague Cervantes in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. In order to retain top employees, the best companies and organizations invest in their people by offering high-quality professional development, and some of those top companies and organizations turned to William & Mary and our Center for Corporate Education for their needs. The Center for Corporate Education offers professional development programs for all levels of employees, from executives to managers to emerging leaders to new hires. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Bradford Downs producer of the documentary film The Conqueror. Ken WhiteHow do you where does the role of audience play? So you see Jerome and you and you've got all the visuals, and the audio say this looks good. When do you think who's gonna like this? Who's gonna watch this? Where does that come into play? Bradford DownsWell, well, of course, you know it's one thing we always say, and I've learned throughout the process. It's one thing to just great make a great film find that great character and story, but if you don't know how to market it at all and you have no one to market it to, then it's just it's going to go on untold and unseen. We felt throughout the process, which is why we initially joined forces with Jerome to tell his story that everything visually aside Philadelphia, the sport of boxing it cut to that core of being Jerome of that relatable, real-life character, and hero. We saw that in that just intrinsically, it transcended everything surrounding him. You know the inner city of Philadelphia, the boxing, and we knew that there was kind of that inherent value thereof him as a character and a hero that we truly believe in and is and as proved to be now you know can relate to anybody. Ken WhiteWe see with Netflix and Hulu there's so many places and TV is just so many outlets and distribution channels. Television is exploding. Documentaries is that can you make a living in the documentary space? Bradford DownsOh sure. And we feel and have seen you know it's getting bigger and more exciting than ever. You know you see with these streaming services all that Netflix is putting in into their original documentary series, and they're all absolutely amazing series and films and with us being in these film festivals now with The Conqueror with the plethora of other documentary films that we've seen and are very high caliber and have very great stories. We see that there is a very big and growing demand for this kind of content. You know these real-life stories about real-life people in real-life situations you know all told as a documentary in the most captivating compelling ways possible. So we see it as being you know in a very exciting edge of you more and more potential out there for these documentary these kind of films. Ken WhitePeople like to learn about other people, don't they? Bradford DownsExactly. Yeah. Ken WhiteWhatever it's human nature, I guess. Yeah. What do you like about filmmaking? Bradford DownsWell, growing up, you know you always love movies and films. I mean, I mean everybody does. But you know giving that opportunity I had that call you know to jump in and join forces you know with Timothy and his adventure in this mission we're about, and you know fortunate enough to find Jerome and tell the story but contextualizing all of it. I love filmmaking. It's the vehicle and opportunity and kind of the overall ability to be able to connect with and inspire people. I mean, you can awaken audience members and transcend them into that world and that way of life, and to those characters and heroes that you know, they otherwise would never have thought of or even knew existed out there. You know I did this through tour guiding, and you know now with my dear friend Tim a partner through the mission and work of this venture and through our flagship project, The Conqueror. Ken WhiteNow you're a musician, and in fact, some of your music is in the movie. How did that how did that happen? What was the what's the story behind that? Bradford DownsYes, I most certainly am. I mean right up there now with documentary filmmaking I love playing the guitar and making music probably more than anything in the world. And scoring an original song for the film had to have been one of the coolest experience I've ever had and plan to have much more of. I mean, when it was all, it was another exciting part of this whole kind of creative process working on the film. I mean, when we couldn't afford the licensing for any more music, Tim and I both looked at each and said, hey, why don't I come up with something. So I sat down and wrote a piece went in the recording studio with Tim and a music producer who actually happens to be his brother, and we went to work, and now I'm just honored and sort of speechless to be on the film soundtrack with famous Spanish composer Jordi Cervello and one of my all-time favorite bands Explosions in the Sky. Ken WhiteThat's that's great. You're doing a lot of film festivals, and every time I bump into, it seems like you're going somewhere else. What's the role of the film festival in the documentary world? Why are they important? Bradford DownsOh absolutely, and yes, I'm always on the go leaving Miller here. It's an amazing opportunity to showcase that work. I mean to people to cities and places that otherwise would probably never see it. We had our world premiere this last summer in Indianapolis and the people in the audience in the theater they would otherwise never be exposed these kind of characters and these kind of stories, and it's also an immense opportunity to meet all these other filmmakers from all over the world. We're in Indianapolis Ken WhiteYeah. Bradford DownsAnd there's filmmakers from in from Ireland from England and Australia and learn about what they're doing as storytellers as filmmakers you know what is their mission and what are they out there creating so what is out there in the marketplace for films and what is relevant now you'll learn all of this through the filmmaking process. And for Jerome and for him and his community, you know to be able to come from the inner city of Philadelphia and go to these international film festivals you know all over the world we're coming up. This May well we're lined up for three International Filmfests in England. So to get The Conqueror over to London, you know that's an opportunity. He wouldn't; you wouldn't otherwise be afforded. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. It sounds like you've learned so much. It's probably an unfair question, but what have you learned through this exciting experience? Bradford DownsOh, it's you know again been one of the most definitely most exciting rewarding you know periods of my life and I'm more excited about you know the future you know with his success of The Conqueror and the other films that we're working on, and we'll continue to pursue with the projects we have in our pipeline. You know practically I learned so much about filmmaking you know the technicality of it what it takes you know me as a producer of this project being on the ground in Philly running around coordinating get getting everything just kind of lined up and cleared all the way through the post-production part of it you know to scoring a film what does it take a license these songs and everything to the film festival part of it that's a whole other kind of stage of the creative process and getting there and doing your good PR and your marketing and bringing Jerome to these stories and about the venture as well. You know this is all done through Montague Cervantes, this story and the other ones we're working on. You know that kind of entrepreneurial component which I've you know been able to leverage in and transition into so much I've learned in this MBA program at William & Mary and then of course you know meeting Jerome the day I met him that that changed my life and he's from an area I would have never seen otherwise you know met people otherwise and just to have and be a part of that that powerful story is it's just it continues to leave me speechless. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Bradford Downs producer of The Conqueror. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Bradford Downs and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Ann Benjamin](images/ann-benjamin-117-thumb.jpg)
![Passion, Advocacy and Initiative with guy jumping up](images/ann-benjamin-117-thumb.jpg)
Ann Benjamin
Episode 117: July 15, 2019
Passion, Advocacy and Initiative
As members of the Class of 2019 from colleges and universities across the world make the transition from student to professional, many of them have questions about job, career and success. Ann Benjamin has some answers. Benjamin is a private investor and philanthropist. She spent 34 years in the investment management business. She was a keynote speaker at the 2019 Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit - an event that brings some of the world's best undergraduate students to William & Mary for a weekend. After speaking to the attendees, she sat down with us and shared her three-step formula for success: Passion, advocacy, and initiative.
Podcast (audio)
Ann Benjamin: Passion, Advocacy and Initiative TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
Podcast (platforms)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. As members of the Class of 2019 from colleges and universities across the world make the transition from student to professional. Many of them have questions about job, career, and success, and Benjamin has some answers. Benjamin is a private investor and philanthropist. She spent 34 years in the investment management business. She was a keynote speaker at the 2019 Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit, an event that brings some of the world's best undergraduate students to William & Mary for a weekend. After speaking to the attendees, she sat down with us and shared her three-step formula for success passion, advocacy, and initiative. Here's our conversation with Ann Benjamin. Ken WhiteWell, Ann, thank you for taking the time. Welcome back to William & Mary. Ann BenjaminThank you, Ken. It's a pleasure to be here. Ken WhiteAnd you've been here a couple times. You were here for the McLaughlin Forum and now today for the women's event, and you just spoke. We just took you right from the stage here into our studio. How was the experience of talking to that roomful of unbelievably high potential young people? Ann BenjaminIt was absolutely wonderful. Just the whole day has been remarkable. The women's presentations, preparation, the ideas I am just absolutely amazed, and as I said in my speech that if I would have had this pool of talent to recruit from, I would have been just on heaven. It would have made my life so much easier. It was so difficult to recruit women from day one and through my entire career, and to have this right in front of me and right in front of a lot of people that are recruiting is just absolutely remarkable. Ken WhiteWhen you look at this group, and this is a high potential group that we just had, these are teams from the best universities in the world and so forth. But how would you compare that group to the young women you hung around within school and the people you knew back then when you were starting your career. Ann BenjaminOh, it is night and day. There's no question about it. I talked to many of the professionals from William & Mary. I don't think we could have gotten up there and to do that. We didn't have the presentation skills, the coaching that these women have had, and it's just absolutely amazing what they could do. And so it's very, very unlike what went on back in the early 80s. Ken WhiteYeah. Ann BenjaminWhen we were women were far and few between. But we did not have that type of training. Ken WhiteRight. Ann BenjaminOr their ability to analyze financial statements is also amazing to me because, again in recruiting, individuals, particularly women throughout my career, very few people understand modeling particularly an undergrad. So to see this and to see the quality, just amazing. Ken WhiteThat's great. Ann BenjaminYeah. Ken WhiteAnd you were the lunchtime keynote, and you shared your comments and you specifically in talking about success and evolving. You talked about passion, advocacy, and initiative, and I thought let's talk about that. So when you're talking about passion, what are you sharing? Ann BenjaminSo when you talk about passion, at least for me, passion it's necessary for success. And a person with passion it gives you the energy and the motivation, and the burning desire to succeed. And that's what I attribute my success to because if I didn't have that passion, I wouldn't have been able to stay with it for so long. Through good times and bad and especially during the bad times. You need to be passionate about what you're doing. Otherwise, you'll never get through those tough times. Ken WhiteSo it's a passion about the job. Passion about the organization or passion about just professionalism as an umbrella? Ann BenjaminFor me, it was passion about investing. Ken WhiteGot it. Ann BenjaminAnd about being successful in investing. And that really gave me the desire to build a business, put in the long hours necessary. And so and it's also a passion about your clients because your clients will pick up on it, and if you're not passionate, they're gonna think you're not interested in what you're doing, or you're not going to be able to deliver the best returns possible. So when you have passion, not only do your clients see that, but your employees see it as well. And when your employees see it, you bring the same level of enthusiasm to your organization. So it's really somewhat of a comprehensive model in the sense that your passionate about what you do, how you do it your clients, and then that filters down to your organization. Ken WhiteIt reminds me, in the higher ed space, when they when students are asked what makes a really great classroom teacher or professor, it's obviously knowledge about the field. And second is we want them to just love it. We want to see the passion because then the students feel it. And so it's serious it's not something that is that has to be taken lightly. And in terms of a goal, it is a question I've asked a lot of our guests on the podcast is how is important. How important is passion to your success? And I'm often surprised by people who say yeah I don't the business doesn't matter that much to me. It's just getting it done right that drives them. But in your case, investing was a thing that really got you going. Ann BenjaminIt was absolutely, and I learned my passion for investing early on in life from being around my brothers. They started an LBO firm back in the early 80s, and they were passionate about what they were doing, and it was a new thing at the time believe it or not. But it was amazing to see what how you could buy a company and transform it. And that to me was just so exciting. And then, from there, I went on to work in public markets, and it was the learning every single day, every minute of the day. You're learning it's the people. It's the thrill of having that investment and making it and see it work out. Ken WhiteSome people don't have not found their passion. Right, and which is I think for someone like you or me would be horrible because I love what I do. You love what you've done. Any advice for someone that may be earlier in their career or mid-career that when they do wake up, they're not that fired up about what they have to do every day? Ann BenjaminI think if you're not fired up about what you do, just step back and take a look. And if you had the passion initially and all of a sudden, you feel you don't have the passion reassess. Okay, if you still love the business, but your passion has sort of diminished, and you reassess sometimes your passion can get reignited. But if you feel that you don't love what you're doing anymore. Then it is definitely time to make some changes in your personal life and in your career. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Ann Benjamin in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. In order to retain top employees, the best companies and organizations invest in their people by offering high-quality professional development programs, and some of those top companies and organizations turn to William & Mary and our Center for Corporate Education for their needs. The Center for Corporate Education offers professional development programs for all levels of employees, from executives to managers to emerging leaders to new hires. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Ann Benjamin. Ken WhiteSo passion number one, your second point was advocacy. Can you share us share more on that? Ann BenjaminYes, advocacy it's important to not only advocate for yourself throughout your career, but initially, you need to find people that will advocate for you. So as a young person starting out, you don't really have a very loud voice. Ken WhiteRight. Ann BenjaminIn an organization, so seek senior people or mentors who will advocate for you, who will speak that to your ability to take on new responsibilities, or to possibly take a new job. So that's really critical when you're seeking advocates initially, and then as you go on, you have to advocate for yourself. Nobody else can do that but you. And when you advocate for yourself, it can be as simple as asking questions, or speaking up when somebody asks you, or speaking up and giving an opinion when you see an opportunity. But in order to do that you need to be well-prepared and ask very well thought out questions. Ken WhiteTough for an introvert, especially going to find someone to advocate for you. How does a young professional do that? Ann BenjaminYou need to step out of your comfort zone, which is hard for young professionals, and it's hard for all professionals. So to step out of your comfort zone and just simply ask someone if they would be your mentor or ask for advice, don't wait until your performance review. But by simply asking people, you'll find out how willing people are to help you along in your career. As an introvert, I can speak from experience. It is not easy, but if you do it, you'll go a long way to achieving your success. Ken WhiteWhat was your experience like when you sought to find that advocate for you? How did you do that, and how did that relationship go? Ann BenjaminWell, when I sought an advocate, it was difficult because there were so few women. Ken WhiteRight. Ann BenjaminSo it had to be a male Ken WhiteYeah. Ann BenjaminAt that time. And so what I did was I realized that my presentation skills were not up to par, and I was lacking confidence. And when you're in a male-dominated world that makes it very difficult. Ken WhiteYeah. Ann BenjaminSo I asked my company for additional training so I could get better at my presentation skills and I would be able to make the next step to presenting companies to our board. So what would happen is I would write the 15-page report to be a great idea and handed off to one of my bosses, and they would make the presentation. Well, I knew that I'm not going to get much further in life unless I learn how to do that. So I would practice my presentation skills generally at home, at night, in front of the mirror until I could build my confidence and be able to make those presentations. Ken WhiteYeah, but it definitely is getting out of the comfort zone whether you're asking someone to advocate for you or you're going to try to do that for yourself. Ann BenjaminAbsolutely. Ken WhiteAnd knowing students some of them that's such so tough to cross that line and to do that. Ann BenjaminIt is it's very painful in the short term, but in the long term, it will go a long way to helping you achieve what you want. Ken WhiteYour third point was initiative. Can you share that with us? Ann BenjaminWhen you take initiative just like I did when I went to my company and asked for additional training. It's important that you take initiative not only for self-improvement and to develop your skills. Ask yourself where do you want to be in five years, in one year, and five years and what skills do you need to get there. And then take the initiative to work with your boss or your mentor to develop a plan to be able to get your skills up to a level where you they need to be. And so you can achieve what you want in one year or five years. Ken WhiteWhat we're hearing a lot today is that the managers are working so hard they're not always able to spend the time necessary with the people who report to them. So that the employee does take the initiative does try to get more out of the manager, the managers just swamped. And we're seeing this a lot, managers are frustrated. How do I do this? They're asking how do I take care of this whole team. Any advice for managers who seem to have I've got all of these people I just don't seem to have the time for the feeding and caring of my team, so to speak. Ann BenjaminSure, that makes it very difficult, especially in this day and age with so many new sources and so much technology and finding time for your team is very difficult but is very, very important. And if you don't have the time, perhaps you can go to your H.R. department and ask them. Do they have other counselors that they can maybe allocate to you to work with your team? Because building your team, if you can't build your team, ultimately, you're not going to make much progress for yourself or ask your company to seek outside help for developing an individual skills. Just so, they can be an active actively participate in the building the team. Ken WhitePassion you said when you have it, others see it, and it rubs off on clients on teammates and on the bottom line. Quite frankly, does initiative have that same ripple effect? Ann BenjaminIt does. You really need to take the initiative for yourself. And again, all three of these concepts are intertwined. Initiative, take the initiative, to plan your career because no one else is going to do that but you. And if you take some time and again figure out what it is you want to do and what skills you need to get there, then you will have an easier time of achieving what you want to achieve. I always tell individuals to be think of themselves as a CEO of a company, but the company is you. So what do you have to do to what's your marketing strategy? What's your what product are you offering? Are you a marketing person? Are you an investment person? And how do you present those skills to an employer or your boss to be able to continue your career path? Ken WhiteIf you had one sort of sentence or a summary that you shared with the group today or you're sharing with young professionals in terms of passion, advocacy, or initiative, or anything. In general, what is it you like to share with people who are about to either early in their career or who are you know just kind of getting started? Ann BenjaminI think out one of the things you need to remember is you have to have passion for what you're doing. Seek advocates and advocate for yourself and take the initiative for self-improvement and plan your career. Then that way, without a doubt, you'll be successful in your endeavors. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Ann Benjamin, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level. With business and leadership development programs taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcasts. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Ann Benjamin and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Mark Kurtz](images/mark-kurtz-116-thumb.jpg)
![The Business of Local TV News with newsroom](images/mark-kurtz-116-thumb.jpg)
Mark Kurtz
Episode 116: June 25, 2019
The Business of Local TV News
How do you get your daily news? We have more options today than ever before: Apps, social media, podcasts, websites, feeds, newsletters and more. As new media continues to take over the news landscape, some traditional media - like magazines and newspapers are struggling. According to a Knight Foundation report released in April, one medium around for more than 60 years is the go-to news source for Americans: Local television news. Mark Kurtz is News Director at WAVY-TV in Norfolk, Virginia, a top 50 market. He joins us on the podcast today to talk about local TV news, how it's changing, and why people continue to choose it as their source for news.
Podcast (audio)
Mark Kurtz: The Business of Local TV News TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. How do you get your Daily News? We have more options today than ever before apps, social media, podcasts, websites, feeds, newsletters, and more. As new media continue to take over the news landscape, some traditional media like magazines and newspapers are struggling. According to a Knight Foundation report released in April. One medium around for more than 60 years is the go-to news source for Americans' local television news. Mark Kurtz is News Director at WAVY TV in Norfolk, Virginia, a top 50 market. He joins us on the podcast today to talk about local TV news, how it's changing, and why people continue to choose it as their source for news. Here's our conversation with Mark Kurtz of WAVY TV. Ken WhiteMark, thanks very much for joining us. It's a real pleasure to have you here. Thanks for sharing your time with us. Mark KurtzHonor to be here. Thank you for having me. Ken WhiteYou know, back in the day, you know when things started going online, and the Internet started kicking up. You know the word was boy local newspapers might not make it local TV news might not make it, but local TV news is doing just fine. Mark KurtzLocal TV news is doing really well. Ken WhiteYeah. Why? How did it happen? Mark KurtzI think one of the things I think that we've embraced the Internet that's a huge part of our business. It's a growing part of the business, and we haven't shied away from it. I think that you know one of the things that local TV has, we have a connection to the market that other people don't have. You know the people on television, you know the personalities there's a face. A lot of people can name their favorite weatherman their favorite sportscaster. People will know our chief meteorologist who's been there since 1981, and they probably can't name a newspaper reporter. Ken WhiteRight. Mark KurtzSo there's a connection to television that doesn't quite exist with newspaper. And I think that our content it plays better in all these different devices we are in the video business we're in the storytelling business whether it's on your phone or your TV at the house however you're consuming it. What we do does translate pretty well. Ken WhiteYeah. Mark KurtzI think that's one reason why you're seeing TV stations continue to be profitable, and TV stations continue to chart a future is because it really is about telling stories. It's about content, and what we do really does play well on all these devices that people are carrying and using these days. Ken WhiteYeah. So when you say embracing the Internet obviously, people know that you have many newscasts over the air, so to speak. Where? When you're embracing the Internet, what does that mean? What are you doing? Mark KurtzSo you know it used to be you produce for the six o'clock news. Ken WhiteRight. Mark KurtzThere was a deadline for the six o'clock. We still have that. We do a lot many more hours of news than we did before that we call it the linear world. You're going to sit down and watch at 4 o'clock and watch for 30 minutes or whatever, but everybody in our newsroom is trained and is has been gone through the training to make sure they're producing content basically all day long. Yes, our reporters have to be ready for the six o'clock news the 11 o'clock news, but they are turning content working with web producers all day long. That may be a picture, maybe information, and maybe an interview may be a soundbite. So the Website's being updated all day long in this process. And so their world has changed so much where it used to be one deadline two deadlines it's kind of constant deadline. We don't hold stuff anymore. We do special investigations and things that may run at a certain time but used to be held everything back. You know that press release came in, don't you know, don't post that right. Everything that can go out does go out almost immediately, and that's built on throughout the day. Ken WhiteSo, as a result, you have better insight into your viewers into who they are what they like. Mark KurtzOh, absolutely because I'm going to tell you immediately. You know it used to be you got letters now with social media it's all day long you hear you hear what they like or they don't like they're gonna tell you about it real quick and say you know exactly what they like. Also, at the Internet, the metrics are just amazing. We can see what people are consuming. We can see what they're clicking on. We know you know down to the number of people looking at it. But then the platforms are different. Television is different than the Internet and things that may bubble up on the Internet. It's a function of people clicking on their phones or looking through social media may not be the same thing that leads a newscast at night. And so you have to kind of look at that and know when to when that's information you want to use or you know take that into consideration because there may be a story that's just kind of a wild Internet you know good internet story maybe its not the most important thing in the world you're not going to lead the news with it you're not gonna lead the six o'clock news with it, but it may be just blowing up on the website. Ken WhiteYeah. Mark KurtzAnd so you just take that into consideration and kind of have to know the audience watching each platform and know the strengths of each platform, whether it's the television or the phone or whatever it is. Ken WhiteNow being in a top 50 market. You've got the technology you've got things you need. Where are you with mobile? What's local television news doing in terms of the phone? Mark KurtzYou know wavy.com is an app, mobile, web. Almost all Web sites now are built for the mobile phone anyway. Ken WhiteRight. Mark KurtzBecause almost the vast majority of people are watching us and accessing us through the phone, not sitting at a computer like they used to. But yet we have a couple of apps that we have that you download those apps, and you get all the info you can get everything we put on online every newscast is streamed there. That's a huge part of our business. And it really is where people are you want to meet them where you are in that mobile app when people download that you talk about a superuser you talk about a brand loyalist that's the one that has made the made the decision I'm going to download your product. I want it on my phone. I trust you, and a lot of times, you know they'll opt-in for push alerts you get those alerts on your phone. Ken WhiteYeah. Mark KurtzAnd we can use that as a way to one tell the important information but also tell them maybe what we're doing stories they should be aware of weather that may be happening. We can tell them hey watch the news tonight. We have a really cool story that you'll see it on at 6:00 and try to actually push them to the TV side. Those are the people that really are with you. Those are your true brand loyalists because they have opted in to get your content. They're not passively consuming it. They have gone and downloaded that that app onto their phone. And so we try to always make sure we take that seriously and don't you know don't inundate them with stuff that they might not want to know. Ken WhiteSure. Mark KurtzBut we do know we they trusted us to be a part of their day. Really. Ken WhiteThis is available everywhere because it is the internet, and it isn't on social media and so forth. But you're still very local. Mark KurtzYes. Ken WhiteHow do you, how do you? What. What is your philosophy in terms of as the news director, and as then as the news organization at WAVY, what your philosophy and your goals for local coverage? Mark KurtzSo you can put stories out there that will get huge numbers, and then you look at where they're consumed, and they kind of went out in the world and they went viral, and it's people all over the country, and those are not really the folks that are going to watch the local newscasts. They're not the community they're not going to buy from the advertisers that are on our station that are not going to buy a local car. They're not going to go to a local restaurant. And so we really focus very highly on the local consumer of news the local stories our entire company's philosophy is just local. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Mark KurtzLocal content and that sounds simple, but it's not. You can get really pulled into stories that are very catchy. They're big nationally, but they may not have a lot of impact here. Right. Ken WhiteSure. Mark KurtzSo. So everything we do is is enterprise journalism local stories whether they're hard you know investigate investigative stories that really hard news or even lighter stories that have you know people want to see here locally in their communities. And that's really the filter we go through. Is it local? You know people pitch stories, or you know you'll get press releases from things and it's kind of a national or maybe a east coast type thing and is it really a story that affects someone in Williamsburg or in Norfolk or Virginia Beach and really doesn't it's easy. It's out there, but we really focus local content, local people, local stories, and I think that's one of the things that sets us apart. It's one of the things that sets local TV apart in general and one thing that sets us apart as a news organization in the market. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Mark Kurtz of WAVY TV in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's School of Business. In order to retain top employees, the best companies and organizations invest in their people by offering high-quality professional development, and some of those companies and organizations turn to William & Mary and our Center for Corporate education for their needs. The Center for Corporate Education offers professional development programs for all levels of employees, from executives to managers to emerging leaders to new hires. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty rank number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Mark Kurtz News Director of Norfolk's WAVY TV. Ken WhiteYou started out your reporter, you're an anchor, and you've been news director for a while. What does that job entail? Mark KurtzSo as news director, I mean, I have basically ultimate editorial control. You know what we're do what we do day in and day out. What leads a newscast long term projects. So anyone in the newsroom falls under me. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Mark KurtzAnd it's certainly a group process is it's you know it's a lot of discussion a lot of debate but ultimately someone has to be the person that says this is what we're doing today. And that falls under me. You know hire the reporters I hire the producers, and you know two parts of the job there's the day to day there's what's happening right now. And then there's looking down the road there's going to be an election there's going to be something in the water festival in Virginia Beach is going to be two weeks out. What do we need to do to be prepared for that? And I've got managers that helped me do that it's certainly not a one man operation. I've got some very talented people on the technology side the content side the digital side. We all come together and say, okay, we want to cover this event. We want to cover a snowstorm or whatever it's going to be or maybe stories we want to do we want to go after a certain topic of stories the opioid crisis something like that we say how do we want to cover this and what can we do online versus television. So my job really is to bring those folks together and make sure we're covering things appropriately. We're covering it with the right you know the right amount of you know being aggressive about stories we should be aggressive about knowing when to back off, and we should back off of things. You know the shooting in Virginia Beach was a great example of that. You want to be very aggressive in getting information out and finding out what happened, but you have to do that with compassion and tact. Ken WhiteRight. Mark KurtzAnd just make you know you need someone that can step back from it and not be you know in every little detail kind of step back look what we're doing as a whole. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Mark KurtzWhat are we doing on all of the platforms we control. And you know and that's one of the reasons I love the job is because when I was a reporter I worked on one story and every day was different. But I really worked on one or two stories. Ken WhiteRight. Mark KurtzI anchored a newscast. I get to see kind of all that I can see the content. I get to see the way it's produced. I get to work with the people that actually put it on the air, the production folks the people that promote it. People that sell it. That's one of the reasons I love that job is it does cross over all those different departments. Ken WhiteYeah, you mentioned a reporter back in the day one or two stories day. What's your typical reporter doing now what's what is our day like? Mark KurtzIf you're a general assignment. Ken WhiteRight. Mark KurtzA dayside reporter It's an all-day process, and it really depends on the story, but it there's the newsgathering portion of it, which is all day really, but the internet the social media has changed their day so much. And knowing what to put on social media versus what you can't put on social media as far as I may have this confirmed, but I don't know these details yet. So walking through that, but the average reporter their day would start with a morning meeting they would pitch a story if they have a story idea. There are obviously things you're going to cover, and they may already be pre-assigned. You know you were going to cover the big trial today, but their day is a constant gathering of information learning details and sharing it in the appropriate way, whether it's with a web editor. So they could put it on the website. They may be shooting video on their phone while the photographer is out getting other video. They may be doing their own interviews. They promote themselves through social media, and then they have to be ready for those traditional deadlines. There's going to be a deadline for five or five thirty-six or a ten or eleven whatever it may be and getting their reports ready getting approved and then being ready to go live for that minute and a half. Ken WhiteYeah. Mark KurtzYou know that's the shortest part of their day. Ken WhiteRight. And the best part of their day probably. Mark KurtzProbably the best part hopefully if everything goes right, but its the shortest part. All this work. You know eight and a half hours work and they are on TV for a minute, a minute and a half. Ken WhiteYeah. Weather it's just it's such a main, it's a staple of local TV news. Well, how much time is devoted to weather saying in a basic newscast? Mark KurtzYou know whether it's if a newscast is 30 minutes long, you're probably going to have at least a main weather that's three to four minutes. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Mark KurtzAnd then you'll have it depends what the weathers doing that day. But you know it's the old joke about the weather. Everyone cares about it. Everyone cares, and we may do stories in Williamsburg or in Virginia Beach, and if you don't have a connection, we cover a large area. Ken WhiteYeah. Mark KurtzYou might not necessarily care what the school board in Virginia Beach is doing if you don't have kids there. Everyone cares about the weather, and it's probably going to affect everybody. It's going to blow through, and it's going to everyone's going to get rain not get rain be cloudy be you know get snow knock it snow. And there's that everyone cares about. But there's also a real public service. We are licensed to operate in the public interest, and I know that you know we'll get comments about why are you on TV why you're interrupting my show. We're not doing it because we want to you know as much as the meteorologist love the weather. They they're not doing it to interrupt your programming or to have to bother you. They feel there's really a need they're scientists they have seen something that's worrisome to them, and they want you to know about it. And so we will all we always air on the side of safety. You know you want people you never want to have someone say I didn't know something was going to happen and we had some wild, crazy weather events. You know that we look at what happens in other parts of the country. And so weather is very popular. Everyone has an opinion about it. Everybody has something they want to say about it. They've they like this the hottest or the coldest or they you know they remember when that happened 20 years ago. I remember this is the storm that came through. And so there's that natural interest in it. But then there's also a real public service part of it. And you know it's funny. We'll have a snowstorm, or we'll have you know severe weather. And you know people will say why aren't you covering X Y or Z. Well, there's six inches of snow on the ground. That's the story. Ken WhiteYeah. Mark KurtzThat weather is the news at that point, and it would be a little silly, almost cover something else. But yeah, we employ four meteorologists and all the great meteorologists who they're scientists. They have the TV they have the ability to be on television. Ken WhiteRight. Mark KurtzTo communicate but they are scientists, and they see themselves as that, and you know they'll come in and tell you all the scientific fun detail then we talk about you know how do you tell the viewer that Ken WhiteRight. Mark KurtzSo they understand it, you know because they're kind of geeking out on the science portion of it. Ken WhiteSure. Mark KurtzBut yeah weather huge weather is just one of those things that everyone cares everyone wants to know about it, and you have to win that space you know to be successful. Ken WhiteHow about sports. How big is that it? Mark KurtzYou know there's the diehard sports fans. You know if I would say that sports really when it transcends just X's and O's and you know scores then people care. They love a good story. They want to know about athletes and sports. You know local sports does well. People do care about that. And so I think sports has actually seen a bit of a resurgence in the past few years. You know there's probably a time when some stations were killing sports or dropping it altogether. I know that our company thinks it's very important because it's so local. Ken WhiteRight. Mark KurtzAnd you know we try real hard to cover local course you're going to see the big you see the big national teams you're going to see that stuff. But if you're waiting for us to tell you the score from yesterday's game, no one's doing that. I mean no one's doing that, but they will turn us on to see a story about maybe William & Mary you know team what they're doing, how are they doing it who's on the team. What's something about the coach. Ken WhiteYeah. Mark KurtzThey want to see that stuff. And so sports you know there are some people who are never going to just never be sportspeople. But I think that if you tell a good story, people will watch it. And that's what you see a lot of times used to be always at the end of the newscast and now sometimes you'll see sports stories creep in at different places. If it's a good story, it could be at 5:00 or early earlier in the newscast because just a great story about a great person or a great team that did something. And so it's kind of a different way of thinking about sports as opposed to three minutes into the newscast that you know you still do that. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Mark KurtzBut a lot of times if someone has a really great story about a player or something we'll put it elsewhere in the show just because. Ken WhiteInteresting. Mark KurtzIt's just a great story. Ken WhiteYeah. Mark KurtzYou should know about it. Ken WhiteSo what's the next big thing where is local TV news going do you think in the next few years. Mark KurtzWell, you know it's being driven by the technology. Streaming online streaming is a such a huge you know I don't think we know the true impact of that yet. The Netflix of the world and that sort of thing the Hulus of the world. I think that you know will the streaming space is going to be huge for us because it's going to you know the people are it's just shift the consumption patterns is shifting they still want the content they still want to watch local TV, and local content weather and they want the stories people are just kind of getting their news, and they're getting their TV in a different way. So being in that space is the next big thing I think when you talk about the viability of television, you know as long as we're there in those spaces which we will be it's going to be good for us because you know it's there'll always be a six o'clock news. There will probably always be. You know you're going to wake up in the morning at seven o'clock six o'clock, and they'll be morning news there how you get it just may be totally different it may be through a streaming service or you know they'll be the people to watch it on their phone there's gonna be traditional folks there still people that get us over the air it's free it's HD looks great and I think that you know you see younger people discovering that and realizing I can stream this and I can watch wavy over the air with a little antenna for free. And people are doing that more than they used to. So you know the number of people who get TV over the air is actually gone up. Ken WhiteWow. Mark KurtzIn the last few years because to them, it's this really cool thing they stream their movies and they watch local TV over the air. But streaming is really the big place where it's going. And the thing about that that provides you that's an on-demand world. So that really changes how do you think about the day when it's you you may have newscasts, but now I can watch you in my big screen TV, and I can pick anything I want to watch. You know we feel like we're gonna be thinking about the on-demand viewer as well, and we may be producing content for a newscast, but we'll probably be producing content all the time they're really the deadlines will just be whenever it's available and available for you to watch it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mark Kurtz News Director of WAVY TV in Norfolk, Virginia. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Mark Kurtz. Thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Shawn Boyer](images/shawn-boyer-115-thumb.jpg)
![Filling an Unmet Need with person and desk](images/shawn-boyer-115-thumb.jpg)
Shawn Boyer
Episode 115: May 23, 2019
Filling an Unmet Need
Shawn Boyer is a successful entrepreneur. He was the founder and CEO of Snagajob - America's largest hourly employment network for job seekers and employers. He also founded and serves as the CEO of GoHappy, a social messaging platform for private groups that focuses on positive sharing and collaboration. For Boyer, being an entrepreneur often means identifying an unmet need. His approach to entrepreneurship is methodical - he took similar approaches and steps to launching both Snagajob and GoHappy. And it's a formula you can adopt.
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Shawn Boyer is a successful entrepreneur. He was the founder and CEO of Snagajob America's largest hourly employment network for job seekers and employers. He also founded and serves as the CEO of GoHappy, a social messaging platform for private groups that focuses on positive sharing and collaboration. For Boyer being an entrepreneur often means identifying an unmet need. His approach to entrepreneurship is methodical. He took similar approaches and steps to launching both Snagajob and GoHappy. And it's a formula you can adopt. Here's our conversation with the founder and CEO of GoHappy, Shawn Boyer. Ken WhiteShawn, thanks for taking time to join us on the podcast. It's great to have you here today. Shawn BoyerYeah absolutely. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteSo let's talk about sort of the start of your business as it kind of goes back to the Internet and what was happening in the Internet. And it's hard to believe for many people there was a time where there was no Internet. Shawn BoyerRight. Ken WhiteOf course, right. But in the 90s it picked up, and in the late 90s it picked up. But you saw something you felt there was opportunity there. Shawn BoyerYeah, I did well, and I was probably late to it in comparison to some of my friends and so forth. So I was I remember I was in law school. So I went to law school. Ken WhiteRight. Shawn BoyerBecause I thought I wanted to be a commercial real estate developer and number of people, I talked to who'd done well at that suggested that after undergrad, I go to law school. And get out practice with a law firm for five to seven years doing commercial real estate and then you know go do my own thing at that point. So I was in law school, and I remember they issued us e-mail addresses. I was like email address what am I going to do with an email address? And you know several of my other buddies you know we're very much into it, and then I remember several of my buddies to being at the computer terminals, and they were looking at scores and things on ESPN. I was like, huh, what is this? But I never you know I would use it occasionally. Ken WhiteWow. Shawn BoyerBut not like to the extent that the number of other people did. And then, when I got out of law school, I was practicing law and was doing that for a couple of years, and at that point in time, this was kind of 97 98 99. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Shawn BoyerIt felt like everybody and their brother was leaving whatever their job was to go start an Internet company, and I was in D.C. at the time, and I was like man I am missing the boat you know. And I never wanted to be an attorney my whole life anyway. And you know I'm just gonna start writing down every idea that I have, and so I literally did. I was writing them down, putting them in this manila folder these little yellow legal sheets of paper you know they're full of different ideas. Most of which were terrible, but I was dating this girl at the time, and this is now in April of 99, and she was getting her Ph.D. in medical anthropology at American. She was a William & Mary undergrad, and she asked me if I'd go online and do a search for her because she was having a hard time finding an internship for that summer. And so I went online at work. She didn't go online because she didn't have internet at her home, which again is so funny to think about now. Ken WhiteRight, it is. Shawn BoyerAnd I didn't see that many sites that were geared towards internships. There were a lot that were geared towards salary level positions, so monster.com was the 800-pound gorilla. CareerBuilder which was another big one Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Shawn Boyerwas headquartered in the D.C. area. So I knew of that, and there were a number of others but not that many on the internship side. I thought you know what that seems like a void. I talked to my parents a few days after that, and they had a retail store, and they said as I was telling them about it, my dad said you know what we have a really hard time finding good hourly help for the store. Are there any sites that are geared towards that market because we put an ad in the newspaper, and it's pretty expensive doesn't really work that well Monster and Careerbuilder we've tried did not work well for us. I was like no I don't know like I worked my way through school like I don't remember seeing anything I would just ask my buddies, hey where are you working Ken WhiteSure. Shawn BoyerOr see the sign in the window kind of thing. So I went back online and looked, and there was nothing, and I thought I'm missing it. Somebody has got to be doing it, and I kept looking. And nobody was doing it. I thought all right well it just must not be a very good idea, right. Otherwise Monster, Careerbuilder, whomever would have come down market Ken WhiteRight. Shawn BoyerAnd started to do it well or somebody else who knew what the heck they were doing would have started something. But you know the more I thought about it, the more I thought you know what. Maybe there is something here, and just nobody has focused on it. So I just started calling you know McDonald's and Walmart, and you know different retailers and fast food types of companies asking them what they did to you know make people aware of the fact they're hiring. All of them said put a sign in the window. If it gets really bad, we'll put an ad in the newspaper, but we really try not to do that because you know that's just expensive. Ken WhiteRight. Shawn BoyerAnd we tap into our employee base right and ask them to refer their friends. And then, I was talking to guidance counselors at high schools and career counselors offices at colleges and asking them. Hey, what do you do to make your students aware of the fact that these hourly jobs exist so that they can work their way through school, not talking about internships? Like you know what you want to do after you grow up? Ken WhiteSure. Shawn BoyerYou know, while you're in school like well, we may post something on the bulletin board in a career office, but we really don't do anything. I just thought you know what, that's a gap. So then I started talking to the students and asking them. How do you find jobs? And I got it's a pain in the rear. Ken WhiteYes. Shawn BoyerYou know I've got to drive around, and you know I walk into a place that has a sign on the window. And then they say that they're not hiring, and then I’m not sure if they just didn't like the way I looked or not or whatever it might be. So anyway, long good way of saying that's how I became interested in just the space itself and to the impetus for what then ended up becoming Snagajob. Ken WhiteHow did you even start that? I mean, you need technical expertise. I mean, this is a small business. This was a big deal with a lot of technology. Shawn BoyerYeah, and that technical expertise wasn't coming from me. Ken WhiteRight. Shawn BoyerUnfortunately. Ken WhiteYeah. Shawn BoyerI wish I had that kind of brain, but I just don't. Also, the first thing I did before I left the job where I was, I literally took out every credit card I could. And I've got I keep it for posterity sake, I guess. But whenever I look at it, it gives me anxiety. These yellow again legal sheets of paper that have all the different credit cards that I had where I was transferring from one to another. Where you know you get this promotional thing in the mail and say you know hey you can transfer this for the next six months for zero percent interest. So I took out every credit card I could before I left because I know I couldn't get one, you know after I left the law firm. I took out all my 401K money, and I deferred all my law school loans, and then I started going to friends and family because I knew that little bit of money that I'd been able to save up and take out of 401K was not going to be enough to go contract with a web development shop to build out what it was that we needed to have. Ken WhiteYeah. Shawn BoyerBecause I didn't, you know I couldn't afford to hire you know an army of people to go do it felt like you know contracting it out would be the best bet. So you know my parents put in money, my Uncle Bobby, my Aunt Vicky, my college roommate from William & Mary, you know my sister, you know friends of friends and so forth and that was a super stressful time. Maybe come back to that but those first several years, and we weren't sure whether we’re gonna make it or not but we contracted out the initial build of the site with a firm to get ourselves to the point where we could launch the website. So we launched in May of 2000, in fact, we just celebrated our 19th what we call snagaversary last Thursday. And then what we realized is okay now we got it out there, and you know these different things that we're learning from people and now want to incorporate into the website. It's starting to get really expensive working with this outside development shop. So we then made the decision to hire a developer who thank goodness was amazing, and he's still there at Snagajob. 19 years later, almost 19 years later so John joined us in the beginning of August in 2000. This guy John Moon and John Moon was a one-person technology shop for Snagajob for the first several years. Ken WhiteWow. Shawn BoyerAnd again thank goodness he was as good as he was because that was Ken WhiteYeah. Shawn BoyerKind of how we were able to make it. Ken WhiteYeah, and a big success story. And then a few years later it's GoHappy. Shawn BoyerAnd then several years later, yeah. So yeah. Kind of fast forward through that 16 years we ended up you know raising D.C. money after six years at the time we raised our first round we were 20 some people in 2006 we grew to 100 people in six months. And then I stayed on with the company through well as the CEO until to the end of 2013 which time we were about three hundred and some people we then had 60 million members of the website about 400,000 companies that worked with us around the country and then stayed on as a chairman for the next couple of years and now we have 80 plus million members and work with about 600,000 businesses around the country. So when I left, I wasn't sure what I wanted to go do necessarily next, and you know you kind of go through that period of time where it's like okay do I want to start something again. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Shawn BoyerDo I want to totally pivot and coach and teach because I know I love being around students and kids? And you know, do I want to go do this commercial real estate thing I still kind of have that you know hankering to go do that? Do I just want to be an investor slash board member, you know, in different companies? But I took a year off. I just had such an urge and not just an urge. I think just such a need to be a part of something again and to try to go create something with a team of people. That you know, we have this shared mission, and there's that unknown element of it of okay we want to go do this. We think that you know whatever people need this. Ken WhiteYeah. Shawn BoyerOr you can solve a pain point, but can we really. And so going back to Snagajob because it was really the impetus for the idea for GoHappy was those first five years when it was so stressful and not sure whether we're gonna make it or not. I just totally neglected friends and family. Ken WhiteRight. Shawn BoyerI just you know I literally I didn't go to my best friends, who from growing up, Mom's funeral because I was too busy and she'd been like a second mom to me growing up. One of my buddies from undergrad at William & Mary, we literally traveled Europe together for a month after we graduated, and then I stopped returning his calls because I was so busy. You know, trying to grow this thing, and he got married, and I didn't even know it. And I called, and I was like, did you get married I didn't even know you're engaged. He was like you never return my calls. So that was really a wakeup call for me at that point to start to become much more focused on my relationships, and so I was doing it in this really manual way putting down my list of most important people putting goals next to them that were you know these annual goals broken down into quarterly and monthly goals putting stuff on my calendar sending outlook invites and the whole thing just felt manual and sterile, and I didn't really have the time to go look for something that might fit me better or at least I didn't take the time to do it. But when I left Snagajob, I was like you know what I want to find an interactive tool to help me do this. And I just didn't find anything, and so that got my wheels spinning around. Okay, there should be maybe you know maybe there is something here right maybe other people desire the same thing and so when I decided that you know I wanted to go do something again. Then I started doing more formal discovery sessions with people and just asking them, hey, how do you think about your relationships. How do you try to be intentional about them? Do you set goals in them, and that then led to GoHappy. Or initially, actually, it was even called DieHappy, which go figure people didn't like the word die. We thought it made sense because like live happy die happy. Ken WhiteRight. Shawn BoyerBut we ended up changing it because so many people hated it. And the whole premise for it is to help people build better relationships so that they can live happier lives and helping people share life with each other when they can't be together trying to really act as a tool to help them facilitate get-togethers. And then third thing is helping people be intentional about the things that they're important people care about, so helping them remember important dates and you know almost being in the way the CRM tool for people for their personal relationships. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Shawn Boyer of GoHappy in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary School of Business. In order to retain top employees, the best companies and organizations invest in their people by offering high-quality professional development, and some of those top companies and organizations turn to William & Mary in our Center for Corporate Education for their needs. The Center for Corporate Education offers professional development programs for all levels of employees, from executives to managers to emerging leaders to new hires. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Shawn Boyer, the founder, and CEO of GoHappy. Ken WhiteYou almost sound like you can't help it right. There's this entrepreneur thing inside you that just keeps coming out. You have to create, is that accurate? Shawn BoyerI think so, and maybe it's stupidity. I don't know where. And I love this, and you know I encourage people to do this regardless of whether or not you end up going and do anything with it. But I just think there's so much value. And when you see, or you experience something that is a pain point for you or where it's something that's just not optimized to not just say well that stinks and deal with it right. To think about all right well, how might that be different. And is there something that I or maybe that someone else could go do about it and go solve for that. And some of those things that you identify and start to write down will come to nothing right. Maybe some of those somebody's already doing it and you just didn't realize somebody else was already doing it. But I guarantee you some of those things you'll look at, and you'll do the competitive landscape analysis and decide you know what nobody is doing this, and somebody should be doing it. And maybe you'll have the passion, the fire to go do it. Maybe you won't. But it's still this really interesting exercise to go through Ken WhiteYeah. Shawn BoyerAnd I think just helps you look at the world a little differently. And so I love doing that. No question. Ken WhiteSo it's a solution-driven kind of philosophy. Shawn BoyerI think so, yeah. Ken WhiteFind the answer. Shawn BoyerYeah, trying to again, I know this sounds totally cheesy, and maybe there's a better, less cheesy way to say it, but you know trying to make the world better, you know by experiencing these things that are less than ideal and trying to figure out all right. How could it be better? Ken WhiteYeah, you grew up, and you mentioned your parents had a business when you were in high school. did that. How did? We've had several of our guests on the podcast who were CEOs and leaders and entrepreneurs who did grow up in a family business. How did that What were some of the lessons you learned? How do you think that affected you? Shawn BoyerThat's a great question. So yes, so I grew up a pastor's kid until I was 16 grew up out in Oklahoma, my dad, his pastor. But he always had a desire to start his own business. And so when I was 16, and I guess he was 46 at the time he and my mom decided you know what if we're gonna start this thing this business, then we better do it now, or we're never gonna do it. So my brother was getting ready to be a freshman in college at the University of Oklahoma I a younger sister who was going into third grade I was going into my sophomore year of high school, and they were from Virginia, and they decided you know what we're going to move to Virginia, and we're going to start a jewelry store of all things. They had no jewelry. I still don't really understand why they decided jewelry but was either jewelry or a bookstore I guess they figured you know there was more margin involved in jewelry. Thank goodness they did do jewelry instead of books because of Amazon. But anyway, so they started this jewelry store, and they were amazing at letting me see kind of the underpinnings of the business part of it was by just necessity because I had to work there because you know we didn't have the money to be able to afford to hire other people. So I worked on the sales floor. I worked in the back room, you know, and could help size rings. I helped them price jewelry. I got to go to jewelry conferences where we were buying stuff, and so I got to see all these different pieces of the business. Customer service element how do you deal with somebody when they come into the store irate about whatever their diamond fell out of the ring and hey lost it, and you know what are we a bunch of idiots you know. And then you get a deal you know on the sale side dealing with people who were buying you know pretty expensive stuff, and so they were amazing at exposing me to that, and I look at it now and like I would never let my 16-year-old do that. So kudos to them for doing that. But they were also amazing at shielding me from all the anxieties that I now realize they were facing right. Ken WhiteInteresting. Shawn BoyerLike are we going to be able to make payroll? Are we going to be able to pay our mortgage? Are we going to be able to pay you know our son's tuition in college because they were just scraping by? Never let us experience that, but I now know that they did. And so that for me, I think was a huge pivotal time where I don't know if I would have had the same burning desire to be an entrepreneur if I had not seen them do it. Ken WhiteYeah. So your parents did it. You've done it many people listening would like to like to try something. What advice do you have for them? They just they're just not willing to pull the trigger just yet. Shawn BoyerYeah, I would say you know the biggest thing I think goes back to identify what the pain point is and you just start going and talking to whoever the target audience is to see in fact okay do they have this shared pain point that you seem to have discovered yourself or through somebody else and then just start thinking about all right well what B B proposed solutions to that. Right. And just start sketching them. Right. Having conversations with people about it, you don't have to actually go build anything right, whether it's a piece of technology or it's a you know piece of you know tangible product that people are touching. It doesn't have to be that it's just doing these really quick iterative discovery sessions with people we're picking our brains. What about this. What about this. What else would you do? And then I think you get to the point where you realize okay there's either not really a pain point here or it's not a big enough target market right for me to go do what I want to go do, and then you start to get to what a proposed solution might look like. Inevitably whatever the final solution looks like if there ever is a final, it ain't going to look like what you thought it was at the beginning right because you're gonna be learning and iterating. But I would just say get out and start talking to people and then get that first iteration of what it is into people's hands. If you're still so excited about it and there appears to be this market for it after you've gone through those initial discovery sessions. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with the founder and CEO of GoHappy Shawn Boyer, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business the Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. If you're interested in learning more, please visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we love to hear from you regarding our podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Shawn Boyer, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Kelly Grier](images/kelly-grier-114-thumb.jpg)
![Leading on a Large Scale with road and sunset](images/kelly-grier-114-thumb.jpg)
Kelly Grier
Episode 114: April 17, 2019
Leading on a Large Scale
If you lead a team, whether it's a team of two or twenty-two, you know leadership is challenging work. Well imagine leading a team of tens of thousands of people spread across the world. Kelly Grier is US Chairman and Managing Partner and America's Managing Partner for EY. She leads over 70,000 professionals in 31 countries with annual revenue of $15.6 billion. She's been with EY for 28 years. Grier recently visited William & Mary where she spoke at the annual Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit. She took time to sit down with us and she shared her thoughts on leadership advice for young professionals, and how EY creates and maintains its special culture.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. If you lead a team, whether it's a team of two or twenty-two, you know leadership is challenging work. Well, imagine leading a team of tens of thousands of people spread across the world. Well, Kelly Grier is U.S. Chairman and Managing Partner and America's managing partner for EY. She leads over 70,000 professionals in 31 countries with annual revenue of fifteen point six billion dollars. She's been with EY for 28 years. Grier recently visited William & Mary, where she spoke at the annual Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit. She took time to sit down with us, and she shared her thoughts on leadership, advice for young professionals, and how EY creates and maintains its special culture. Here's our conversation with EY's U.S. chairman and managing partner and America's managing partner Kelly Grier. Ken WhiteKelly, thank you so much for joining us first of all welcome to William & Mary. Kelly GrierThank you. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly GrierIt's great to be here, Ken. Ken WhiteHave you been before? Kelly GrierI have. Yes, I have. I've been a few times now. So first and foremost, I am the mother of a freshman student here. Ken WhiteWonderful. Kelly GrierSo we came to visit a couple of years ago as Jack was evaluating schools and he and we fell in love with Williamsburg and William & Mary straight away. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly GrierIt's a wonderful place. Ken WhiteI know the feeling, so you did the student walking backwards tour right. Kelly GrierExactly. Ken WhiteWe've all been through it. If we have children who are in high school or college. Yeah great. And you're here for the Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit going to meet some unbelievable Kelly GrierYeah. Ken Whiteunbelievably talented young women when you meet with young women professionals. Is there a message you try to share? A theme you try to talk about? Kelly GrierYou know I would say you know I just encourage them to be bold and be courageous, and you know be completely unconstrained in their ambitions. You know I think that in this group in particular I think is emblematic of just the incredible talent and capabilities that our women have. And for them to pursue those with sort of reckless abandon, I think is certainly a strong message that I would convey. Ken WhiteTough to do for millennials for you for the generation behind them. For men and women, that's tough. Kelly GrierYeah. Ken WhiteYeah. What were you like at that age? Kelly GrierWell, you know I was pretty dogmatic in pursuit of my ambitions. I have to be honest with you I. I was putting myself through college, so I had an economic imperative in addition to my personal and professional ambitions. But I, you know, I really sought to be the best I could be at whatever it was I was doing at the moment, and I had a drive to excellence and into achievement. And so that that advice that you know I convey to women and not just women but young folks today is really a bit of a chapter at page out of my own early chapters when I was their age as well. And it served me well over the years. Ken WhiteSo there's passion then, Kelly GrierAbsolutely. Ken Whiteas well? I asked just about every guest on the podcast. How critical is passion to success? How much do you have to love the work? Kelly GrierYeah. It's a great question. I think that it's I think it's central. So I think that you can be successful for a short period of time without having the passion, but I think for sustained success, you really have to be passionate about what you're doing. At the same time, I don't think that that passion is the only ingredient for success. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly GrierObviously, you've got to be hardworking. You've got to have a curiosity. You've got to continue to challenge yourself. But the passion I think is the sort of that that rocket fuel that makes it you know makes a big difference in how you pursue those other the elements of success Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grieras you pursue your ambitions. Ken WhiteYou mentioned long time you've been with EY a long time, which is somewhat rare today. What are the advantages of being with an organization for an extended period of time? Kelly GrierWell, you see a lot. You know, in an over that period of time, you're able to connect dots across sort of the complexity of a landscape as broad and diverse as ours is at EY. We have so many different services that we bring to market. We have so many different geographic offices and practices, and we do so many different things in terms of how we run our own business. So there's a whole wealth of experience that is all sort of within the boundaries of EY. And the advantage of having been with the firm for such a long time as I've seen so many different aspects of the firm. I've seen so many different aspects of how we bring exceptional client service to the market and to our clients. I've seen so many different ways by which we have. We've driven our talent agenda, and we've created credibly rich and experienced and wonderfully valuable talent for the marketplace. In my time as the talent vice-chair, I've seen the way that we manage the business judiciously. How we create investment capital how we deploy that capital and so over the course of my career the ability to have had all of those various experiences at first and foremost, it gave me a wide variety of experience. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly GrierSo a lot of people leave the company the organization that they're working for because they seek that diversity of experience as alternative experiences. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly GrierI never needed to leave EY to have that I would I'd move into a different role. I'd move into a different practice area Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly GrierI transferred overseas, and all of those different experiences. Widen my aperture and also help me to understand business and certainly in the business of our firm better, and so it served you know it really served me well. You can have the same you can ultimately have the same I'd say overall career experiences and successes Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grierthrough a variety of different organizations. But there's something really powerful of being able to have it all within a single organization. Ken WhiteYeah, yeah. No doubt, you lead many. I mean, you're not leading a team of five. How do you lead on such a large scale so many people, as you mentioned, geographically? Kelly GrierYes. Ken WhiteIt's big. How do you approach that? Kelly GrierYeah, it's a great question and I actually just spent some time with the with a group of EY ambassadors including some interns as well as some of our William & Mary students who've just committed to EY and they asked me a similar question as sort of a corollary question which is what's my leadership style. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly GrierIt was a great question, and I think it's it's the way that I would answer your question, which is, first and foremost, those 72,000 people in the 31 countries that comprise the Americas they don't work for me. I work for them. My job is to make sure that they have what they need to be successful both at EY but also personally as well and even professionally outside of EY. You know we're an incredible source of talent for the world, and our responsibility is to make sure that whatever their pursuits are, how long they decide to stay with EY, or ultimately leave and pursue ambitions outside of EY. That they are as best positioned to be successful as they could possibly be. And so I think that's a pretty important part of how you think about leadership Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grierand the 72,000 people. What am I doing to enrich their experiences? What am I doing to enable their success? What am I doing to make sure that their skills and experiences are commensurate with what the market is demanding today and what the market is going to need tomorrow? Ken WhiteRight. Kelly GrierWe're very focused on looking around the corner and making sure that we've got line of sight into how the market skill requirement and skill set is evolving Ken WhiteSure. Kelly Grierto make sure that we're planning for that. And we're working with academia to make sure that academia is planning for that. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly GrierYou know there's a vast responsibility to leading an organization of this scale. But I would say it is first and foremost about ensuring that those 72,000 people are going to be successful and in their success EYs success is derived. Ken WhiteRight. It's interesting we've had many leaders on the podcast, of course, Mike Petters, the head of CEO of Huntington Engels, one of them. Exact same answer. Kelly GrierIs that right? Ken WhiteWhat is my job to make sure the people who quote-unquote report to me have everything they need to be to be successful? That's it. You know you get that, and there it is. How do you know what they need? How do you communicate and listen and get the information? Kelly GrierIt's a great is a great point. So it has to be multifaceted. I mean, first of all, we've got to be listening to the marketplace. We've got to be looking, you know, looking outside in. In addition to listening inside out as well and we do both, you know we certainly listen to our clients. Our clients expect that we are at the bleeding edge of transformation. We're at the bleeding edge of disruption because we are the ones who lead them through those transformations and that disruption and all the opportunities that come with it and avoid all the risk associated with it. And so they're an enormously valuable insight to us as we're helping them sort of create the future Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grierthen using that insight to essentially recast and reimagine what we need to do at EY to be capable of doing that broadly for our clients but also again within EY. So it's a really dynamic environment right now. It's obviously you hear the term disruption all the time Ken WhiteSure. Kelly Griertransformation all the time, but in reality, that is very much the current state of play. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly GrierWe are helping companies transform themselves really across every single sector, and everybody's at varying degrees along the journey, but everybody is in some form or fashion looking to transform their business. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly GrierAnd so for us, we've got to be able to meet those demands and listening to them is very instructive in terms of how we equip our people with the skills, the assets including technology-based assets. That we need to have available to us to enable those transformations and then to think about as well what does this mean for our own business. For example, you know EY was actually just recognized as literally the number one firm in use of robotic process automation RPA, which is really useful but increasingly ubiquitous technology in you know in process improvement and efficiency, etc. Well, we deliver that service for our clients across the board and are recognized for that. But we're looking at how do we automate our own processes. How do we incorporate robotics and bots if you will Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly Grierto the way that we, you know, we drive more efficiency into our business, and in fact, right now, we have 7,000 bots working at EY. Ken WhiteWow, wow. Kelly GrierSo we've got one of the largest sort of bot families or bot Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly Grierworkforces in the world. So that's an example of sort of the inside out. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly GrierAnd our people play a really important role because they are very much on the front line Ken WhiteRight. Kelly Grierof a lot of the client transformation Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grierbut they're also very much on the frontline in sort of the user experience of being a part of EY. So their suggestions to us as to how we could do things better, smarter, faster you know is really valuable insight as well. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with EY's Kelly Grier in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary School of Business. If you're looking to raise your game and give your career a boost. The Center for Corporate Education hosts professional development programs that provide busy executives and emerging leaders with the tools needed to compete in today's business environment. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the U.S. Chairman and Managing Partner and America's managing partner for EY, Kelly Grier. Ken WhiteYour typical day, you're basically communicating all day. How what channels do you use face to face phone email town halls? What do you? How do you listen, learn, and communicate? Kelly GrierYeah. It's all of the above. I am on the road at least 90 percent of the time Ken WhiteSure. Kelly Grierand I take those opportunities as I travel around to meet with our EY teams. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly GrierI spend a lot of time with our partners, and I spend a lot of time with our clients and other stakeholders, so our regulators are a very important stakeholder for us as well. So I spent a fair amount of time with them. And I do value the ability to have an in-person conversation right. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly GrierThe intimacy of that the candor that comes with that the level of trust you know that you build when you sit together is different than certainly a phone call Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grierwhich is different yet again from an email, and you know and believe it or not occasionally we'll actually still will still issue voicemail messages which are you know which is sort of a vestige of the past. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly GrierBut from time to time is actually useful to be able to put a voice over to some of the messages I do issue video communications Ken WhiteRight. Kelly Grierto our people as well Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grierparticularly if it's something that needs to be sent out broadly. But I want them to see and hear you know my accompanying expression and emotion associated with the message being delivered. I find that to be very effective. I've got a people advisory forum as well so a bit of a focus group if you will Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grierthat will convene three or four times a year, and they set the agenda they will tell me what's on their minds. They represent the views of their colleagues. They tell me what's on their minds and vice versa. It's also a nice opportunity to socialize different ideas or changes that may be on the horizon. And we have the same with the partner level group as well. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly GrierAgain I think it is unique as a partnership. I work very much for my partners Ken WhiteRight. Kelly Grierand you know we're all sort of in this together as co-owners of EY. So it's a variety different ways. Ken WhiteWhen I think EY, I think culture it just leaps off the website right. Kelly GrierYeah. Ken WhiteWhat is it about. What is it? How what's the magic potion right. Kelly GrierYeah. It's a great question, and I have to tell you that there is nothing that I'm more focused on than that question. You know, being the custodian, the guardian steward of our culture is I think my number one job. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly GrierAnd I do think we have a unique culture, and it's incredibly powerful in how you can align you know an organization around this shared set of values, and you know this esprit de corps is first and foremost. Starts with making sure that everybody we bring on board is going to be accretive to that culture Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grieris going to align with the culture. That everyone understands what our value systems are and that they ascribe to those values and share those values, and they commit to those values and that you know central to those values is the concept of teaming. And this is what's really extraordinary I think about EY and one of the things that is really really difficult to replicate because we have first and foremost we bring the most talented people and the most accomplished people from campuses. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Griercertainly from William & Mary and from various other campuses and we know from external sources that we are one of the most attractive employers Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grieron campus. And so we know we've got the best talent that chooses to join EY. Incredibly accomplished students, great grades, Ken WhiteSure. Kelly Grierhaving done lots of really meaningful work Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly Grierin addition to the academics. And in addition to that, when we're recruiting for experienced hires, we also have phenomenal success. And inevitably they tell us they join us for our culture, but we bring this incredible talent into the firm and what we ask them to do, which is somewhat extraordinary. Is we ask them to subordinate all of their personal successes and achievements and really elevate the primacy of the team. And so you really sort of yield your Ken WhiteHmm-mmm Kelly Grieryour individuality and your individual not your individuality but your individual goals and aspirations Ken WhiteRight. Kelly Grierto the team's goals and aspirations. And there's a bit of a leap of faith that you take that in doing so you're going to be profoundly successful Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly Grierand that is really unusual to be able to cultivate in a group of extraordinarily accomplished people. This sense of team being primary and individual things that secondary. That is I think one of the things that's really essential about the EY culture Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly Grierand really really distinctive, and I think it all rests on you hear me talk a lot about this concept of belonging that again you see yourself in the firm your value system aligns with the firm's value system. You feel this commitment to the team because you feel a sense that you really belong here. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Kelly GrierAnd in that I think is probably one of the most powerful attributes of our culture. Ken WhiteAnd isn't it just incredibly fun to be on a winning team? Kelly GrierExactly. Ken WhiteJust a blast, isn't it. Kelly GrierWell, there's that too. Ken WhiteRight, yeah. Kelly GrierExactly. You're doing great things really helping companies do some of the most extraordinary things this as I mentioned earlier I mean we're helping companies literally create the future Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly Grierand our people are part of that, and to be a part of a team that's doing that is very gratifying. Ken WhiteA tough question for our last question. Looking forward in the future as you say so much innovation and disruption. What's it take to be successful moving forward? Kelly GrierInsatiable curiosity. I was actually maybe I'll say it differently. I was actually just in Israel a couple weeks ago, and I was meeting with one of our clients who's a prolific entrepreneur and innovator and successful many times over. And when we talked about Israel as the Startup Nation Ken WhiteRight, hmm-mmm. Kelly GrierYou'll hear that term obviously used very extensively because of how entrepreneurial, innovative culture is of this wonderful little country. And he used the term he said Israelis have a healthy irreverence for everything. And he said, in other words, they challenge everything. They don't accept the status quo. They they're always asking you know asking questions around why or you know if not this could it be that and how do we make it better and how do we just see the world differently. Does it always have to look this way is the sky truly always blue. I mean, they're just this irreverent this healthy irreverence that really drives that curiosity that ultimately drives innovation. And I think I think that that's the most important. I literally think that's the most important distinguishing feature of anyone who's entering the workforce now because it is such an credibly dynamic world. And if you're not constantly asking what's next or what's around the corner or where do we go from here or where does this product this model this service this capability. What's the next version next generation of it. If you're not asking those questions, you're going to be left behind. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kelly Grier U.S. Chairman and Managing Partner and America's managing partner for EY. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding the podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us by emailing us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Kelly Grier, and thanks to you for listening. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Matt Siano](images/matt-siano-113-thumb.jpg)
![Life on Wall Street](images/matt-siano-113-thumb.jpg)
Matt Siano
Episode 113: April 3, 2019
Life on Wall Street
Life and career on Wall Street. It has changed considerably since the days of power ties, suspenders, and slicked-back hair. As the world and business continuously evolve, so do the firms and jobs on Wall Street. The number of business school grads pursuing jobs there has dropped compared to years' past. But, graduates with other degrees and experiences are now employed by Wall Street firms. Matt Siano is Managing Director, General Counsel at Two Sigma Investments, a New York-based hedge fund. He also serves as an adjunct professor at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Siano was here on campus for the recent Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership summit. And while here, he talked with us about his life on Wall Street, how Wall Street has changed, and where it's headed.
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TranscriptMatt Siano: Life on Wall Street TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF) Ken WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Life and career on Wall Street. It's changed considerably since the days of power ties, suspenders, and slicked-back hair. As the world and business continuously evolve, so do the firms and jobs on Wall Street. The number of business school grads pursuing jobs there has dropped compared to years past but graduates with other degrees and experiences are now employed by Wall Street firms. Matt Siano is Managing Director, General Counsel at Two Sigma Investments, a New York-based hedge fund. He also serves as an adjunct professor at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Siano was here on campus for the recent Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit. And while here, he talked with us about his life on Wall Street, how Wall Street has changed, and where it's headed. Here's our conversation with Matt Siano of Two Sigma Investments. Ken WhiteMatt, thank you for taking the time to join us here on campus. Often you got to interact with a number of undergraduate students over the weekend. What were your thoughts as you see them? Matt SianoI describe this event as really Chicken Soup for the soul. It's one of the best events of the year. It's the ability to see folks who really want to help—being paired with students who really want to learn. So it's actually one of the best events, I think, in the entire calendar. And I'd say that you know after teaching here for almost a decade it is really one of the best things that we do. Ken WhiteGreat. And thank you for supporting it. I know everybody is extremely appreciative of that. We wanted to talk to you about Wall Street. You know, I think what's interesting is is the number of business school students, whether they're undergraduates or graduates who are pursuing careers in Wall Street. That number seems to be down, and as opposed to the past, so we thought, let's just talk about Wall Street, and you're there. How did you end up there? Matt SianoYou know purely by chance, actually. I went to William & Mary. I majored in government and history and had a minor in religion. I proudly say I never took a single business school class when I was here. I wouldn't have even taken Econ if it weren't for the fact that the government department made me take it to get my major and then went to law school and quickly realized that I did not want to litigate and didn't want to be in court all day and then realized okay I have to figure out what am I going to do with myself and found that I actually really enjoyed tax and found that most of securities law work in the United States is bounded both by the security regulations themselves but also about how to actually make it more tax efficient for the underlying investor or company and realized that okay I have to find some way to sort of put this degree to use and found my way to a law firm that specialized in investment management work and in hedge funds and hedge funds, in particular, are extremely tax savvy and tax centric. And so I ended up working for about five years in a Wall Street law firm that that focused on those kinds of issues. And after about five years, I realized that I didn't want to make partner in a law firm, and I actually wanted to learn more about what was going on in those companies that I had set up or been advising, and a pretty large quantitative hedge fund called Two Sigma called and said we're looking for a general counsel and you seem like you want to be a general counsel and why don't you come aboard. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt SianoAnd so next thing I knew was I moved from downtown New York to into Soho and found myself working inside this very interesting quantitatively driven, almost fully automated investor management firm that happened to need help with a structuring transaction and their tax work. And so next thing I knew, I was doing what most people would describe as Wall Street. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt SianoIn the classic sense as a guy who literally would have never thought that when he was walking around campus. Ken WhiteAnd what years are we talking? Matt SianoSure. So I graduated from William & Mary in 96 Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt Sianoand then went straight to law school. I graduated ninety-nine and then joined Two Sigma in 2004. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. What was the vibe and the culture like on Wall Street at that time? I think people look at the movies and think that's, you know, that's how it is. Matt SianoCertainly, the late 90s when I was at Seward, and certainly in law school, there was definitely more of big suspenders Ken WhiteYeah. Matt Sianoand sort of movie kind of feel to it. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt SianoBut you could feel it changing. And part of it was the dot.com bubble that was building at the time. And that really presaged the conversion from classic MBA finance backgrounds to more computer science data analytics. The importance of software and automation and the dot.com bubble and then sort of bust afterwards had an effect on Wall Street in a lot of different ways. But one of them was the impact of all of those computer scientists and all that big data analytics power staying inside many of the big banks, and many of their clients frankly took on a lot of a lot of those talents and capabilities, and so you saw the roots of the evolution of what Wall Street in the classic sense. And over that period of time, certainly, while I was at Seward and certainly now while I've been at Two Sigma, the number of humans that you see on the floor of the stock exchange Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt Sianohas completely cratered, and you now find yourself where most stock trading is done electronically, and the firms that are participating in the marketplace now need to be able to build those kinds of systems. And so yes, you need finance backgrounds to understand what kind of investment strategies you want to pursue, execution strategies, portfolio management, and optimization, but you need an awful lot of folks who can help you build the tools, infrastructure, software to be able to interact with a market that is both is high speed but also fractured and has so many different venues than it did back then. Most people don't realize that back before certain regulations were passed in the mid-2000s, most stock trading and add stakes took place either on the big board NYSE or at Nasdaq Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt Sianoand they had a huge dominant market share. And today, you find yourself with 13 different protected venues around the United States, and so you could trade stock in a lot of different venues. Leaving aside all the dark pools and self matching engines and to be able to interact with all of those different venues, it's not just picking up a telephone anymore and Ken WhiteRight. Matt Sianocalling your friend who's a specialist on the floor, it's how do I actually interact with this more complicated ecosystem. Ken WhiteYeah. Wow. What's the future hold? Is it going to get? What do you what your prediction if you have a crystal ball? Matt SianoEverybody is nervous that it's gonna become Skynet Ken WhiteYeah. Matt Sianoand the machines are going to take over everything. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt SianoWe often joke at Two Sigma that it takes an awful lot of human beings to run a fully automated firm, and so I think the firms of the future are going to continue to invest in those kinds of capabilities of all different backgrounds. We have folks from 60 plus different countries at Two Sigma. We have folks with degrees in 200 different disciplines. And so what you're finding on Wall Street is that it's the best and the brightest of all different types, all different backgrounds, skill sets, expertise that help you inform and make a 360-degree view. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt SianoAnd one of the things I try to tell the students in my hedge fund class here at Mason is whether you're the marketing major, the accounting major, the finance major, there's a home for you in what is Wall Street or broader Wall Street. So not just the bulge bracket banks but all of the buy-side firms like a Two Sigma like our competitors who are looking for the best and the brightest. People who can take complicated projects, huge amounts of information and distill it down into a cogent idea. And that part, I think, is what made the students here at Mason, I think are really very good at making them understand that there is a home for them there. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt SianoThey can find places where that's going to feel good to them. And that's kind of what we try to teach. Ken WhiteInteresting what you said is what a lot of companies say regardless of the sector is I need somebody who can see the problem, make sense of it, communicate it, and move forward. So what type of person is there a personality on top of those traits that succeeds on Wall Street today or that you're looking for. Matt SianoSo there's always it's still a place where ambition is obviously a necessary component part. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt SianoIt is a competitive environment. It still attracts the best and the brightest from around the globe, and so I'm not sure that attracts shrinking violets. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt SianoI think people who are on front on the front foot and who like to like to tackle tough problems. It still attracts that kind of talent, but I think you're finding that it's rewarding people who are introspective, who are collaborative, who are team builders. So there's a difference between who might necessarily be attracted to it in the first stint versus who gets to stay and who's in the game for a very long period of time. And I think it's the folks who are who care about the people who work for them. They care about their clients. They care about their manager. They care about the company. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt SianoSo that kind of thinking beyond just yourself is what gets rewarded over the long term. The sort of movie picture of people who are very ego-driven Ken WhiteRight. Matt Sianoand the Gordon Gekkos of the world. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt SianoYeah, there certainly those personalities that still exist, but they're becoming fewer and far between. And I think that's a good thing. Ken WhiteWhat drives you? What do you like about it? Matt SianoI work at a firm where it's about trying to find truth—trying to find the right answer the right way and to do it in a way that is collaborative and measures the problem as many different ways as possible. Sometimes that's a little frustrating because we often joke that it's not just measure twice cut once. It's measure four or five times. Think about cutting; go back and measure again. Think about the problem again, consult another person, and then maybe cut. And I think that what makes our firm really great is that we have people who are naturally motivated to get to the right answer. You don't have to use carrots and sticks to push people to do that. They're sort of natural A students, and they care about finding the answer to tough problems, and they're not afraid to say, you know what we don't know. It's it's hard. We're not sure we can get to the answer on that. And then to be able to admit that to either the clients or to ourselves oftentimes the hardest population to admit failure to, I think that's what makes the place special. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Matt Siano of Two Sigma Investments in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary School of Business. If you're looking to raise your game and give your career a boost. The Center for Corporate Education hosts professional development programs that provide busy executives and emerging leaders with the tools needed to compete in today's business environment. The programs are taught by William & Mary's MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. To learn more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation on Life on Wall Street with Matt Siano, Managing Director General Counsel at Two Sigma Investments. Ken WhiteYour law degree. How has that affected the way you approach things the way you think when you're talking about thinking Matt SianoSure. Ken Whiteabout these big problems with a collaborative team? Matt SianoI've come to realize that to be a really good lawyer. You do have to acquire an MBA somewhere along the line, whether that's an MBA through experience or whether you go back and do it more formally. I joke that I have three degrees that I have my undergraduate degree from William & Mary, my law degree from Fordham, and my MBA from Two Sigma, and I've gotten the opportunity to meet with lots of people who've come from different backgrounds than my own. Certainly have gone to different universities than my own and who are willing to share their time, their talent, their expertise, and I've learned that the best lawyers listen twice as much as they speak. And I think that's probably true in other disciplines as well. Ken WhiteRight. Matt SianoPeople who are more classically trained as a physicist or as an MBA student but certainly, the more you listen and the more you actually try to find what perspective the other person has that maybe you don't have or you can add to. I think that part I've learned how to deploy my law degree more in that way by listening. Ken WhiteWhat percentage of your day do you spend communicating then? Matt SianoIt's a great question. I would say that I jump from meeting to meeting almost like a MASH doctor. I get called in and said. We have this problem we've gotten this far. What do you see? What are we missing? And so most of my day at Two Sigma is bouncing around from we have a registered broker-dealer, we have five different registered investment advisors, we have an insurance analytics business, we have an affiliated reinsurance company in Bermuda, and the problems that each of those businesses have are all very different. Ken WhiteMmm. Matt SianoAnd so oftentimes, I'm called in to look at this HR problem, or this investor issue, or this government response, or this investment management process problem. And so you have to learn to be able to switch gears very quickly from okay what is it now that you need and what can I bring to bear from those other earlier conversations that maybe can help inform what this particular part of the business wants to do. Ken WhiteThere's a recent piece in Harvard Business Review saying that CEOs are spending almost 70 percent of their time in meetings. That run true pretty much with what you're doing? Matt SianoI would say that's accurate. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt SianoIt's tougher and tougher to find time to just sit and think Ken WhiteYeah. Matt Sianoand to write and to review material. I'd say that's probably the biggest regret that I have about where my career is at currently is that you use less and less time to spend in my office with the door closed Ken WhiteYeah. Matt Sianopouring over the primary source or the primary problem. And so you have to learn to hire really good people who can do that work for you and who know what to tell you, and what not to bother you with. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt SianoAnd then to spend your time going around trying to find where the real issues are where you can add real value and to help folks feel good that they called you in. If if you're the lawyer who comes in and tells people no or you make them feel stupid in any way, shape or form, that's the last time they're going to call you in a meeting Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt Sianoand invariably, that'll be where the problem of your business starts to arise. So the goal is to make people feel like you are listening to them, you hear what they're concerned about, and you really invest and feel passionate about their problem, and make it your problem. Ken WhiteHmm-mmm. Matt SianoAnd if you do that, unfortunately, it ends up in 70 percent of your time in meetings. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt SianoBut at least effective meetings Ken WhiteYeah. Matt SianoWhich is good. Ken WhiteE-mail a lot of time? Matt SianoTons of e-mail. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt SianoI think at last count. My analytics department told me that I clear twelve hundred e-mails a day. So that's steadily gone up. We're at a place that measures everything frankly. Ken WhiteIt's on the high side, wow. Matt SianoSo they are very proud of being able to present you statistics with how much face time you're using Ken WhiteYeah. Matt Sianoor how much. My total went up from I'd say it was about 12, about 250 when I started at Two Sigma, and now I'm about twelve hundred. So it's a tremendous amount of e-mail. Ken WhiteDo you have a strategy? Matt SianoI try to make sure that folks understand the price of cc'ing people. That cc'ing isn't free, and that's both from an offensive side and a defensive side. You know when you get if you get a subpoena or you get some document requests from an adversary, extra cc's are just more e-mail you have to call through. Ken WhiteRight. Matt SianoAnd so we have a phrase at least I have a phrase I use it says you know cc'ing is not free. So understand who you're including don't under include don't over include. Make sure that you're sharing it with the population people who need to know, but don't overburden people just for the sake of either needing to have quote-unquote face time electronically with someone. If you're doing your work, people will know that, and you should be judicious in the way you pull on people's time, particularly in a 24 hour a day environment. It's not fair to send e-mails to folks 11 o'clock at night just for the sake of it because they have to figure out now why did you send this to me and someone from the legal department or someone from my government affairs team when they send something people assume well it's coming from Siano's team it's important I gotta read this. Ken WhiteSure. Matt SianoAnd so we talk about making sure that you understand cc'ing isn't free. Ken WhiteWhat do you read to keep up on? You have newsfeeds. Wall Street Journal is a what do you like that kind of? Matt SianoSo I often joke that the three newspapers in New York are perfect. The Times for the news, the Daily News for the sports, and The Post for life. But I read all three New York papers. I do dabble in The Journal for particulars. There are longer articles they've got. They do very good in-depth articles which are really well worth reading, but I think that the old saw about the New York Times that if you read The Times everyday, you can get a college education by just reading that paper. The Gray Lady is still a really good source of staying grounded and connected. I know there's always a debate about its political sort of bent one way or the other. But my personal view is that The Times is still the paper of record for a reason, and I do the crossword puzzle every single day, which also helps keep me and keeps me grounded. Ken WhiteRight, right. Matt SianoBut no, The Times for the news anyway is still, I think, a great source. The firm obviously takes in data from at last count tens of thousands of data sources to run the investment management program. But I also find that the Washington Post is a really interesting paper still. In terms of just getting another view of the world in a in an environment where money isn't the driving factor. It's a very interesting difference, and then The Financial Times it's really a great paper so. Ken WhiteIt's interesting here in the business school to see who reads The New York Times and who reads The Washington Post. Matt SianoAbsolutely. Ken WhiteDefinitely two groups; there's no doubt about it. Matt SianoWhen I first came to William & Mary, god twenty seven years ago and I couldn't find The New York Times anywhere, and someone said to me, oh well, we've got The Post, and I, of course, assume that was The New York Post and I didn't realize oh no they meant The Washington Post. But you know when you're 17-year-old kid from New York Ken WhiteRight. Matt Sianoyour world view is informed by The Post. Ken WhiteSo you mentioned earlier, there's so many more positions today than than than there were even ten years ago on Wall Street for those who think they might want to pursue what do they do? What's that step? The young professional the college student I want to examine opportunities on Wall Street. What should they do? Matt SianoSure. The good news is that many firms that are out there have great websites that list their open positions. So I often tell students that it's very hard right out of the box to find the perfect job. The odds if you know there are a million open potential positions in the universe, you hitting that right one job is a one in a million shot. But if you can reduce the things that you think you don't want to do, you vastly increase your odds of finding that thing that you want to do, and then B squeeze this place for as much knowledge about different opportunities as you possibly can. So don't just assume that your life is over if you don't get the investment banking internship at bulge bracket firm whatever. Think about, do I? What do I really like to do and what firms do that kind of work and then talk to people talk to the professors about I'm really interested in big data and really understand analytics. I'm interested in risk management, or I'm interested in marketing. I like talking to people. I like talking to investors or like like sales and then if you look around and think about the different quadrants or different parts of the financial services space, find someone who can give you that sort of mental mall map. It's very difficult for students to sort of place where they are in the financial services world, and I found that oftentimes giving them the you know you are here is very important, and here are all the ten little stores next to the big anchor tenant that you've heard of and some of those little stores might be way more interesting for you. From a mentorship, from a subject matter, opportunity. And then whoever hires you, that's the great first job. You get experience, make the most of it, ask a lot of questions. There are no stupid questions. Do your homework and show up and care. And it's amazing how the harder you work, the luckier you seem to get. And that's a great thing. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Matt Siano, Managing Director General Counsel at Two Sigma Investments. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the William & Mary School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs taught by the William & Mary MBA faculty. The faculty ranked number one in the nation by Bloomberg Businessweek. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. And finally, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. We invite you to share your ideas, questions, and thoughts with us via e-mail at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Matt Siano. Thanks to you for listening. I'm Ken White. Til, next time, have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Thomas Tull](images/thomas-tull-112-thumb.jpg)
![Machine Learning and Human Interface](images/thomas-tull-112-thumb.jpg)
Thomas Tull
Episode 112: March 20, 2019
Machine Learning and Human Interface
It's difficult to put one label on Thomas Tull - he's an entrepreneur. He's the founder of Legendary Entertainment, the maker of blockbuster movies. He's part-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and he's an innovator. Tull is the Founder and CEO of Tulco, and operating company that transforms existing businesses by bringing in great management teams and technology. He recently visited with students at William & Mary's School of Business. Afterwards, he sat down with us to talk about the intersection of machine learning and human interface. When to listen, and when not to listen, and how to have a job and career you love.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's difficult to put one label on Thomas Tull. He's an entrepreneur. He's the founder of Legendary Entertainment, the maker of blockbuster movies. He's part-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and he's an innovator. Tull is the founder and CEO of Tulco, an operating company that transforms existing businesses by bringing in great management teams and technology. He recently visited with students at William & Mary's School of Business. Afterwards, he sat down with us to talk about the intersection of machine learning and human interface, when to listen and when not to listen, and how to have a job and career you love. Here's our conversation with the CEO and founder of Tulco, Thomas Tull. Ken WhiteThomas, thanks for being here. Great. Great to meet you and great to have you here on campus. Thomas TullIt's great to be here. I've really enjoyed it. Ken WhiteAnd you've talked to a lot of students. What did you talk about? What were their questions like? Thomas TullWell, I've done three sessions in analytics class, an undergraduate business class, and then we had yesterday at four o'clock a campus-wide group that came in, and I spoke, and I have loved the energy here. I've gotten great questions, you know, especially there were a couple of questions from undergrads that I was like I can't believe that very sophisticated questions and I, you know, of course, it's a beautiful place, but you can understand why people are so passionate about the school. Ken WhiteGreat to hear. Well, let's see if we have some good questions for you as well. I don't know if we can top our students. That's a tall order, but our audience knows your background. And when we see the background, one of the questions that came right to my mind is when you were growing up did you know this is the kind of life you under lead this what you wanted to do? Thomas TullYou know, no, I was convinced that I was going to be a lawyer. I was going to go to law school and follow that sort of trajectory. And you know, but then as I got a little older, I thought to myself I'd kind of like to have my own business or at least be able to blaze my own path. So I thought about that a lot. And you know, at a young age, I had little, you know, lawn mowing and snow shoveling businesses and stuff like that to try to help my mom out with the bills and so forth. But in terms of the things that I get to do today. Absolutely. People ask me, did you ever you know dream any of this would happen. No, I had no context to even think it was it was possible, so I'm incredibly fortunate, obviously. Ken WhiteHow do you label yourself? Would you consider yourself an entrepreneur? How do you what title do you sort of give yourself? Thomas TullThat's an interesting question. You know entrepreneur, I guess from a standpoint of I've always you know kind of had my own businesses and so forth. But I think also what I seem to do more of is taking existing businesses and trying to either put a different slant on them and so forth. So I'm not capable of inventing social media or any of these things that didn't exist before, and now they do. But I've always been fascinated by finding a company or finding a business or a sector and being able to look at ways to make it more efficient. Ken WhiteHow did you do that with Legendary? Thomas TullWell, with Legendary. It really started out as looking at it as an asset class. It was a 30 billion dollar asset class at the time. I started studying it in sort of 2003 and looked at a lot of the financials over the previous decade looked at performance metrics around how films did where I thought the market was heading, especially internationally, and I thought you know there was an opportunity to create a company that was sort of adjacent to the Hollywood ecosystem. And you know and then along the way, you know seven or eight years ago saw the need for looking at things and deploying our capital, especially against advertising in hopefully a more thoughtful way. So formed Legendary Analytics and bought a sort of boutique analytics shop in Boston and grew that up to something that was pretty valuable for us. So it's constantly trying to ask you know how can you do things differently if you could know, what's worth knowing, and trying to push teams to think that way. Ken WhiteThat sounds like such a good idea, but how do you know it's a good business. How do you know it'll work? Thomas TullWell, and those things are oftentimes incompatible. So I think one of the things that I believe in is that you have to sort of have that blend of stubbornness do your homework do very deep homework so that you've convinced yourself that your thesis holds water and that that very question you ask. And the reason I looked at ten years worth of financial returns and all the different things that we looked at for legendary was I was at first nervous that even if you did well. Right. So you deployed your capital, you made your movies, and they did reasonably well that you still didn't have a real business that could scale and was worth putting institutional capital behind. So I had to convince myself and then obviously the financial markets that I thought it was prudent. So you have to be stubborn, and once you've convinced yourself that you've found a path. I mean, people believe me had like an intervention with me and said this is a crazy idea you don't know anything about the industry et cetera. And they meant well, and some of the points they made were, you know were reasonable. But I had really looked deeply at this and convinced myself to go all-in on it, and I think if you find businesses that have worked or people that have kind of blazed a path, you'll find a lot of similar stories that you know that that it was it certainly wasn't obvious and they got a lot of no's and that you do it anyway. Now you also can't be stubborn to a fault where you know if the empirical evidence is this isn't a good idea even though it's your idea and you feel real emotion around it, you still have to be thoughtful enough to say, okay I can't pursue this. Ken WhiteBut a tough line to cross or not cross for some entrepreneurs. Right. We see people hanging on too long or giving up too early. Thomas TullYeah, I think both of those things you certainly see if you have conviction. One of the things that I have said before is that you have to stay the course even when reasonable people would sort of tap out and say, you know I'm giving up. But just as dangerous as that is, your plan clearly is not working. And you know you're in a hole, and you just keep digging. Ken WhiteDo you have advisers' inner circle who do you bounce ideas off of? Thomas TullYeah, I mean, look, I have phenomenal people. There's one guy, in particular, his name is Marty Willhite, who is with me at Legendary. Before he was with me at Legendary, he was at Charlie Mongers law firm at Munger Tolls and was sort of one of Berkshire Hathaway's outside deal lawyers for a dozen years or so. So incredible experience and intellect. And you know Marty is now is with me a Tulco as well. And there's just we have an amazing board of directors. We have an amazing group of advisors, far better and deeper group than I deserve, and certainly take advantage of that in terms of, you know, getting advice and bouncing ideas off of them. Ken WhiteSo you're doing a lot of listening along the way. Thomas TullAbsolutely. Ken WhiteYeah. Thomas TullYes. Ken WhiteYou're involved with the NFL and professional sports. What do you like about that? Thomas TullWell, I would say two things. It's probably the only investment I've ever made that was ruled by emotion rather than numbers. I grew up a diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and in 2005 we had filmed a movie called We Are Marshall about what happened at Marshall University, and Pittsburgh Steelers wanted to see an early cut of the movie because Katie Morrow, who's in the movie, is related to the Rooney family. So normally, I just would have sent somebody else but believe me, I said I'll take it. So I went and spent the day with the Steelers and struck up just one of those amazing relationships with Dan Rooney. I think he was fascinated by the fact that I, just in his words, had an encyclopedic sort of knowledge and passion for the Steelers. And we stayed in touch and built a real friendship, and I think it was in 2007. He asked me to be his partner and join the Steelers ownership group. And that was an out-of-body experience for me. Ken WhiteI'll bet as a Steeler fan. I get it. I totally get it. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Thomas Tull in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is hosting the certificate in business excellence program for professionals in the Northern Virginia, Washington D.C. area. The program begins in mid-March takes place on Fridays. Each day is devoted to one important core business area, including effective communication, accounting for managers, business analytics, business strategy, and executive leadership. If you're looking to expand your business acumen and give your career a big boost. Check out our website at wmleadership.com com for information about the Certificate in Business Excellence. Now back to our conversation with the founder and CEO of Tulco, Thomas Tull. Ken WhiteThere's got to be a lot of parallels with the movie industry and professional sports. I mean that that's entertainment, right. What do you see as some of the parallels? Thomas TullWell, I would say first and foremost that both businesses are primarily you're in the human being business right you're dealing with very talented people that motivate themselves in different ways. You're dealing with sort of large financial numbers and having to make things work whether it's, you know, look, I really want this actor or actress to be in the movie, but it can't tip the budget to an out of control place. Obviously, you're forced with a lot of decisions on rosters where talented players that you want to keep but there are other teams in the market that'll pay more. And so there's complexity around that. And then I think because you're dealing with immensely talented people who are also now in a social media age face different pressures far different circumstances than the quote famous people that came before. I think that creates a lot of interesting dynamics and pressures. So I think there are parallels just in terms of, you know, trying to build the relationships and trust and so forth, and was it has been an amazing ride with both. Ken WhiteYeah. And now it's Tulco. Very interesting. Thomas TullYes. Ken WhiteLooking at businesses and making them better basically, and how are you doing that? Thomas TullWell, so the thesis with Tulco was sort of to it's a holding company, so it's not a fund. It's an operating company. And what we look for is companies in traditionally sort of large but sleepy spaces that have not heretofore had a lot of innovation and used a lot of technology and then partnering with great management teams that have deep domain expertise and not only providing the capital but at the heart of Tulco is Tulco labs where we have data scientists and machine learning artificial intelligence. And what we seek to do is to partner with these management teams, buy the company or large chunks of the company and have our Tulco labs folks come in and help them employ technology that is transformational. Right. We don't look for incremental change. We look for things that really move the needle. So knock on wood has been working. We've got an amazing shareholder group and has a board and so forth, and I get out of bed excited every day. Ken WhiteThat leads to some serious change within an organization. So what do you have to do as a leader? When you do when you come into an organization, and it's going to be transformational change. How do you handle that, or how do you lead? Thomas TullYeah, I think the first thing is an alignment of goals and a very clear path that you outline with total transparency. Because if you have a management team frankly that wants the check but doesn't really embrace or understand the change that we think needs to happen, that's not going to be a very successful relationship. So we look for our management teams to say, look, we have a really great business here. We think we're in a great sector. We know this cold, but we don't have the resources to be able to do this. And the teams that get excited about it and are reinvigorated by it and kind of see where you can take it. Those are good partners and a good fit for us. Ken WhiteHow do you see and this is a tough question. How do you see things like data analytics and machine learning changing what we're doing in business and changing our society as we move forward? Thomas TullYou know, certainly, we're seeing this now, but over the next decade, I don't think there's a corner of our economy that is not going to be touched and affected by machine learning, data science, artificial intelligence, robotics. And you know I think that where we see the magic happening is between the machine and human interface, right. If you if you're just doing everything with data analytics or just saying, look, the machine will decide those aren't highest and best outcomes, but where you can take large swaths of data and information, organize it and then make it actionable. We think that's extraordinarily compelling and valuable and then all the different things that would be very difficult or take enormous amount of time or resources in order to kind of get to know every nook and cranny and using the right technology to get your head around that. I think all those things are incredibly valuable. Ken WhiteSo as our work world is changing. What advice do you have for professionals? What should they know? What should they be leaning toward in terms of career, and if they know nothing about data, a lot about data, and so on? Thomas TullYeah, I think you know. I think the whole knowledge economy thing is interesting because your skill sets now I think have to include being able to lean into and embrace technology because it is happening regardless of what anybody's thoughts or wishes are. You know those things are going to happen, so if you can understand the context and really spend some time learning what data, what analytics, what what's these sorts of things can do and can help to transform businesses and make more valuable. I think that's a prudent thing to spend time on. Ken WhiteTo double back to something you said earlier, you say you love getting up in the morning can't wait to go in. What advice do you have for people to reach that spot? How do you get there to when you get up in the morning? You just can't wait, your feet hit the floor, you can't wait to go in? Thomas TullWell, I would say a couple of things. The first is you know that old adage about know thyself I think is incredibly important because you know whether it's expectations placed on us at home socially whatever it is about what we should be doing with our life versus really getting comfortable with who you are how you're wired what you're good at maybe what's challenging for you understanding as much as you can about what environment you'll thrive in. I think is very, very important because if you're going to be successful, I mean there's a number of measurements for that and I think one of the biggest is that you know certainly the older I get, the more I understand that time is your most valuable asset. So you know if you're spending your time in a vocation where you know it's just a grind for you. Now, look, we all start somewhere, right. So it's very difficult to come right out of school and say, you know this is how I'm going to spend my time. You have to earn your stripes in that way. But I do think looking at a situation and saying, look, I think I would do great in a structured environment at a big company versus somebody that says, look, I would hate that like I need my brain works best when I have creative freedom when I have you know the ability to have immediate efficacy and not get frustrated and so forth. I think the more that you can be intellectually honest and reflective about those things, the more valuable it is. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Thomas Tull, founder, and CEO of Tulco. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Thomas Tull, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Lisa DeNoia & Jeff Werby](images/denoia-werby-111-thumb.jpg)
![The Coworking Movement](images/denoia-werby-111-thumb.jpg)
Lisa DeNoia & Jeff Werby
Episode 111: June 11, 2018
The Coworking Movement
While a traditional professional goes to the office every day, other professionals work from home, often alone and isolated. Those working from home have an alternative: Coworking. By next year, over two million professionals around the world will go to work in shared offices or workspaces where they work independently. Amenities in coworking spaces include office space, conference rooms, private telephone rooms and other necessities professionals seek. Lisa DeNoia and Jeff Werby launched 1701 - a coworking, meeting, and event space in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and it has quickly caught on. They join us today to discuss coworking, the types of professionals it attracts, and how it's grown from a simple workspace to a collaborative community.
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Lisa DeNoia & Jeff Werby: The Coworking Movement TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. While the traditional professional goes to the office every day, other professionals work from home, often alone and isolated. Those working from home have an alternative co-working. By next year over two million professionals around the world will go to work in shared offices or workspaces where they work independently. Amenities and co-working spaces include office space, conference rooms, private telephone rooms, and other necessities professionals seek. Lisa DeNoia and Jeff Werby launched 1701. A co-working meeting and event space in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and it has quickly caught on. They join us on the podcast today to discuss co-working, the types of professionals it attracts, and how it's grown from a simple workspace to a collaborative community. Here's our conversation with Lisa DeNoia and Jeff Werby of 1701. Ken WhiteLisa, Jeff, thanks for sharing your time with us. You have such a cool story and a very interesting business. Jeff, before we talk about the actual business, how about your background? How did you two get together and work together? Jeff WerbyLisa and I met about five years ago. We were working together at a defense contracting business. We started working a lot of projects, and we ended up doing a Salesforce.com implementation there, and she joined the team, and she was a project manager, and we've been working together ever since. Ken WhiteAnd how did that lead to starting a co-working space co-working business? Jeff WerbyYup, co-working space, so when we were working on salesforce projects, we ended up doing some traveling. We went to Dreamforce, and when we did some traveling, we went to other cities that had co-working, and we thought it was a really great opportunity to bring to Virginia Beach. We ended up meeting with the city of Virginia Beach economic development. They were interested in co-working, and so we started working with them to find the space to bring it to Virginia Beach. Ken WhiteAnd what was it, what's special about Virginia Beach to you? Jeff WerbyI'm from Virginia Beach. Lived there pretty much my whole life. I join the Navy to see the world ended up getting stationed in Virginia Beach, which happens to some people. And you know my family's there, and it's a great place to live and the ocean. Ken WhiteWhen you look at other co-working spaces, I mean being so close to the beach, that's pretty cool, I would think. When you see them in other cities, are there various spots they're trying to find? Do you try to be near the water? Do you try to be isolated? Do you try to be in the middle of everything? Jeff WerbyI don't think it really matters. I mean, there is a co-working space that we talk to these people in Clovis, New Mexico. I had to even Google that because I had no idea where that was. Ken WhiteRight. Jeff WerbyThey are in the middle of nowhere and in a little small strip of one street that they call downtown. I think you kind of go to wherever there is a density of people who might appreciate what you have. In Virginia Beach, when we started, we said we wanted to be at the ocean front. Everybody said we are crazy. We may be the closest co-working space to the ocean anywhere on the East Coast. I'm not sure if that's true. But we are three blocks from the beach, and that's great to be able to just go down there and see the ocean in the middle of the day and get your head out of whatever you're working on. Ken WhiteYeah. Lisa, who so you build it. Who do you expect to come, and who does come? And they're not. You don't really consider them customers. You consider the members. Right. Lisa DeNoiaYeah, so we have about 80 members right now, and they're members. They join a monthly membership plan, kind of like joining a gym instead of coming in to work out. You come into work. You know, we thought we would have a lot of entrepreneurs and startups. We thought we would have freelancers and remote workers from bigger companies. We also have a lot of members who are artists. They don't necessarily make art in 1701, but we are in the middle of the Vibe creative district, and so we have about 11 local artists who have their work on display in the space, and those artists are also running a business and so they come in to kind of work on some of their admin stuff here and there, and they come in for special events and stuff like that. We also just have a variety of really creative members. So we have people who do video and animation, and we have podcasters and authors, and it's really, really interesting to hear about all the things that people are working on that you wouldn't expect. Ken WhiteWhat's the space look like? Lisa DeNoiaThere's two separate sides of the building, so the one side we call the main space it's very bright. It has a lot of windows. Has concrete floors and open ceilings. There's some sort of we call them cubbies like some little spaces where people can get together and huddle up and have maybe like a one-on-one meeting. We have some dedicated desks throughout the space. We have some standing desks, and then we have a lot of open desks where people can strap in and sit, and then about a third of our building, we call it the garage. It's a little bit more industrial looking and rough around the edges. It doesn't have as many windows, but which is cool because we can do a lot of like video or PowerPoint and stuff. We have a big projector and a screen in there, and we can set that room up in different ways for workshops and events and things like that so. Ken WhiteAnd why either of you. Why do your members join? What is it about co-working that interests them? Jeff WerbyI think it's not necessarily just co-working, but I think it's the community, and I think it's so some people it's for them being able to get up out of their home office and actually be able to interact with other people. So we've had people who on the first day they met somebody there and gone to lunch with somebody they would have never ever met. We find that a lot of people say, you know when they used to work out of a coffee shop, they would go in, and they'd put it in their earbuds or their beats headphones, and they would sit there, and they would put their head down and do their work and never interact with the people that they saw in there every single day. And at 1701, people literally start communicating, and they'll go and get a cup of coffee and talk to people on the first day. They'll go for a run on the beach, and you know, not only are they collaborating and discussing things inside the building, but they're ending up going together, and their families are joining each other for dinner, and they're going out to the beach together on the weekends. Ken WhiteHave you seen them collaborate in terms of business as well? Jeff WerbyAbsolutely. So there's been a number of people who collaborate everything from there is an app that was developed family app and that was a collaboration between really three different companies inside of our building. Two people joined to create a team. They got another guy to help do the software development, and then they used a third person in the building to help them with some of their marketing and creating animation and video. Ken WhiteIt's such an interesting concept. Where do you see it going? How might co-working grow? Lisa DeNoiaI think co-working, in general, is just going to continue to grow. I mean, if you look at all of the research and the numbers that are out there, I mean, you know it's just going to continue to grow well through 2020 exponentially. So I think that more co-working spaces are going to pop up everywhere. I think you know the big ones like WeWork are just going to continue to grow and grow and become massive. You know, hopefully, we can eventually expand into a second location. There's a lot of amenities that we do have in our building, and then there are some amenities that we don't have in our building that our members are asking us for, and so we are always looking for ways that we can try to meet the needs of the members that we do have. And so even though we have 80 members now, we started out with one and then two and then three, and they've had a huge impact on the way that the business is today and what the things are that we offer. So as our membership grows, I think that'll help us grow and decide what to do next. Ken WhiteCould it grow to where people are living in co-working spaces as well? Lisa DeNoiaI think that's already going on. I mean, there's co-living. WeWork is doing that. Some other places are doing that. I mean, there's also these experiences that are geared towards digital nomads with people who will they'll basically go on vacation and go on these like year-long, you know, traveling adventures where they're co-working together all over the world. And those kinds of things so. Ken WhiteWow. What effects has your business and the people your members had on Virginia Beach and the business community? Lisa DeNoiaI think we've had a pretty significant impact on at least the business community in the vibe district of where we are. I mean, so right now, the businesses in our building make up about half, maybe a little bit more than half of the businesses in the vibe district. You know that area is an area that's been revitalized over the last couple of years, and I think the fact that there are so many more businesses in the vibe district in our building is contributing to the stability of the neighborhood and as businesses grow and they're kind of graduating out of our building, and they need their own space or a bigger space. They're renting space nearby in the vibe district or at the oceanfront, and the city really wants the oceanfront to be a year-round place that's active year-round where restaurants and retail can stay open year-round, and so I think having more of these local businesses and people who are there and they're working, and they're generating revenue at the oceanfront that's really what's going to enable that to happen. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Lisa DeNoia and Jeff Werby in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond a Mason School of Business. The center's popular certificate in business excellence program is coming to the Northern Virginia Washington D.C. area this fall. Designed for the busy professional, the five-session program addresses leadership development from a cross-functional perspective. Five essential business topics will be taught in the program, including effective communication, managerial accounting, business analytics, business strategy, and executive leadership. The program helps you get a better handle on business, leadership, and your career. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Lisa DeNoia and Jeff Werby of 1701. Ken WhiteHow would you define the vibe district when you're telling somebody is not has never heard the term vibe district. Jeff WerbyYeah, so the vibe district is what was historically kind of an underutilized piece of the Virginia Beach Ocean Front. It's really between 17th street and 19th Street. It kind of wiggles around a little bit, but it's basically, and it's still today a little bit rundown a little bit like I said under utilized there's a lot of empty storefronts. If you went through there, it would not look like the resort area. Ken WhiteRight. Jeff WerbyAnd so you know the city put in place some incentives and some structure to incentivize people to come into that area and make it utilized. Ken WhiteNow you're doing more than co-working. You have events like panel discussions. Can you tell me about those? Lisa DeNoiaYeah, so for 2018, we decided to focus on bringing more and more different types of people into the building, and so we created a series of panel events to bring in influencers from around the region to talk about 12 different business topics and are relevant to the region. So we're talking about digital content and farming and agriculture, tiny homes and mobile businesses, craft food and beverage. That kind of thing. So we do those. We also rent space out for private events. We share space with some meet-ups and some nonprofits who are doing civic hacking is like code for Hampton Roads meets in our building operation code meets in our building, and so we've trying to have an amenity for local technologists and developers as well. Ken WhiteIs there an easy way to describe the demographic of the members? Is it a certain age? Is it a certain education level? Is it kind of all over? Jeff WerbyYeah, I think it's it's probably as diverse as you could get. Ken WhiteReally. Jeff WerbyWithout trying to put in a diversity control. I mean we, we have no agenda whatsoever in that realm, but it is very diverse, and we have you know very young to what we call you know seasoned professionals you know both genders, you know every race, you know education, where they're from, military background civilian active duty military you name it. We've got them in our building. Ken WhiteAnd people who are full-time working on their project or some may be doing it as a second thing while they're working full time as well. Right. Jeff WerbyYup, I mean there's people who are, like I said, they're full-time active duty in the military, and they come there three or four o'clock whenever they get off work, and they work until 10:00 at night, and they come in on the weekends, and they know that that's their focus but they have their day job and then there's people who literally come in there every day, and that's what they're working on they're focusing on their business so and everything in between there's also people who are community members who only really come once or twice a month you know mainly just as a way to get out and network with people and have the opportunity to come to all of our we have social and business networking events that we put on. Ken WhiteWhat about rules and expectations. You know, during the day, I maybe I don't want to be bothered, or I love to be bothered. How do you I what I'm thinking of is the old dormitory, right? The freshmen come in into their wing, and they've got to create their own rules how are we going to live together. I mean, it does. How do you manage that so that everybody gets along? Lisa DeNoiaI mean, people are generally pretty respectful. I think you know; obviously, if someone's sitting there working with their headphones on, you're probably not going to start talking to them unless it's urgent or you're working on something together specifically. You know, I think co-working spaces kind of have their own little culture and their own unspoken rules, too, so everyone knows that everyone's in there because they want to connect more with human beings and they want to talk, but then again, everyone knows everyone's in there to work. And so there's these moments where it almost comes and goes in waves like you'll hear someone talking or someone will laugh and then all of a sudden like the space will get very loud for a couple of minutes like everyone will start talking at once and then as soon as it happened like it will just stop, and everyone go back to what they're working on, or you know in the middle of the day like at 2:00 or 3:00 maybe a bunch of people will all be drinking coffee together or you know we haven't really had a lot of problems or you've had to ask somebody to keep it down or something like that. But if there is someone that's being loud or distracting or on a call somewhere where they shouldn't be, it's usually as simple as just tapping them on the shoulder being like, hey, why don't you head into the phone booth or go over here you know. I mean, most people are working, or they're working on a business. They're professionals, and they're trying to do the right thing so. Ken WhiteFor the introvert, it sounds great, but I'm introverted; I just don't know. What do you say to them? Lisa DeNoiaI'm an introvert, so I mean, sometimes I like to go sit somewhere where I'm facing the wall, or I put my headphones on, or I just go, you know, it's really cool cause you can move around to different parts of the building. So even though Jeff and I own the business, we do not have our own office in the building. We don't have our own desks. We move from space to space just like everyone else does. And I think the best part of it is if wherever you're sitting isn't working for you, you can get up and move and go somewhere else. So if I need to reserve a conference room because I know I need to be alone for an hour, I can do that, or I can go work in the phone booth or if I am feeling like I want to be more socializing, go sit in the middle of the space or sit on the couch and know that kind of everyone will be sort of buzzing around me. Ken WhiteIf people want to try it out. Do you can you get a day pass or visit? How does that work in yours and other spaces you've seen? Jeff WerbyI mean, so we offer everybody a free day. So if you come in for a tour, so you schedule towards automated system, you pick a time, and you come in for a tour, and then we let you come back and use a free day. I think most spaces do something like that. I don't know. You know some of them you have to email them and tell them that you're going to come. But yeah, I mean, it's the kind of thing that we always tell everybody come and try it out beforehand. You've got to experience it and see whether or not it's a good fit for you. And then the other thing is that we don't have contracts. So it's month to month. If it doesn't work for you, you know you're not tied into a long-term contract. So people really like that, and they can also start using it as a community member and paying for drop-in days kind of a la carte, or they can get an all-you-can-eat, you know, full 24-by-7 access. If anybody ever starts in one and is a community member and they end up using so many days that they would pay for a full time, we just convert them to it. We don't charge them an overage, so it's pretty flexible. And people really like that. Ken WhiteYeah. So if they're wondering if they have some questions, give it a shot. Just try it. Jeff WerbyAbsolutely. And the other thing if people are visiting and they're at the ocean front for the summer, or you know maybe for a week, I know that everybody tries to go on vacation and not have to work, but you know we are open and in a lot of the hotels are getting rid of their I guess they call them business centers and the Internet the hotels typically is pretty awful. So if people need to get away, they can leave the family down at the beach and just come down and work for the day even while they're on vacation. Ken WhiteWhat about equipment. So I've I'm there I've got my laptop and whatever with me and I want to go out what do I do with that. Does it stay there? Do I put it away somewhere? Lisa DeNoiaYeah, people just leave their laptop on their desk so that the doors are locked all the time, so our members have access to the front door using an app on their phone, and then we also have our community manager or one of our associates sitting at the front desk to let people in and out. So there's not like the general public parading in and out of the building throughout the day. So your stuff is safe wherever you feel comfortable leaving it. And yeah, so people can just come and go as you please. It's not like working in a coffee shop where you know all of sudden you need to go use the restroom, and you're like do I pack up all my stuff and lose my table or whatever. You know you can kind of leave your stuff there for the day. Ken WhiteBut it seems to be growing at a great rate, and so the word is give it a shot right if you're a remote worker or somebody working out of the house. Jeff WerbyAbsolutely or if you're somebody who wants to network and meet other people because you have an idea to start a business or you've got a small startup, and you want to meet people who can help you and collaborate with, it's a great place to meet those people. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Lisa DeNoia and Jeff Werby of 1701. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, check out our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to our podcasts, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guests this week, Lisa DeNoia and Jeff Werby, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Kathrine Kimball](images/kathrine-kimball-110-thumb.jpg)
![The Successful Professional](images/kathrine-kimball-110-thumb.jpg)
Kathrine Kimball
Episode 110: May 22, 2018
The Successful Professional
As thousands of new college graduates begin their careers this summer, many hope they can find a successful professional whom they can emulate. For young businesswomen, Kathrine Kimball has proven to be a popular role model. Kimball began her career in transfer pricing in 1993. Since then, she has advised clients all over the world as she worked for Deloitte, EY and CRA. Just last year she founded Aptis Global. Less than 12 months later, the International Tax Revue named it Best Newcomer Firm of the Year. In March, Kimball visited William & Mary for the Women's Stock Pitch Competition and Leadership Summit, hosted by the business school and the Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance. After interacting with students there, she sat down with us to talk about her career and, among other things, the importance of re-inventing yourself, handling difficult situations, and mentoring and helping others.
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Katherine Kimball: The Successful Professional TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. As thousands of new college graduates begin their careers this summer, many hope to find a successful professional whom they can emulate. For young businesswomen, Kathrine Kimball has proven to be a popular role model. Kimball began her career in transfer pricing in 1993. Since then, she's advised clients all over the world. She worked for Deloitte, EY, and CRA. Just last year, she founded Aptis Global. Less than 12 months later, the International Tax Review named it Europe's best newcomer firm of the year. In March, Kimball visited William & Mary for the Women's Stock Pitch Competition and Leadership Summit hosted by the Business School and the Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance. After interacting with students there, she sat down with us to talk about her career and, among other things, the importance of reinventing yourself, handling difficult situations, and mentoring and helping others. Here's our conversation with Katherine Kimball, Managing Principal, and Founder of Aptis Global. Ken WhiteKathrine, you've had a busy day. Thank you very much for spending time with us on the podcast. Kathrine KimballWell, thank you, Ken. Ken WhiteSo we're recording on a Monday afternoon. You were here all weekend for the Women's Summit and then meeting with more students today on Monday. Going back to the weekend, the Women's Leadership Summit. What was that experience like for you? Kathrine KimballOh, it was so invigorating and inspirational being with these young women. There were nearly 200 here of various seasons of life, mostly students from all over the world, and it was incredible. The breakout sessions and having one on one time with them and the ability to even just have the time during the lunch and the cocktail hour as well. Ken WhiteWhat were some of the questions you were asked? Kathrine KimballA lot of them were how did you handle certain situations. So the very first question in one of the breakout sessions I thought was interesting because you would think it wouldn't be an issue anymore, and it was more about how do you handle if you feel there's bias. How do you handle if you feel there's some racism. How do you handle those kinds of situations? And I gave them my one-liner that tends to diffuse those situations and told them how to say that as well and what I'll do in those kind of situations is say, well, you might think about that, but the way I think about it is I like to consider myself a radical intentional pause inclusive that tends to shift the power base and of the conversation in the room around the table so that now you as the inclusive have that power base of the conversation rather than the divisive Ken WhiteDefinitely Kathrine Kimballone. Ken WhiteCould put somebody on the back of their heels. Kathrine KimballYes. Ken WhiteWhere did you get that? Do you remember where you came up with that? Kathrine KimballI was in a situation, and it was appropriate. I kept using it. That's the way it worked. Ken WhiteYeah. Kathrine KimballToo long ago, probably about two years ago, I decided that I was in a position to really start using my own power base and to be a little more proactive about expressing when it was not okay. Ken WhiteYeah. Kathrine KimballIt doesn't have to be targeted at me. I need to use my position to empower others, and it's just an appropriate gentle way that still displaces the power of someone who's divisive or perhaps negative. Ken WhiteHave you seen and in talking to the young women who were here this weekend, have you seen the differences in their world versus your world when you were that age. Has business changed much? Kathrine KimballIn some ways, it's back to the future. They still had the same uncertainty, some of the same things I thought about my own career. One of the things that I think is really important with the Millennials that we all know is the careers they'll have at 30, 40, especially at our age. They don't exist right now. And so being flexible and being a chameleon of sorts and knowing what your gifts are and also knowing what your limitations are, I think are really important. Ursula Burns answered a fantastic question with a fantastic answer. On Friday night and, she said go with the ambiguity of the situation. She had been engineer had a very structured career, and her opportunities for the c suite and changing her trajectory were all about kind of embracing this unique opportunity. She had to be the assistant to the CEO, which was not anything you would expect if you were an engineer. Ken WhiteRight. Kathrine KimballTransforming that, I was able to use that on the panel for agents of positive disruption on Saturday and talked to the women about being willing to embrace the power of ambiguity. So don't look for that. I know there's a lot of us who like to think forward. We're methodical. We're planners. Five years you've got those are great. You should know that you should have those goals, but you should also continually reassess because the dynamics of the global environment aren't going to wait for your five-year plan. Ken WhiteRight. Ambiguity for, and I don't like generalizations, but for many millennials, that's a tough one. Kathrine KimballIt is a tough one. Ken WhiteThey like the definition give me the path. Did you get any pushback when you shared that and talked about that? Kathrine KimballYou know some of it, we talked about knowing the path but also honing in on not what was the career I want to be a banker, and I'm going to do this. I want to be an engineer. I want to be a teacher. It was what are my gifts. What's the toolkit that I'm bringing to the table, right. What is my toolkit? What are my gifts? And then what does that fit into because you might have to morph into something totally different. I came to graduate school with a banking background and thought I would go the investment banking route after that, but it was just a stepping stone really for me. But I was a Navy wife, and so I had to reinvent myself with every tour of duty following a Navy career. And it was my professor at William & Mary that said well, wait a minute, if you can't go this route, what route do you want to take, and how can we help you get there and that's how I landed in transfer pricing before there were even rules in the U.S. was through one of my professors here who mentored me and shepherded me into an entirely new area. And here it is 25 years later. Ken WhiteThat's a fantastic story. Is it playing to your strengths? Is it somewhat? Kathrine KimballI think it is because well I'm I am an expert in transfer pricing, which is the most contentious area of international tax and arguably even in international business because it's the economics of the structure. So you're looking at the value chain you're allocating the taxable income, and therefore you're gonna have a big impact on what the effective tax rate and shareholder value is. So if you think about that for a really strategic perspective, transfer pricing it's a c suite issue. And it's also very contentious. We see that on the Wall Street Journal, unfortunately, more often for some clients than not. But I think the evolution of transfer pricing. It started out where it was very accounting and finance-oriented in, and I love to write. So it's writing these documents you really a storyteller. You're telling the story of the company. And so, in 1994, we didn't really know what U.S. documentation looked like. I had worked on the Yamaha case with my finance professor from here, Dr. John Strong. Ken WhiteSure. Kathrine KimballAnd we were part of the Yamaha cases team known as the wacky finance team. Baker McKenzie had put together a team, and it included the former comptroller of Saab, who's still a friend. Dr. Strong and myself which I was the Kimball group which was me myself and I and I did the work while my two-year-old took naps after graduate school, and then we also had Arthur Andersen, who was still around at the time that did the traditional analysis and so our approach was to do something very unique and come at it from a very corporate finance perspective. So we did that, and that's actually what settled the case. And ten years later, I was at EY and working with a colleague, and she had been the litigator on the IRS side. And I looked at her CV, and she had the Yamaha case on her CV, and I said wait, I worked on the Yamaha case, and she said were you with the Kimball group? And I said that I was the entire Kimball group. You are looking at the Kimball group. Ken WhiteThat's great. Kathrine KimballBut it was incredible. So, in the beginning, it did take my skill set as a lender, which was how you take apart a company and put it back together very simply. Ken WhiteInteresting, yeah. Kathrine KimballIt was cash flow analysis. It was understanding what makes a company tick. Commercial lenders, that's what you do. And then putting together all the tools that I got here in the business school and being able to put them in this new field in 94 when regulations were brand new. No one really knew what those reports were supposed to look like. There's guidance. There are rules from the U.S. at the time, but still, we were making it up, and then it evolved. And then recently, in 2015, the global framework changed, and it's very much even more so about value chain, which is where supply chain and IP meet. And now you've got to understand the risks that are inherent in that as well, and we addressed risk before but not in the same way we do now. So it's really the confluence of everything it's strategy, it's finance, it's accounting, it's economics. I have the best job, basically. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Kathrine Kimball in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The center's popular certificate in Business Excellence program is coming to the Northern Virginia Washington D.C. area this fall. Designed for the busy professional, the five-session program addresses leadership development from a cross-functional perspective. Five essential business topics will be taught in the program, including effective communication, managerial accounting, business analytics, business strategy, and executive leadership. The program helps you get a better handle on business, leadership, and your career. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the Managing Principal and Founder of Aptis Global, Kathrine Kimball. Ken WhiteAnd you talk about ambiguity with young women, and that's your career, right. It was always Kathrine KimballYeah, that's my comfort zone. Ken WhiteYour comfort zone being out of your comfort zone. That's fantastic. But now it's a bit of a new world for you. You're part of a startup. Can you tell us about that? Kathrine KimballYes, thank you. Yes. April 1st last year, we launched Aptis Global. And we launched in three countries, the U.S., Mexico, and Belgium, basically getting the band back together. I started with people that I've known and trusted throughout my career. And it's just grown, and that's why we're in the places we're in. We have both international tax and transfer pricing economics partners. We have some of our partners have been in-house, so we bring a completely unique perspective, having been in the chair of our clients, which I have not. I've always been in consulting space, but they're able to say been there done that, and I walked that path. Let me walk it with you, and so we have something called Transition Champion that will come alongside could be the smallest tax department. It could be one of the largest in the world, and we'll formulate a game plan around that and how they need to get to their next level. And in addressing the new compliance as well, so we do a lot of strategy and a lot of planning. But with, our Mexico Center of Excellence being 35 miles from my front door rather than India, which where in my past life, they were halfway around the world. So it had cost advantages but not a lot of technical advantages. So now I've got people that I deal with daily, and I see frequently that we're able to get that cost advantage and pass it on to our clients as well. So we do a lot of strategy work. We have also an Aptis Senior Advisor program. So retired big four partners and dear friends have joined as senior advisors, and so they're on board for consulting with our clients, growing our staff, and we're able to create this global virtual team from scratch. So we prayed for a Ferrari because why not. And we got a rocket ship. Ken WhiteBeautiful. Kathrine KimballSo now all these race car drivers are trying to figure out how to be astronauts. Ken WhiteYeah, fantastic. You almost you just sort of skim by the world. This is a virtual company. Wow, so what does that mean for you for communication? How do you build culture? Kathrine KimballWe are building culture with our hearts. So one of the things that I learned at my undergrad Loyola Marymount there was Sister Peg talked about being an intelligent heart and a compassionate mind. It wasn't enough to be the smartest person in the room or the nicest person at the dinner party. You had to bring those two together and turn them upside down. So that mantra has stuck with me, and it was from back when I made partner at EY and my team there. I still get tagged occasionally on Facebook with those words, and I love that. And it's followed me through my career. But it's really how we've built this company and these relationships. It's no secret. It's just 25 years of just being good to people. Ken WhiteYeah. Kathrine KimballAnd so we have this group that is like I said, we've got one other partner now. I'm very excited we just announced this week in San Diego, and then we have our Mexico COE. And then, in Belgium, we're expanding our European practice, and the technology is critical, so we have used Zoom quite a bit. Ken WhiteSure. Kathrine KimballWe do video conferences quite a bit. We get together several times a year. I go to Europe to help grow the market there and then also have our European partner come here, and we've used contractors to grow because we have grown very quickly. We're adding in a very strategic way. We don't want to be adding without having the right perspective. So it's very important that people have the right mindset to be part of our culture. Ken WhiteYeah. Kathrine KimballAnd if you don't bring your heart to the game and you only bring your mind, there's a lot of smart people in transfer pricing, and they'll do really, really well, but they won't be part of Aptis. Ken WhiteYeah, it's like our Dean Larry Pulley says lead a life of principled achievement. Kathrine KimballYes. Ken WhiteIt's not just about achievement. Kathrine KimballYes, yes. Ken WhiteYou and your organization is very, I guess, really dedicated to having a positive impact on others and helping others and mentoring others. Where does that come from? Kathrine KimballYou know I think it's the roots of your family. That's where you know you learn most things around the kitchen table. I learned around the kitchen table and watching my father grow a car business from scratch and learned the entrepreneurial nuts and bolts and the gut-wrenching moments as well. It's very difficult. I also learned about character behind the counter of my grandma's general store in Alabama. In high school, I used to spend my summers helping her run Gregory's grocery of Grady, Alabama. You can't make this up, Ken. I'm not kidding, and sitting behind that counter, not only did I watch her negotiate with the Proctor and Gamble guy about her product mix, she had too much baby aspirin, not enough adult aspirin. Ken WhiteYeah. Kathrine KimballThe freshness of the moon pies, the RC Cola guy was always hopping when he was in grandma's store because she expected very fresh Moon Pies. But then she also had a book of credit, and sometimes people would come in the store, and I would think they were dressed a certain way, and I'm you know 14 15 16 those summers and I would think that they'd be in the book and they weren't necessarily in the book, and other folks were in the book, and I wouldn't have expected that. And Grandma knew their heart, and she knew who they really were on the inside. And that's how you ended up in her book of credit. Ken WhiteWow. Kathrine KimballAnd so I learned a lot about that character, and that's something when you go to fast forward. I was in the commercial lending program in 1985 with First Interstate Bank in Los Angeles, and we were taught about the c's of credit, collateral, and cash flow, and then, of course, one of them was character. And I'll never forget someone raise their hand and said well, how do we know Mike, who was our instructor. How are we going to know if someone's got character, and he said you'll know it in your gut? And that is really what happened behind that counter is watching her know in her gut who could be in the book and who couldn't. Ken WhiteA great story, and it definitely resonates with those who grew up in a family business because that's a different kind of upbringing, right. No question. Kathrine KimballI'm not afraid of anything. I was raised in the car business. Ken WhiteThere you go, your company in terms of recognizing others. You have an award that you give each year. Can you tell us about that? Kathrine KimballWe do. There were a couple of things we wanted to do from the get-go. So we at first launched a charity. So on day one, we launched the labor of love. So we'll be launching the website soon, but we've already started doing projects. So labor of love is hands and feet, and we all of our executives, even the most senior of these tax guys, made blankets from scratch, and we delivered them to a children's hospital in Mexico, and now we're about to do the same thing for a women's shelter because they're a socialist system their hospitals don't really need it, but they're women's shelters do in Belgium. So wherever we go around the world, we'll have labor of love projects. The other thing we wanted to do that was a differentiator. But it was really no magic secret it was just how we roll is we created an award called the Aptissimi, and the term aptissimi is a Latin term that means those who are set apart or striving to be best to the best. So it's not meant to be pretentious. We are the best of the best. It's meant to be who's striving to be that extra. It's really holding yourself to a higher standard. And that's a different kind of personality than having a system or a place or a job or school holding you to a higher standard. Ken WhiteYeah. Kathrine KimballThat's what aptissimi is. So we wanted to recognize our mentors and people that helped us take this leap of faith because, at midnight on the thirty-first of March, I left a big for partnership, and the next day I launched a very, very publicly at a big celebration with family and friends. We had over 150 people there big black-tie celebration, and we had the April Fools surprise factor. Ken WhiteNo kidding. Kathrine KimballWe launched the Kimball Group, our parent company which is capital and strategy Aptis Global and Labor of Love. And then, later this year, we'll be launching a leadership content company called Circa 22 that's not focused on baby boomers leaning millennials, but instead, it's very forward-thinking it's having content that will help the millennials become who they need to be for the 22nd century. So it's very forward-thinking, and again, it's just operating from the heart. So we're working with William & Mary on that concept and the research and how to play that out as well. Oh, the Aptissimi award evolved from all of this, and at the launch, we honored our mentors and people who helped us get to this point, including in some cases, my father, my mother's not here, but her, of course, and some early partners that believed in me when no one else did. We know why they picked me to pour into; I'll never know. But we wanted to honor them. So each partner picked people to do that. And then, as we've gone on, we've been able to do that. So I wouldn't be here and have this career, quite honestly, without John Strong and Larry Pulley. They have believed in me from day one. I came to this program with a husband at sea and a four-month-old, and there were lots of days where I didn't want to continue. Specifically, Larry wouldn't let me quit at one point, and here I am. And John helped launch my consulting career in such a grand way I could have never ever done this. So John and Larry are Aptissimi's. And recently, we were able to honor a few of our clients who I watched them operate with their team in sometimes difficult situations transformational kind of seasons for their companies. And so it was just really an honor to be able to acknowledge that and to celebrate that they're set apart in their own way. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kathrine Kimball, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Kathrine Kimball, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Jennifer Engelhardt](images/jennifer-engelhardt-109-thumb.jpg)
![Artificial Intelligence](images/jennifer-engelhardt-109-thumb.jpg)
Jennifer Engelhardt
Episode 109: May 9, 2018
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence may become one of the most important and transformational technologies of our time. AI can affect just about every aspect of business; including leadership, results and the bottom line, hiring, retention and culture, decision making, and innovation. While we see and hear a great deal about artificial intelligence, for many professionals, the topic remains somewhat of a mystery. Jennifer Engelhardt knows the ins and outs of AI. She's a partner at IBM Global Business Services and spent years in the life sciences space where, thanks to AI, some amazing breakthroughs are occurring regarding therapies, patient care, and cures. We sat down with Engelhardt last week where she explained artificial intelligence, how organizations can embrace it, and how it can be used to make meaningful decisions.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Artificial intelligence may become one of the most important and transformational technologies of our time. AI can affect just about every aspect of business, including leadership, results, and the bottom line. Hiring, retention and culture, decision making, and innovation. While we see and hear a great deal about artificial intelligence for many professionals, the topic remains somewhat of a mystery. Jennifer Engelhardt knows the ins and outs of AI. She's a partner at IBM Global Business Services. She spent years in the life sciences space, where thanks to AI, some amazing breakthroughs are occurring regarding therapies, patient care, and cures. We sat down with Engelhardt last week. She explained artificial intelligence, how organizations can embrace it, and how it can be used to make meaningful decisions. Here's our conversation with Jennifer Engelhardt. Ken WhiteJennifer, thanks for taking the time to join us. We're about to join about three or four hundred William & Mary Alumni here in the hotel in Northern Virginia, and you're kind enough to sit down with us and share your time and expertise. Thanks for joining us. Jennifer EngelhardtAbsolutely. Glad to be here. Ken WhiteSo we were going to talk about artificial intelligence, and right before we started to record, as we were talking about it, you really kind of threw a curve because you approach this. You have a very interesting background in terms of AI. Can you share that? Jennifer EngelhardtSure. So I've been with IBM almost 21 years, and I spent most of my time working in the life sciences space. So with all the major pharmaceutical companies. So health care is a big passion of mine. And what I see happening in the AI space and Watson in particular. We have a Watson Health business unit now. Watson is, of course, the platform that won against Jeopardy several years ago. So if you look at what's happening, if we take the example of oncology and see what's happening in that space, I'm just incredibly passionate about it because it's really about improving experiences as humans human health. Basically, what it does is if you think about data and how data historically needs to fit into discrete rows and columns in a spreadsheet or in a database, but the other 80 percent things like conversations and medical images and books and lectures and so much other input that 80 percent is just kind of goes into the ether and is not really used. So if you look at you know Joe cancer patient every week, the oncologists will get together with these tumor boards, and they'll talk about that specific patient, what clinical trials might be relevant and what is the best course of action. You know what are the best therapies to get the best possible patient outcome. Well, it doesn't take into account. I mean, obviously, these doctors have limited time, and there's 160,000 clinical trials every year. And obviously, these doctors can't read all of them, so what Watson does is it looks at that individual's unique genomic data. So is this person a smoker? How old is this person? What is their BMI? What is their patient history? And then, it looks at all of the data relevant to that particular case. If this patient has leukemia, what are the relevant clinical trials that might be relevant to this? And what it does not replace the doctor, but it gives the doctor insight into what therapies would be most effective. So if you take that and look at what's happening in healthcare, and that can be applied to so many other areas of, you know, areas of discipline. Ken WhiteSure. Jennifer EngelhardtLike with the environment, with fraud detection and banking. It can be applied everywhere, really. But I'm really passionate about the health care space because obviously, curing cancer is a pretty lofty ambition for any organization. We actually have as a benefit now at IBM access to Watson oncology, so we can get. We have I believe we have 12 content curators for Watson who work in Cancer Institutions like Memorial Sloan Kettering, and they actually help train Watson so that it can provide the most accurate information and data to help health care professionals make the best decisions for patients. Ken WhiteSo a physician using this has just gone from local to global. Jennifer EngelhardtThat's right. Ken WhiteAmazing the results that can happen. Jennifer EngelhardtYes. Ken WhiteWhat other areas of life sciences are you seeing any other examples that are using AI? I'm sure they're endless. Jennifer EngelhardtThey're endless. Yes. I mean anything from other diseases that are being treated to what you know what is the best therapies for patients in developing countries where we can't, you know, we can't necessarily get to them the way that we can in the first world and then things like gosh anything from trying to think of a good example recruiting. So what is the best candidate pool to use if you're looking at a specific industry? For example, so the average employee these days. I was giving a speech at a conference recently, and I read that the average employee these days stays at a company for four-point six years. The average millennial stays for two years. So attracting and retaining the top talent that is one of the biggest challenges organizations face these days. Ken WhiteRight. Jennifer EngelhardtSo you know, Watson and AI can help us determine which universities to recruit from and what profile what demographic to go after in order to find the best candidates to meet our business objectives. Ken WhiteSo no doubt, we're smarter, and we're more efficient because of it. How do you see it affecting the professional? What kind of skills does a professional need? Maybe. How have you changed, in other words, from the beginning of your career to now? With AI, what's needed? Jennifer EngelhardtYeah, that's a great question. And I've spent my career working in the ERP space, so SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Workday, and what I found a lot of times I've actually worked with CIOs and CFOs who sponsored these programs and oftentimes they're not very happy with the outcomes. So I actually spent a lot of time working with angry executives who put in the capital appropriations request the board, and they're not seeing the return on their investment. And if you look at the reason why it's the same problem that you would have with AI and that is that that the issue of user adoption. So if you have these great tools and write analytics, if you're not using those to their maximum capacity the maximum use, then you're not getting the return on your investment. Ken WhiteRight. Jennifer EngelhardtSo there was a conference in Dallas a couple of years ago, and they said let's look at these advanced analytics tools and what they found was that only the project teams get very excited about them. But the end-user is only using about 22 to 28 percent of that functionality, so if you want it, so if you look at other examples outside of healthcare, how to make. How do your production planners make a more accurate forecast, or you know how do you reduce the amount of time a buyer spends creating a purchase order that they're not using the data there to make better-informed business decisions. Watson and analytics it's all about enabling employees to make better decisions based on the data and tools that they have. Ken WhiteRight. Jennifer EngelhardtSo if we just have the data and tools there but people aren't using it or don't know how to slice and dice or don't know what the different capabilities it provides. It's just a system. Ken WhiteRight. Jennifer EngelhardtSo the user adoption is a piece that we're very interested in understanding what metrics we're trying to achieve and then holding people accountable for those metrics and then rewarding them for achieving those metrics. And that's what really helps us get the value realization from these platforms. Ken WhiteAnd it's training, I assume. Jennifer EngelhardtTraining and its training its ownership. So who owns the procure to pay process and then within the procure to pay process? Let's say that you're trying to reduce the amount of time a buyer spends processing a purchase order. If you're trying to reduce that from three minutes to two minutes, so if we ask somebody who owns that. How are we rewarding that person for attaining that KPI that key performance indicators? If we're not, we don't have owners. You know what gets measured gets done. So if we don't have owners and we're not measuring, it's not going to get done. Not only do we need to measure, but we need to incentivize those people. Ken WhiteRight. Jennifer EngelhardtSo give them a stepping stone on a promotion if they meet that metric or give them a financial bonus or do something. But if we just say this is what I want you to do without having the ownership and the rewards and recognition, those two other pieces are essential, and they're often overlooked. Ken WhiteYeah, it's just one more thing to do right on an already full plate. Jennifer EngelhardtExactly. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Jennifer Engelhardt in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Businesses and organizations from across the world turn to the Center for Corporate Education to help them with executive and leadership programs that develop top talent, explore new ideas, and address specific business challenges and opportunities. Programs are customized to meet the needs of each organization, and they're taught by William & Mary's award-winning business school faculty. If you want to take your organization to the next level, think about William & Mary's Center for Corporate Education. Visit our website wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Jennifer Engelhardt. Ken WhiteWhat about the training? Is the ramp-up difficult for most people to learn how to do it? Jennifer EngelhardtI think you know training is much more. We call it micro learning. It's much more, you know, podcast, for example. Yeah, you know, learn about AI in 15 minutes, very digestible small pieces. And it's really about more than just training. It's really about creating a culture of continuous improvement in social. There's been so much buzz around social but no one, you know, it's hard to find organizations that really have implemented a social platform where they get results, and I'll give an example, so if we have Joe production planner, who is using AI to make a more accurate forecast. And you know his buddy at another plant is also making forecasts but not necessarily as accurate. You know this person can continue doing the work that they want. In other words, they don't have to use those analytics. They can still get the job done. The lines are still going to be running, product is going out the door, purchase orders are coming in. But how do we get Joe to take this best practice and share it with all the other plants across the enterprise? Because historically, you know it's been you and me sitting down at lunch and saying, oh, have you tried this or have you done that. That's how people share best practices. So the training is one piece, but it's really post-go-live. So, what do we do to get Joe to share that best practice? So the training group. The training groups becomes think of the training group now as a center of excellence. And so what we do is we want Joe to fill out a very simple form that explains what report he's using to get a more accurate forecast. Sends that form over to the training group. The training group puts together a two-minute podcast and pushes it to everyone with that security profile. So why does Joe want to go through the aggravation of doing this? He's a busy guy. Ken WhiteSure. Jennifer EngelhardtWell, if Joe does this, he gets a badge, and when he gets five badges, he gets lunch with the CIO, or he gets a financial incentive. And why does Jerry at the other plant want to take this podcast? Well, Jerry also gets a badge, and so that's why I say we need to have think of training more as a center of excellence. Ken WhiteYeah. Jennifer EngelhardtGive ownership, so who is the procure to pay lead. Give people ownership and then incentivize them. Put the rewards and recognition in play something very simple. People love badges. Ken WhiteSure. Jennifer EngelhardtYou see all over LinkedIn now. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Jennifer EngelhardtGive them a badge give them some sort of financial incentive give them some recognition at a town hall. That is tactically how you plant the seeds of social, and that's going to be what's important because AI is going gonna be out there just like SAP's out there, Oracle. But the amount that you're going to profit and benefit from it is going to be the degree to which you get your employees to fully utilize its capabilities. Ken WhiteIt starts at the top. Jennifer EngelhardtIt starts at the top. Absolutely. Ken WhiteBig buy-in at the top, and then there is a better chance better likelihood of everyone else buying into it, especially with the incentives. Jennifer EngelhardtExactly. Ken WhiteNow how is it changing in terms of skills? What does the worker need today that maybe he or she didn't have 20 years ago? Now that AI is like Joe. You just talked about what skills does he have to have now? Jennifer EngelhardtYou know it's, and it's interesting, I had a conversation this morning with a nurse who wanted to go into Watson Health, and she says you know what, Jen, I don't have an IT background I said, you don't need an IT background you need to be able to take that data and use it to make better informed medical decisions. And so it's really about taking what information that you have and being able to apply it to your work. And again, making sure that you have the different pieces in place if you're a leader. Make sure you have owners, you have clear metrics, you measure them, you have owners of those processes, so people are accountable and that you're rewarding and recognizing the right behaviors so that you're building this culture of knowledge sharing and continuous improvement. Ken WhiteWhich really isn't different from what we've done right. You collect data, and you make the best decisions. Jennifer EngelhardtExactly. Ken WhiteBut now the data are really good. Jennifer EngelhardtThat's right. Ken WhiteInteresting. Jennifer EngelhardtThat's right. One of the things you have to worry about a bit is when I think about adoption. I think historically. People say well; the training has not been there, so people aren't really adopting it. But there's other issues as well, things like data mistrust. So if people don't trust the data, they're not going to use it. So what we try to do is we try to find out what are the root causes for lack of adoption in different pockets. And so if there's, you know, lack of trust in data, what we can do is we can establish that data czar, and that person's job is to put interventions in place to help people trust the data and to use it. There can be things like political resistance that could be part of ownership in legacy systems. You know, people don't want to use the new system or the new platforms, especially with the different demographics that we have the different age demographics that we have in the marketplace in the workplace these days. So you have to understand where the adoption gaps are, and you have to focus relentlessly on adoption. I mean, the coding piece, you know that part is the easy part. It's getting people to use this in the way that you want to. That's the challenge. Ken WhiteIn your experience, is AI and what we're talking about still new? Does it have to be? Do some people have to be persuaded, or is it we got it, and we've got to use this. Jennifer EngelhardtYou know, I think it's just such the most overused word in a phrase. I mean, we called it Watson. We called it artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence. You know, at the end of the day, it's really, really good data that's going to help us make better decisions. And that's what it is. And it's getting data and turning that data into insights that people can really use and then getting them to use those insights to make better-informed decisions. That's what it's about. Ken WhiteAnd your example going right back to when we first started of cancer. For crying out loud, it's there for us. We just have to learn how to use it. Jennifer EngelhardtThat's right. Ken WhiteYeah. Jennifer EngelhardtYeah. Ken WhiteAre you seeing a difference between the generations? We talk a lot about the generations in the work in the workplace. Are younger folks quicker to embrace than older are you seeing any generalizations or anything across the board? Jennifer EngelhardtYeah, I think there's some of that. But I also think that as it relates to reports and data, you know, I think that sometimes the generational gaps can be overstated. I think any worker wants to be able to use this data, and being able to use a report to make a better-informed decision is not rocket science. I mean, we're not asking, you know the boomers to start coding you know we're asking them to take some you know take these data use it to make some informed insights. Use those insights take action, and those actions again can be measured against certain KPIs, and then they should be rewarded for achieving those KPIs. So it's really a matter of, you know, gone are the days of two day, you know PowerPoint driven classes for training don't even think about that anymore. It's really about using AI to make these better-informed decisions and then post-go-live once these platforms are up and running. It's about a relentless focus on getting the maximum value out of those reports and that data insight. So I would tell people not to be scared. I think there's a lot of confusion around what AI is. I think that there are, you know, tons of buzzwords out there that can be intimidating, but I think this is all a good thing, and I think once people see the power of it, they're really going to latch on. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jennifer Engelhardt, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Jennifer Engelhardt, and thanks to you for joining us. And finally, a special congratulations to the William & Mary Class of 2018 and to new grads everywhere. As we record this episode, we're just a few days away from graduation ceremonies here at William & Mary. Congratulations, you did it, and we're proud of you. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Molly Pieroni](images/molly-pieroni-108-thumb.jpg)
![Career Advice for New Graduates](images/molly-pieroni-108-thumb.jpg)
Molly Pieroni
Episode 108: April 24, 2018
Career Advice for New Graduates
Over the next month, thousands of new graduates will receive their diplomas and enter one of the best job markets in years. Making the transition from student to professional is no doubt exciting, but it comes with questions and unknowns. Molly Pieroni is Managing Director of JatoTech Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm she co-founded in 1999. She earned her bachelor's degree from William & Mary and her MBA from Harvard Business School. Pieroni's had an outstanding career, much of it spent in male-dominated industries. Last month, she visited William & Mary for the Women's Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit hosted at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business. There, she met with young women about to launch their careers. Today she joins us to share thoughtful, relevant advice for new grads entering the world of business.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, over the next month, thousands of new graduates will receive their diplomas and enter one of the best job markets in years. Making the transition from student to professional is no doubt exciting, but it comes with questions and unknowns. Molly Pieroni is Managing Director of JatoTech Ventures. An early-stage venture capital firm she co-founded in 1999. She earned her bachelor's degree from William & Mary and her MBA from Harvard Business School. Pieroni had an outstanding career, much of it spent in male-dominated industries. Last month she visited William & Mary for the Women's Stock Pitch, and Leadership Summit hosted at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business. There she met with young women about to launch their careers. Today she joins us on the podcast to share thoughtful, relevant advice for new grads entering the world of business. Here's our conversation with Molly Pieroni, Managing Director JatoTech Ventures. Ken WhiteMolly, thank you so much for being with us. I appreciate you sharing your time with us. Molly PieroniThanks, Ken. Glad to be here. Ken WhiteSo you're with the huge event this weekend, and we're recording what Saturday at almost 2 o'clock. So you've seen some of it. What's your reaction so far what you've seen? Molly PieroniYeah, I think this is a phenomenal event. I'm so proud to be a William & Mary alum. I'm so proud of what the Mason School has put together here, and this is just an incredible, incredible event. The population of women in the room, young and old, is got a great energy to it, and everyone is there to learn and to help each other. Ken WhiteWhat's your reaction to the young women in the room? To me, it's kind of mind-blowing the talent that's in there. How do you feel when you see them? Molly PieroniI'm glad I did; I don't have to compete with them. Ken WhiteYeah, right. Molly PieroniI'm glad I mean, if you think about it, they're only two of us from my year that went to work on Wall Street, and I think there's gonna be a much, much higher number and percentage that head that way from this group. Ken WhiteWell talking about that time of your life when you were a senior in college, what were you thinking career-wise? What was your game plan? Molly PieroniI was pretty clueless. I was very ambitious in terms of wanting to be good and wanting to continue to push the envelope in terms of what can I learn how to be around the smartest people. That was always very important to me. But I wasn't well-schooled in sort of career tracking, and I think like what I've heard from some of the senior women here this weekend is having people kind of point the way for you and with you makes a big difference. And so I was working with a professor here. He said well, students like you should either go into investment banking or into consulting for about two years, and they needed to go to one of three or four business schools. Ken WhiteAnd that's what you did. Molly PieroniAnd that's what I did. Ken WhiteYeah. And you pursued an MBA at an early age, and being a young woman, there weren't many people who look like you in that classroom. What was that experience like? Molly PieroniYeah, that was it was an incredible experience. It was about, I think, 30 percent women at the time that I went, and it was all case-based in terms of the teaching method. So you're in a Socratic teaching environment, which means you're participating. So not only was it a relatively small percentage of women, it was a group where you were expected to contribute, so that the bar was very high. I will say, though, having worked on Wall Street for two years, I thought it was like it was a bunch of women because relative what I had seen in New York. I had a much larger population. I was really enthusiastic about the women that I met when I was at business school. Ken WhiteAnd you were at Harvard Business School for your MBA. Molly PieroniYes. Ken WhiteThere's a lot of talk about the case method and is it fair to in terms of class participation but knowing that you had not only to contribute but better contribute something pretty good. Molly PieroniYes. Ken WhiteHow did you get? How did you get set for that? What was that like for you? Molly PieroniWe got the women in the section we got together. There were nine of us out of 80, and we got together, and we decided that we'd help each other. And sometimes, in a case-based discussion, you can call on each other to make a point. And so there were some of the group that were really resistant to to speak up and were relatively shy, and we'd call on them from each other and sort of prep each other ahead of time. So part of this was quite intentional. My study group was five people, three of whom were women. And so, 60 percent of the study group was women. And so, we intentionally stuck up for each other throughout the two years. Ken WhiteInteresting you're talking about teams and MBA programs. When we meet with colleagues across the country, sometimes when we divide our students into teams, we want them to be so diverse in terms of gender and nationality and experience military and so forth that there's only one woman on a five-person team and all of the research is telling us now. No, definitely have two be fair, and it's a great way more. The research claims more women will come out of their shell. They'll participate more having someone like them in the group. That sounds like that was what you're experience was sort of like. Molly PieroniYeah, that's right. And I'm reflecting on this, I've noticed in my career I didn't do it intentionally, but every single time at every single company, I had a wingman who was a woman. And to your point, to have two of us in order to collaborate behind the scenes and stick up for each other, you know, overtly really helps in some of the more male-dominated fields. Ken WhiteWhat about mentors? Did you have them? Molly PieroniI've had many, and I have much to owe them, and that was not gender-specific. I've had men and women mentors. I've had a very diverse group of mentors over the years. Ken WhiteSo MBA in hand, you're quite young. You decided to pick a professional path and go after it. What did you choose and why? Molly PieroniYeah. So back to my conversation with the professor at William & Mary who said go into investment banking or consulting. And by the way, I should say I didn't spend more than two years in investment banking, and I would say that it's important to get every single ounce out of what you're doing each step of the way. And then move on. So I was pretty well-schooled at all the things that I need to do as an analyst on Wall Street after two years. And I was really valuable to the firm because I could just run with things. However, I wasn't learning as much on a day-to-day basis. And so, it was intentional on my part to leave at the point where I needed to move and to gain more expertise and more knowledge. So I looked forward when I was on Wall Street to see what did people do ten years, 15 years out to see what does the investment banking career path do for you and where do you go with it, and what impact does that have on the world. And I found that I was much more passionate about the companies that we were working with than I was about the field of finance. And so, in an effort to broaden myself outside of banking and finance, I moved into strategic consulting and was able to help to start the Boston Consulting Group Dallas office or be part of the team that started the Boston Consulting Group Dallas office and which was a terrific opportunity and so to work in strategy consulting and broaden my experience was that was a valuable move. Ken WhiteI think it's interesting that you actually took a view of, let me see, what we're where I might be in 10 or 15 years. That's unusual. What would caused you to do that? Most people, especially young people, are thinking maybe a week ahead, not ten years ahead. Where'd that come from? Molly PieroniI have a habit of looking forward. I have a habit of trying to think where am I having an impact on the world. And you can have an impact on the world if you're doing something that you love. And while I really enjoyed the investment banking experience and all of the analytical chops that it took, it didn't I didn't have the passion for it for a long term. And I was able to look at some of the more senior people in the investment banking field broadly beyond the firm that I was working in, and I just wasn't motivated by the same things that those people were motivated by. I look for patterns, and I look for, you know, just what does it feel like to be that person. What does it feel like to be that person? And I think it's helped me to kind of chart away and find a path that makes sense for me. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Molly Pieroni in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Businesses and organizations from across the world turn to the Center for Corporate Education to help them with executive and leadership programs that develop top talent, explore new ideas and address specific business challenges and opportunities. Programs are customized to meet the needs of each organization, and they're taught by William & Mary's award-winning business school faculty. If you want to take your organization to the next level, think about William & Mary's Center for Corporate Education. Visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the Managing Director of JatoTech Ventures, Molly Pieroni. Ken WhiteYou said something that you said passion, and I've often asked many of our podcast guests how important is it for you to be passionate about your work in terms of being successful. Molly PieroniYeah. Ken WhiteHow much do you have to love it? Molly PieroniI think you have to. I think that's what my Latin teacher in high school would say a sine qua non it's that which nothing. I think you have to have passion in what you do because the fact of the matter is not every day is a good day. Ken WhiteRight. Molly PieroniAnd there are dark days, and there are days when you're really rethinking what is it that you're trying to accomplish. Whatever it is that the company that you're working with or the team you're working with can be failing, and you have to have a really good reason for being there. And I think that's why you need the passion, not just because you're going to typically be good at what you're passionate about. That's all true, but you also have to have you have to have the dark moments covered. And I think that you have to have a real reason. So, for example, I left consulting to go start a venture capital firm with a partner of mine. And the reason I did was because when I wrote my business school essays, they said basically, what do you want to be when you grow up. And I have a family full of engineers and scientists and professors of these things, right. Really smart people that had no business bone in their body. Right. And for me, it was really important to marry the strong technical people with the business world. And why not build a firm that was designed to help those really smart scientist engineers become really successful business people. And that's a framework you can get really excited about because the bad news about the venture capital industry is that no matter what firm you look at and no matter what fund of those firms. It's always one or two portfolio companies that create the returns for the whole portfolio. Ken WhiteRight. Molly PieroniIt's the breakout that makes the fund return. That's great. And those are wonderful stories, and we can all, like you know, you go to any V.C. firm's website, and they'll have you know their version of their stars that they've created or helped to create. For me, the bad news was I didn't analyze the other side of that, which is the ones that don't make the portfolio company are the ones that you're going to be working the most with and that are having the most trouble. So they're really dark times in the venture world that you have to and not dark, but they're just sleeves up. You're working hard and sometimes working hard without success in some of these companies. And you have to have the reason for all of your efforts and your energy going toward those things. Ken WhiteI've noticed since we're talking, you've talked about a college professor. You talked about a high school teacher. You've talked about mentors. So your teachers and coaches meant a great deal to you. Molly PieroniOh, yeah. Ken WhiteWhat do you do to give back? Molly PieroniYeah. Ken WhiteHow do you, how do you play that you know play it back? Molly PieroniI mean, first of all, I won't be able to repay what these people did for me. I think that to be an educator is it's the equivalent of a CEO. It's the equivalent of a rock star. I mean, it's a one-to-many opportunity in life. And if I think about the number of lives those people have an impact on. It's really humbling. And so I won't be able to repay it, but I am involved in many, many educational pursuits that are give back oriented. I'm really passionate about William & Mary. And when I came versus when I left. And then what I've done since I put a lot of credit to this institution and what it was that they offered here. But I just I'm constantly looking for ways to work with young professionals to help them do what people did for me. Ken WhiteYeah, that's great. You've worked, as we mentioned, in many male-dominated industries. What advice do you have as we're here for the Women's Leadership Summit? So many young women looking to launch their careers. What advice do you have for them to enter not only a male-dominated field but just be a professional? What kind of advice do you share? Molly PieroniYeah, I talk a lot with young women early in their careers. So because I'm not young anymore, I'm fighting. I think the phrase I'm fighting to maintain middle age. I have a strong belief on this. I think that young women should degender their outlook professionally. And what I mean by that is be good, be excellent at whatever it is that you're pursuing. Work hard. Think well. Really apply yourself. And oh, by the way, you're a woman. Because you are automatically going to stand out in a room because you're a woman, everyone else will see that you don't feel that because you've got your eyeballs looking out, and everybody else is looking at you. And so you're naturally going to stand out. The good news is you have exposure, right. The bad news is you have exposure because if you're not good, you will be seen and vetted very, very quickly. So I think I think my advice is, you know, make sure that you present yourself so that people listen rather than watch. Right. Let them walk away, not remembering what you were wearing but what you said. Ken WhiteRight. Molly PieroniAnd then enjoy all of the benefits that there are to being a woman in business because, frankly, men like to do business with women. Right. Women like to do business with men. It's a very copacetic relationship. And I think that's all gravy. But first and foremost, be very, very good at what you do. Ken WhiteHas communication in the workplace since you've started among genders gotten better, stayed the same, gotten worse. What do you think over the years? Molly PieroniSo when I worked on Wall Street, the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court appointment was in the midst. Ken WhiteSure. Molly PieroniAnd all of the controversy around Anita Hill and I look back to those days about how did we communicate in the workplace. It was not that different than it is today. I think there is a little more awareness of gender and being sensitive to not just gender but sexual preference and just a broad set of diversity vocabulary, if you will. That's coming into our culture, but I think in terms of how people communicate at the workplace, I don't really see that much different then versus now. Ken WhiteIt's so interesting your advice for young women degender your career. I've never heard that. That's so interesting. What about men? Any advice for young men entering the field. Being a professional and being that go-to person. Molly PieroniOne of my wishes for them is to recognize that women can really help you out like. I think that by engaging with your women colleagues, you can come up with a better solution and come up with innovative answers that perhaps you might not have seen in just like a men's group. But beyond that, I don't think I mean you're in college with these, you know women and everything that goes on you know just socially and in the classroom should just continue on in the workplace. I don't. I don't think there is. I hope that they don't become afraid. I think some of the moves afoot today can make us overcautious in terms of interacting with each other. And I do think that we need to make sure the pendulum doesn't swing so far in the direction of caution that we then put up barriers between men and women in the workplace. But I think for the most part is just, you know, treat them like your sister. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Molly Pieroni, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals. With business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Molly Pieroni, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![David Musto](images/david-musto-107-thumb.jpg)
![Transforming the World of Investing](images/david-musto-107-thumb.jpg)
David Musto
Episode 107: April 12, 2018
Transforming the World of Investing
It seems like every business and industry is experiencing disruption today. Much of the change is driven by technology and data. One field that's being transformed is the world of professional financial planning and investment management. Consumers can now count on technology to guide them in terms of their retirement savings like never before. As a result, the role of the financial advisor is changing. David Musto is President of Ascensus—they provide resources for organizations and companies who help their employees save for retirement. Musto has over 25 years of experience in the retirement, investment, and insurance industries. He joins us today to discuss the exciting changes taking place in the investment management field—changes driven by technology and data.
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David Musto: Transforming the World of Investing TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. It seems like every business and industry is experiencing disruption today. Much of the change is driven by technology and data. One field that's being transformed is the world of professional financial planning and investment management. Consumers can now count on technology to guide them in terms of their retirement savings like never before. As a result, the role of the financial advisor is changing. David Musto is President of Ascensus. They provide resources for organizations and companies who help their employees save for retirement. Musto has over 25 years of experience in the retirement, investment, and insurance industries. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss the exciting changes taking place in the investment management field. Changes driven by technology and data. Here's our conversation with David Musto, President of Ascensus. Ken WhiteDavid, thank you for taking the time to join us, and welcome back to campus. David MustoThank you excited to be here. Ken WhiteAnd you met with students yesterday. How was that experience? David MustoIt was a wonderful experience to hear what's on students minds and what they're learning and what's of interest to them. We had a really nice conversation about how technology and big data are starting to influence the world of financial planning and advice, and investment management. Ken WhiteAnd that's a topic you brought to them. Were they expecting that? To me that that sounded incredibly interesting. I wouldn't have thought someone would talk about that. I assume they were pretty interested. David MustoYeah, I think they were expecting it because it was in the write-up. What I came to appreciate through the conversation is that you know, I think for students in class today, there isn't as much of an appreciation for how quickly technology and data is actually transforming the world of professional investing and the world of investment advice. Ken WhiteHow much has it changed since you got into the field? David MustoA lot. Ken WhiteWas it even there? Did we really even talk much about that? David MustoWell, so you know, in the early days, you know, technology was there, and if you think about the experience for the, you know, the typical American saver, maybe they had a financial planner or an advisor, and that advisor was compensated primarily based on commissions buying and selling stocks and bonds, and many of the conversations around you know how much a person should save and how they should be invested or how they might be or how much they might be expecting to spend in retirement were really based on simple rules of thumb. Ken WhiteYeah. David MustoRight. Save 10 percent of everything you make through a lifetime and spend no more than 4 percent of your accumulated assets, and you'll be okay. And you know, the world's very different today and what we see is that many of the things that human beings in the form of advisors and planners would have delivered really have been taken over by technology and to the betterment of the consumer. So you know, today, a financial advisor isn't a stock selector, bond selector, or portfolio manager. Many of those activities have really been consumed by home offices, you know, basically institutionalized for advisors and planners with algorithmic models and technology that are supporting asset allocation approaches managed accounts as an example where institutions are taking responsibility for an individual's portfolios, you know that that type of a capability was only available to ultra-high net worth individuals 20 years ago and today you can go online set up an account with either a very well-known or maybe little known institution and have them take complete control of your portfolio primarily with a computer. Ken WhiteYeah. David MustoSo the role of, you know, how the advisor, the planner, and the investment professional is actually executing their job and also really putting out there their value proposition is changing. Ken WhiteYeah, what did they do now? David MustoYeah. So you know I'll shift over to investment management as an example. You know back in the day analysts research teams would comb over financial reports looking for information that would help them assess the long-term growth potential of a stock or the or the credit worthiness of a bond. And they do that based on publicly available disclosed information, typically on paper. You know, today, big data is being used obviously to manage and simplify, you know, all that legwork that would have other been otherwise been required to be done by an individual but going even further. So you know, would it surprise you to know that certain investment teams are using satellite data that now observe the parking lots of big box retail stores to determine how many cars are in the parking lot at various points in the year? Which of those cars are luxury automobiles versus Chevys and Fords? How many tractor-trailers are showing up to deliver inventory? Ken WhiteYes. David MustoAnd using that information and data hopefully as a way of gaining some small information advantage that can be used to create alpha, right? In researching and ultimately buying and selling certain securities. That's a very different world. Ken WhiteIt's amazing. David MustoYeah. Ken WhiteBut we know what we can do today; the technology is absolutely fantastic, isn't it? David MustoIt is. Ken WhiteSo as an advisor and as a planner, how has that role changed as you said, that was a person who would do all the legwork now. The legwork, in some respects, is being done for them. So is it more of a relationship kind of role? David MustoI think you're spot on. So you know, the days of the broker or the advisor as trader shifted into the advisor or planner as asset allocator, and now as those functions become more consumed by technology and institutional process really, the advisor and the financial planner is becoming more of a life coach. Ken WhiteYeah. David MustoAnd really sort of a human element for individuals that want to have a comforting, trusted voice around the decisions that they're making. Ken WhiteRight. David MustoAnd although the advisor may not be the one individually selecting or recommending a specific stock or security. It's the advisor that can help put that selection in perspective for the individual. Ken WhiteRight. David MustoThere's still a range of activities and behaviors, and I'm maybe, you know, sort of thinking about the extreme version of where things are headed. But I don't think it'll be surprising that within the next 10 to 15 years, we'll see increasingly less and less activity that in the past had been delivered by those individuals still being the same. Ken WhiteIs there an industry or job that's not being disrupted today right? I mean so it makes total sense. What about the results though as we, as we depend on technology a little bit more? Are people seeing better results? David MustoI think you know there's various studies out there. If you look at investment return. But the other, I'd say, interesting trend is a shift from focusing on performance to really thinking about outcomes for individuals. So I posed this question to the students in our session yesterday. If I gave you the choice of as the young person that you are either outperforming the market 3 to 4 percent each year for the rest of your life or being able to guarantee you that you would receive 100 percent of the average of your last five years earnings what would you choose? And very quickly, the hands go up and say, oh, I'm going to take the compounding of interest, and I'm going to take in performance, and I'll take the three to four percent. But that sort of ignores ultimately the goal of what you're trying to achieve. And it also ignores a whole bunch of information and data that increasingly is more readily available and understood by individuals. Ken WhiteRight. David MustoHow long might I live? With the advent, you know the advances that are happening in genetics and DNA. Who's to say that 20 years from now people won't have a better handle on what their life expectancy might be or what expected expenses individuals might have in the later years of retirement? There's already a lot of data analysis been done in academic work that suggests there are five or six health conditions that are extremely high-level predictors of healthcare expense in the last 10 to 15 years of someone's life. Ken WhiteRight. David MustoSo you know, if I want to create a portfolio, what are the things I'd like to know? What's the terminal date the portfolio I'd like to? I know it sounds a little macob to talk about that. You know how what is the terminal date of the portfolio. What are my draw-down needs right throughout various periods of that portfolio and its performance? So you go back to your question there is a shift in mindset from performance to outcomes. And it's also influencing the way people think about constructing investment products and ultimately managing money to specific goals and objectives. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with David Musto in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. As we record today, the Center for Corporate Education is hosting its certificate in business management program. Thirty-five professionals representing a variety of organizations and fields are here from across the country for the five-day program designed for the working professional who wants a better understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. The certificate in business management program will be offered again in the fall. During the week of October 22nd, if you'd like more information on the program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the President of Ascensus, David Musto. Ken WhiteOver the course of your career, have you seen people pay more attention to retirement, less the same? How are people doing? David MustoYeah. So you know, the amount of attention people pay to their financial matters broadly seems to be very correlated with life events. If I offered a class today to students to come and learn everything you ever needed to or wanted to learn about financing a home, financing a car, managing debt, you know, planning for retirement, planning for your health care savings, you might get some takers, and they'd take really good notes, but they would totally disengage until the day where they had a child, they had a parent that became ill, they got married and wanted to buy a house. So you know what we see, and all the work that's out there is, people tend to engage in their financial lives when it matters and when life events dictate. So you know, a lot of the focus on retirement really happens much later in someone's life. It's hard to get younger people to engage in the importance of saving, and it's one of the reasons we're also seeing a big move in the retirement industry to defaults and actually taking more responsibility and accountability for someone's savings behavior as a default and letting them opt out. So in many defined contribution plans today, an individual joining a institution or a company will be automatically defaulted into the plan. Ken WhiteRight. David MustoMaybe at a rate of 3 percent deferrals or contributions into the plan, and every year those deferrals will be increased by 1 percent until the individual reaches 10 percent. Now they can always opt-out. Ken WhiteRight. David MustoBut we've put them on a path to begin to address a really important need early in their careers that otherwise very few people would have engaged in. They wouldn't have wanted to have the conversation, and they would have assumed that they didn't need to save a lot today because retirement is still 30, 40 45 years out. Ken WhiteThat's outstanding. And if you don't see it, you don't miss it sort of a, you know, a right if it's going right into the account. Fantastic. What about college savings because your company does a lot in the 529 space? How are people how are people doing overall in terms? Are they setting up accounts? Are they using them? David MustoSo, unfortunately, a lot of people are setting up college savings accounts. But unfortunately, nowhere near enough right relative to the rising cost of education and typically also people starting later than they might otherwise need to in order to really get the benefit of that tax-deferred savings that you can be advantaged by through a 529 account. Now listen, it's understandable why that happens. You know, people have needs around their disposable income. Do I put the and this is a really interesting area also that technology is helping to solve and you know computer programs helping to address where do if I have a set amount of disposable income. Where do I put the next dollar? Do I contribute to a 401k account? Do I put it into a IRA account? Do I put it into a health savings account which is, by the way, total? You know, triple tax-deferred, and you know no tax ever right on those capital gains and earnings through the period. Or do I put it into an education account for my child or? And those are tough, difficult choices, and unfortunately, many people don't have enough disposable income to take full advantage of all of those different opportunities. So you know, back to your questions about the financial advisor and the planner, helping individuals think about their life and the cycles through their life and when and how they might want to be saving for different purposes and objectives is very important. Ken WhiteYeah, it goes back to your term of life coach. It makes total sense. David MustoYeah. Ken WhiteYeah. How interesting. Anything on the negative side or anything creating hurdles with the explosion of technology and artificial intelligence and big data in terms of investments and savings. David MustoYeah. So I'd say privacy appropriately and business ethics which I know your students take very seriously and study right as a field, is increasingly important. The technology is moving faster than the thinking around these issues and certainly moving faster than the pace of regulation or rules that are protecting this information and data how it's used and applied. The other the other force that works against many of the right actions is human behavior. So I know your students are probably at least familiar with the concept of behavioral finance. That human beings tend to anchor right on certain principles that may or may not be academically appropriate or tend to have hindsight bias and think that things that happened in the past will happen again in the way that they happened in the past or risk aversion where human beings, in general, feel more pain from loss than they do joy from upside return, which influences the way people make decisions and choices. Julie Agnew one of, one of the esteemed professors here at William & Mary, has done a lot of work on choice architecture. How do you present options to an individual that may influence the choices that they make? You know, if I tell you, you know, you can have a car that is really fast but potentially dangerous or really slow and ineffective in the way that it gets you to where you want to go or something that's really warm and fuzzy right in between. Most people are going to take in between if I present those choices in a different way, really fast car that is going to make you attractive to the opposite sex and, you know, really pump up your ego and your self-esteem, or a very inexpensive cheap vehicle that is less attractive to the world around you. Right. You may make a different choice. So it's really an interesting field. And the combination of behavioral finance and technology and data are really coming together in the way that is influencing how people are making decisions, hopefully, better decisions in the future. Ken WhiteIs it important for people to understand their behavior and understand where they're coming from and how that may help or hinder their investments? David MustoYeah, you know, we've found it in our industry very helpful to talk about those principles. And when you talk about those principles with most people, it immediately the light bulb goes off, and they say, yeah, I get it right that I've done that. That's exactly the way I think. That's exactly the way I behave. And it doesn't mean that people are going to overnight behave differently but to have that level of self-awareness and to realize that you might be selling at the wrong time right. Selling at the low and buying at the high, which is right the most common right of these behavioral traits that are shared by so many of us. Just to be aware of that and try and fight you know your own instincts can be very beneficial. Ken WhiteAny advice? We have a number of students who listen to the podcast we hear from them on our email exchanges. Any advice for a student or a young professional who might want to get into the field? David MustoYeah, I think it's really important to spend some time focused on analytics. I know William & Mary has a business analytics data analytics rather major and some concentrations. I can't overstate the importance of you know whether you want to design investment products, manage investments directly, or promote or sell investment products, or be responsible for companies that do all those things. Understanding how big data is going to influence this industry and understanding how technology is changing and influencing the industry is going to be very important. And you know that that's not, you know, a typical academic pursuit, right? You either major in finance or you major in computer science, and doesn't mean you need to develop expertise in computer programming, but when you look at, I'll use an example, BlackRock, you know, one of the largest, if not the largest money manager globally today increasing dramatically its investment in investing technologies and reducing to some significant degree the number of people that are performing certain functions in that business that they know over the next several decades will ultimately be taken on by technology. That's a sea change. Ken WhiteYes, it is. David MustoAnd for the students coming out of school today that are preparing for a career in the field, you know, being closer to understanding the interactivity between technology data and investing is really important. Ken WhiteAnd any advice for saving for young people as well? David MustoStart now. Do as much as you can. There was, you know, I know I just said don't follow rules of thumb and don't anchor on rules of thumb, but it turns out that save 10 percent of everything you make for your entire life, and you're going to be okay rings pretty true. I think some recent academic stuff research that's been done probably pegs the number for young people today somewhere around 12 to 15 percent because more responsibility is now being taken on by individuals versus institutions. So pension plans. You know, the old days of 10 percent was in a world of I was getting a pension after working for a company for 30 years, was in a world of social security continuing to be around in the form that it was that world's changed. It's changed dramatically so so for the young person that is going to be increasingly self-reliant on their savings and not looking for an institution, a company, a government to support them in their later years. The earlier you can start. Was it Einstein who spoke to talked about the magic compounding? Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with David Musto. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast we'd love to hear from you email us at podcast.wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week David Musto and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Evan Jones](images/evan-jones-106-thumb.jpg)
![The Evolution of Fender](images/evan-jones-106-thumb.jpg)
Evan Jones
Episode 106: March 27, 2018
The Evolution of Fender
If you like music or play the guitar, you know the great guitarists like Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton and The Edge, Jimmy Hendrix, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In addition to their talent, they have something else in common: The Fender guitar. For years, rockers and other musicians have relied on Fender to help them belt out killer solos and get audiences on their feet. But like always, music continues to change. While the electric guitar is still popular, many of today's top performers and novices are turning to the acoustic guitar. Evan Jones is the Chief Marketing Officer of Fender. He and his colleagues turn to data analytics to get a better handle on musicians, customers, and prospective customers. After analyzing the data, their creativity took over, and Fender Play was born. Jones joins us today to discuss his marketing career, the always-evolving music business, and how Fender is more relevant than ever, thanks to the community of musicians known as Fender Play.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. If you like music or play the guitar, you know the great guitarists like Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton and The Edge, Jimmy Hendrix, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In addition to their talent, they have something else in common the Fender guitar. For years rockers and other musicians have relied on Fender to help them belt out killer solos and get audiences on their feet. But, like always, music continues to change. While the electric guitar is still popular many of today's top performers and novices are turning to the acoustic guitar. Evan Jones is the Chief Marketing Officer at Fender. He and his colleagues turned to data analytics to get a better handle on musicians, customers, and prospective customers. After analyzing the data, their creativity took over, and Fender play was born. Jones joins us on the podcast today to discuss his marketing career, the always-evolving music business, and how Fender is more relevant than ever. Thanks to the community of musicians known as Fender play. Here's our conversation with the CMO of Fender, Evan Jones. Ken WhiteEvan, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. Great to have you here. Evan JonesThank you. My pleasure. Ken WhiteWhat's the real reason you're here? Evan JonesWell, the real reason I'm here is my wife Kirsten Schimke, now Kirsten Schimke Jones, is being inducted into the William & Mary Athletic Hall of Fame. She graduated in 93 after playing volleyball here for two years. Ken WhiteYeah, so big, really big weekend for you and your family. Evan JonesYeah. Great weekend. We actually had her parents flew out from Scottsdale. She had other friends that you hasn't seen in a while come in, and we also brought our three kids with us so they could see. Her mom went to school, and actually, I had a chance to meet some of the folks on the basketball team yesterday too. Ken WhiteYeah absolutely. Thanks for sharing because this is a big family weekend congratulations to the family. You met yesterday with a number of students and had sort of a marketing get-together, sort of talking about your career and so forth. What did you talk about with them? Evan JonesYes. Well, I guess the brief for the event was to just share a bit of my journey and some of the things that I've learned along the way, so you know, I share with them that actually, when I was in school, I had no clue what I wanted to do. I thought it was political science. I remember taking a political science class at Johns Hopkins, and that turned me off to political science. No offense to Johns Hopkins. Ken WhiteNo, of course not. Evan JonesYou know and then got into history, ended up transferring to UC Davis, and decided I wanted to get into sports medicine. So graduated with a BS in Exercise Physiology which is why I suppose three days later, I was on a plane to Germany with a guitar, Eric Clapton's Unplugged CD, about to go join a basketball team to play basketball for a year. Ken WhiteThere you go. Evan JonesSo I'd love to tell you that it was all purposeful and intentional, but the reality is it has been anything but. But you know, the journey that I shared was after a couple years of basketball overseas, I ended up joining Nike. And for somebody who grew up in Eugene, I probably had the chip in my head early on but was fortunate enough to join the organization when it was very new. I was working with eight distribution partners doing business in Eastern Europe and, over the course of five years, grew up within that organization became Head of Marketing for that region. And then from there, after, you know, various positions at Nike was able to work at a bunch of other brands, eventually landing my current job as CMO of Fender. Ken WhiteSo not really having marketing as the goal. Where does the passion come from for marketing? Evan JonesWell, I think, first of all, for me, my life has been driven by sports and music. Those have always been my two biggest passions. I was born in New Orleans, although I grew up in Eugene. My father was a great piano player even though his profession was as a doctor, and so music has always been a part of me, sports as well, and I think those were probably the two underlying motivations for me in terms of what I was going to do next. Ken WhiteYeah, so then you decided in sort of mid-career this is not a exact path I want to get a little more creative. Was music the target? Evan JonesWell, just to, yeah, just to go back and hear your question. I think you know the reason I chose going overseas to play basketball for a couple years was I had some friends who were heading into grad school had done it for a year and just said it was a great cultural experience. How could I say no, especially when a team offered me basically salary, a free apartment, travel money, the whole thing? I had that for two years. But I think what I've figured out is, well actually, what sort of drove me to leave that I dislocated my shoulder on a six foot 10 Yugoslavian center and three days later walked into an Irish pub where I ended up meeting my wife. Ken WhiteWow. Evan JonesAnd she's from Montana. So go figure. But I think as we talked about we wanted to do next. We realized that sports, sports marketing, and being in and around sports was what we wanted to do. Found out that Nike had an office in Vienna, and that drove us to essentially put business plans together to go pitch Nike to hire us. Ken WhiteFantastic. Evan JonesHer first and then me. Ken WhiteSo many undergraduates and graduate business students want that job. They want to do a marketing job in music, in sports, anywhere. And it is unbelievably competitive. How do they cut through the clutter today? Evan JonesYeah, you know, it's interesting. I look at most successful marketers are either generalists, having been in multiple brands, multiple companies, maybe multiple startup situations where they've had to solve all sorts of interesting problems, or they're specialists, and there's no question that if you want to be a specialist today understanding how social media, digital marketing, lifecycle marketing work is critical. For my career, I've always been a storyteller first, and I've always told you know marketers on my team, and as I've learned over the years, especially at Nike, that the best marketers are curious, and you know they are consumer advocates first and foremost. I think what's interesting is if you look at the evolution of technology, the capabilities now that brands can develop the ability to understand not only how to attract sort of top-of-funnel marketing consumers to your brand but then how to build relationships over time that go beyond just simple transactional conversations is really the key. Ken WhiteIs this that where storytelling then comes in? Evan JonesYeah. So you know, storytelling at the end of the day is a great way to attract somebody, engage somebody, get them into a relationship with the brand but then in terms of building that relationship over time. You know, just look at what's happening at retail right now. You know the physical experience is being challenged by the digital experience, and what's attractive about the digital experience is the data, the information, the relationship that you can develop directly with the consumer. So understanding as a marketer how not only to tell great stories but also how to build a great journey for the consumer is critical. Ken WhiteSo really, going from beginning to end with the customer now, it's not just buy this item anymore. Evan JonesThat's right. Ken WhiteSo how did you make the move to Fender? Evan JonesWell, the move to Fender for me. I can't tell you that anything I did after leaving Nike was purposely intended to get me there, but I remember when I left. My wife when I left Nike after twelve and a half years, my wife challenged me to write down my three target jobs that I thought I'd want to get someday. And admittedly, one of them was to be the CMO of Under Armour. Just because I thought, well, I can sort of prove you know what my capabilities are. But one of them was to be CMO of Fender, and I figured, you know, someday when I was older, I could comfortably market guitars to people like me, but you know, as I went through the next seven years of my career I can't tell you that it was anything intentional or purposeful I held kind of jobs for shorter periods of time. I was the VP of Marketing for DC Shoes. I was at Activision working on the guitar hero business, which, if you can't be a real guitar hero, be a plastic guitar hero. Ken WhiteThere it is. Evan JonesAnd I was CMO for New York Hat company out in Buffalo, New York. And you know, all of them for me were attempts to match my aspirations with my values with things that I wanted to do. When the fender opportunity came along, it was such a great fit for me because of where I was as a marketer but also where the company was. And you know, I think where we are now with Fender is, you know, we've got a great 70-year-old brand that has tremendous equity and brand adoption by some of the world's most interesting artists. But we're also, I think, well positioned to drive a whole new wave of energy into music and into culture through artists and through community. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Evan Jones in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. You've been hearing about the power of business analytics for years now, but you may not know how to get analytics to work for you. If that's the case, the Center for Corporate Education is offering an exciting opportunity in April. Business analytics for leaders. The two-and-a-half-day program starts April 18th. It's designed to help you gain an understanding of how business analytics can be used to build a data-driven culture in your organization. The course is designed for executives, high-potential managers, and business owners with a responsibility to develop and implement the organizational strategy and grow the business. The program is taught by our business school faculty, who teach in William & Mary's Masters of Business Analytics program. To learn more about business analytics for leaders, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the Chief Marketing Officer of Fender, Evan Jones. Ken WhiteAnd so, what are you doing in that space that you can share with us? Evan JonesWell, when I got to Fender three years ago, my CEO, our Head of Digital, and I all realized one of the things we really lacked was sort of true data around, you know, what was the guitar playing and buying universe like. So we commissioned what I suppose had been the first consumer insights survey or segmentation study that Fender had ever done, perhaps ever had done in the music industry. And what came back was really compelling. It kind of showed us that 50 percent of all new guitars in the last five years had been bought by females, not just moms, girls, women looking to play. Call it the Taylor Swift effect, but the inbound number of female players coming in has been dramatic, and that is very different than what I think most guitar shops would tell you. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Evan JonesSecondly, 70 percent of all those guitars that they preferred were acoustic. We've since seen a lot of that slide into electric under the assumption that you had a lot of young women come in learned to play acoustic realize they also want to play electric, and so they've added that to their collection as well, but probably the most interesting information that came back was that 45 percent of all guitars that we've sold and 35 percent of all guitars bought by new players are first time players. Are bought by first-time players. Ken WhiteWow. Evan JonesSo that's a pretty compelling stat. And what makes it even more interesting is we learned that 90 percent of all first-time players drop out within the first year. If not, the first three months. Ken WhiteRight. Evan JonesSo for us, what that told us is we don't really have an awareness issue. We have an abandonment issue. Ken WhiteYes. Evan JonesAnd so you know, as a company, we've been really focused on how do we both elevate the profile of guitar and music and culture and elevate artists who are dragging music forward but also how do we address the abandonment issue. Ken WhiteAnd so that's what the data showed you those three areas, then abandonment is issue. That's such an interesting issue. I'm thinking, as our listeners heard you say, that I can just see the hands. I'm one of them. You know listeners saying that, right? I had a guitar or two and just abandoned. So how do you approach that? Evan JonesWith that information, one of the other things we did is went out to understand the dynamics of the new market, the used guitar market, and also the lessons business. What came back was really interesting in the new, and the used guitar markets are essentially of equal size. The new market just edging that slightly, which, when you think about the number of guitars that are out there today, kind of makes sense. Ken WhiteRight. Evan JonesBut way more compelling is the fact that the lessons business is four times as large as the new guitar business. Meaning there are people are spending four times as much on learning as they are on buying. Ken WhiteInteresting. Evan JonesAnd within that, the fastest growing segment of learning modalities is online subscription-based learning. So with that information, what we embarked on about two and a half years ago was to build a digital business of subscription-based services really targeted and designed to help first-time players get over the hurdle, learn their first song, and get started on their musical journey. And that's when in July of last year, we launched something called Fender Play which is a subscription-based online learning service absolutely targeted towards beginners. Ken WhiteAnd what it what are the results? What are you seeing? I think you just nailed it to get that first song because then there's some success, right? Evan JonesExactly and you know we always talk about the fact that if you are a guitar player, if you're the 10 percent who make it through the dam each year, you're going to go on to own six, 10, 15, 20 guitars or if you're like our CEO 55 and you know we want to get people started on that journey, of course, it's good for business but it's also great for music and for the brand. Ken WhiteHow you reaching, but what are you doing to get them to learn that first song? Evan JonesSo you know, thinking about how do we get more people through the hurdle with Fender Play. When we launched it, you know, we were unsure exactly what the results were gonna be. It was really a first time. I think that this had been done by anybody in the guitar industry. Since we've launched, we've now have over 40.000 subscribed users who are using the Fender Play service to learn. What's really interesting about it is they are very engaged. We built a model that had assumptions around conversion from trial to subscription churn rates, et cetera. We're finding that they're converting at a much higher rate, refining they're sticking with it much longer. Equally compelling is we're finding a subset of them are also buying new gear. And so we've got the first glimpse of what a true lifetime value lifecycle marketing model can look like for the brand. What's also really compelling is we have established an invitation-only closed Facebook group of Fender Play users. And we've got about 3,000 people who are in there right now, and for us, it's a great test too, but it's also become this really phenomenal sort of organic support system. And we have consumers who are on there every day sharing their experiences. In fact, one of the most interesting things we did is we pulled a couple of videos of that just to share with some of our internal teams, and some really amazing things were coming through. One of the most interesting was, for a brief moment in time, Wonder Wall by Oasis was a song that everybody wanted to play, and out of nowhere, we had hundreds of Wonder Wall videos being shared across all channels. We think it's because, with three or four chords, it's a lush-sounding tune it doesn't require a ton of technical expertise, but people are able to get that thrill of learning to play a song and sharing it with their friends, their partners, or in this case the community. Ken WhiteHave you noticed anything about age in terms of who's trying Fender Play? Does it tend to skew younger? Evan JonesWell, for now, what we've done is we've mainly targeted our existing channels and audience. And so, by virtue of that, it's a fundamentally slightly older community of people. But over the last six months, we've been aggressively ramping up our outreach and acquisition strategies to reach younger both male and female consumers say from the ages of 16 to 30. And what we've seen is since we've been doing that, it's exactly replicating what we've seen in the data. Fifty percent of the users are female. There's a predominance of acoustics that are coming in. That's really exciting for us. Ken WhiteYeah. What about musicians? How are you working with them? I mean, you certainly don't abandon them. That's your heart and soul. What do you do with them? Evan JonesWell, in the context of Fender Play, one of the side reasons that we also launched Fender Play is we believe it could be a great way for new artists who have fans to allow their fans to experience their music differently, and that could be everything from you know legacy artists who have some of the most viewed songs as a way for them to get more people listening with and engaging and really leaning into the musical experience. But we're also finding it's potentially a very compelling way for us to help break and launch new artists who, when they're in cycle and let's say they have an album coming out in Q4 they want to get a song in Fender Play. They don't actually have to record it themselves. We take care of that in our studios in Los Angeles, but they could incentivize learning that song to their fans, and we're more than happy to, you know, support them in that effort because it just creates obviously more connectivity for them as individuals. Outside of that, you know, I think with respect to the overall brand, one of the fundamental things that we've done in the last three years is really get much more focused on artists. And when I came to Fender, my CEO and I had, I guess, what could best be described as multiple spirited conversations sometimes over a beer where we discussed a lot about, you know, talked a lot about the Fender brand voice. You know, at Nike, we used to sweat that a lot. We would be in strategy sessions, and we would grind it out. I think we wanted to keep it simple at Fender, and what we decided to agree upon is that the Fender brand voice can best be described as the sum total of the voices of the artists who use it. And with that in mind, what we've embarked on is really becoming great storytellers on behalf of artists, and we do that in our product marketing. We also do that, quite frankly, just with artists who have a unique story to tell. Ken WhiteSo when you started in marketing community building like you're doing on Fender Play affecting culture like you're doing there driving personal improvement, that wasn't marketing, but it seems like it is today. What a change. Evan JonesYeah. You know, I think the way that I try to think about it is not as a series of transactions but really as a movement, you know, and I think I've been in a lot of brands where we've had to pay influencers to speak on our behalf, or we've had to convince influencers that what we're trying to sell is cool. I think, in this case, we're sort of flipping the script. We are fortunate to sit sort of inside the creative circle with the artist. So we put all of our energy into making sure that they've got the best tools on the planet to create whatever they want. We're also expanding the definition of artists to include not just the ripping guitar solo legacy players that we all grew up on, whether it was Stevie Ray Vaughan or David Gilmore, but really to think about artists today who are using guitar in different and new ways to create music. And I think the reality for us is we've realized as a brand, you know, we need to be both servicing the legacy but also really servicing, supporting, and elevating what the future and next generation of guitar looks like, whether that's first time players or artists who are in that developing emerging phase and just breaking through. Ken WhiteDo you see more products and services taking this approach to marketing as opposed to let's just reach people and get a sale? Evan JonesWell, I think so, and kind of going back to my point about the influencer relationship. In our case, the primary influencer is the artist. And so our relationship is that it's not a sponsorship. And I think for brands, if you can figure out what your organic truth is. Figure out what's the heart of your brand what's the heart of the relationship that you want to have with the consumer. Then I think the challenge is to figure out how do you authentically build that relationship in a way that isn't so transparent where your strategy is showing. That was always kind of one of the worst insults you could ever get at an ad pitch when I was at Nike. Hey, your strategy showing, you know, and I think not every brand is built for that necessarily type of marketing, but I think if you're working with a passion-based brand, or you're working in a lifestyle business, or you're working in a business where there's a repeated relationship. I think figuring out what that authentic core is is critical. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Evan Jones, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Evan Jones and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![David Hunt](images/david-hunt-105-thumb.jpg)
![The Path to Entrepreneurship](images/david-hunt-105-thumb.jpg)
David Hunt
Episode 105: March 6, 2018
The Path to Entrepreneurship
When you hear the word "entrepreneurship," you may think of a startup where an individual or team generates a great idea that, after multiple steps, become a business. While many entrepreneurs pursue the startup route, some take another path and look into opportunities available in established businesses. That's what David Hunt did. Years ago, rather than start from scratch, he looked for a business that was ready for a new owner, a new approach, and new ideas. And it worked. Hunt joins us today to discuss entrepreneurship, what it takes to succeed, and how some great businesses are already out there waiting for new leadership.
Podcast (audio)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. When you hear the word entrepreneurship, you may think of a startup where an individual or team generates a great idea that, after multiple steps, becomes a business. While many entrepreneurs pursue the startup route, some take another path and look into opportunities available in established businesses. That's what David Hunt did years ago rather than start from scratch. He looked for a business that was ready for a new owner, a new approach, and new ideas, and it worked. Hunt joins us on the podcast today to discuss entrepreneurship, what it takes to succeed and how some great businesses are already out there waiting for new leadership. Here's our conversation with entrepreneur David Hunt. Ken WhiteWell, Dave, thank you for spending some time with us and being on campus today. It's great to have you here. Welcome. David HuntThank you. Thank you, Ken, appreciate it. Ken WhiteAnd you met some students today. How was that? David HuntFabulous for lunch and also at the Entrepreneurship Center. They were all very, very bright, pleasant. It reminded me of what it's like to go to college. Ken WhiteYeah. David HuntVery positive. Ken WhiteBright for sure around here, no doubt. You know, when I think when a lot of people think of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, they tend to lean a little more toward startup and building something from nothing. That's not your background. Could you share your story with us? David HuntSure. It's a good observation. I actually have always wanted to work for myself. I was a kid. My mother had taught me at a very young age that you know if you've got to work, it might be better to work for yourself than somebody else. That was sort of her philosophy of life. And so that got me even as a young child selling Fuller Brush brushes and brooms door to door with my mom. And it always caused me to have a summer job or to look for an opportunity where I could be my own boss. And that was really the impetus for going into business and having that ambition. Ken WhiteWhen you were a child, would those in the neighborhood and family members have said? Oh, when Dave grows up, he'll be a business owner. David HuntI don't think so. No, I was a bit shy, and I was also I was quiet, and I was very studious. I didn't really reach out and talk to a lot of people and engage with others which I think is really important if you do become an entrepreneur. The ability to communicate well with others and to establish a relationship with them that's that's trusted and beneficial. Ken WhiteBut that kind of experience as a child. Door to door. That's priceless. David HuntIt was fabulous. You know, my mom she, for many years, she was a single mom, and she really did it because she could make more money and in fewer hours than if she had an eight-hour-a-day job and then still be for me be home for me and my two brothers. So I had I was when she became a single mom when I was five, my brother was six, and the younger brother two and a half. So it allowed her to be home for us when I would come home from kindergarten and my brother from first grade. Ken WhiteYeah. What our parents will do? David HuntWhat they'll do. Ken WhiteYeah, so let's talk about you being an entrepreneur. You actually looked for and obtained a business that was had been around for quite a while. David HuntThat's correct. I bought a patent Information Service a company that essentially sold paper. I bought it in 1998. It sold patent copies to patent attorneys as well as what's called a file, a file history, or all the correspondence between a patent attorney and the patent office during the process of getting a patent. And I knew when I bought the business that the Internet was probably going to destroy it. So I knew that its days were numbered. I didn't know how long we would be able to keep doing what we were doing. But what was most important to me was to have sales because my view of business says if you have revenues or if you have sales, it covers up a lot of problems. And for me, it served as almost a bank account to sort of change the strategy of the business over time to build it into a patent search firm and then advanced patent law training as well as analytics translations and then to grow that outside of just patents and into technology consulting as well. So we used the company for that purpose. And so I'm entrepreneurial, although I think it's much harder to start something from scratch to get a customer base to appeal to people to do that at the same time that you're trying to finance it. It's very difficult unless you have just an absolutely fantastic idea, and people are just pounding on your door to buy what you have. That, to me, is very difficult. Ken WhiteHow much did you know about the field and the business when you got in? David HuntNothing. I was so for me I also didn't have the money to buy it. What had to happen was a husband and a wife who owned it. It was a small information service with six people, but it had a good reputation with some really well-known customers both in the legal community and then also in a couple of research and development arms of companies, and they were looking to retire. They had no children. They did not want to just close the door. They wanted more than I could pay for it. And they wanted a big down payment, but for me, they allowed me to pay the price they were asking because they wouldn't negotiate on the price but to lower the down payment and then pay them over time. Ken WhiteRight. David HuntAnd, of course, they didn't know what a discounted cash flow analysis was. So the company was really worth twice what they were charging me, but because they hadn't done that, I was able to lower the down payment, pay the price they wanted, but then to throw off enough cash so that I could not only pay them down but to grow the business. Ken WhiteWow, what a great story. David HuntYeah, it was awesome. Ken WhiteHow if you're looking at an existing business today with your entrepreneurship entrepreneur glasses on? What are you looking for? What should an entrepreneur seek and examine as they see a potential opportunity that is currently running? David HuntI guess it depends upon what your skill set is. Everybody has a different skill set. For me I'm I tend to be good at managing something that's not sexy but has professional support there. So what I mean by that if professional services, I know how to manage people with advanced degrees, scientists, and engineers. I also am pretty good with project managers. For me, the product of the service is not as important as the sort of the happiness of the customers, the quality of the employees that are there, the ability to have a problem solvers and go-getters at the company, and then to make sure that we're in a field where we are differentiated regardless of the industry so that we have a place that will in the field at that time that'll buy us some time so that we can continue to change and be relevant five to 10 years later. So I'm not tied down to a specific industry. Ken WhiteRight, but playing to your strengths is an important thing, and knowing your strengths. David HuntYeah. Ken WhiteI guess as well. David HuntYeah, I'm a, well, I'm a, I'm an analyst by nature. I'm a researcher by nature. I learned that at William & Mary in my undergraduate studies at William & Mary studied government the first go round and then then the MBA program after that. And you know, for me, it was a very tough school that requires you to think. Requires you to work very hard, and you know, and if you're honest and you're hard-working, and you also rely on other people for their skill sets when needed. I think you can succeed in pretty much any industry. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with David Hunt in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. You've been hearing about the power of business analytics for years now, but you may not know how to get analytics to work for you. If that's the case, the Center for Corporate Education is offering an exciting opportunity next month. Business analytics for leaders. The two-and-a-half-day program starts April 18th. It's designed to help you gain an understanding of how business analytics can be used to build a data-driven culture at your organization. The course is designed for executives, high-potential managers, and business owners with a responsibility to develop and implement the organizational strategy and grow the business. The program is taught by our business school faculty, who teach in William & Mary's Master of Science degree in business analytics. To learn more about business analytics for leaders, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with entrepreneur David Hunt. Ken WhiteSuccessful entrepreneurs, are they born or do they learn. David HuntI think both. I think you definitely have to have the sort of an innate willingness to take risks to also be confident but not overly confident or to believe your own press. I think a lot of the dangers for any entrepreneur is to have some success and then to think that they could do anything and or that they could do it themselves. And for me, over the years, I've come to just focus on the things that I'm good at, and you know I'll do everything at some point so that I know the business, and I'll test my ability to do it. But ultimately, I'm always looking for a person that can do something better than me in a specific field so that I can eventually jettison that and focus on what I'm good at. Ken WhiteYou mentioned risk. David HuntYeah. Ken WhiteCan you talk more a little bit more about that? Risk in what way? David HuntWell, I think a lot of people are fearful that, you know, if they go to work for themselves or their, you know, whether they're a startup or they buy something that you know if it doesn't work out what's going to happen to them. They might be like I was where I had a wife and a child and, you know, mortgage. I had left Freddie Mac, and you know, and if you think about it, you know, if you go from a well-paying job with, you know, good benefits and you have a family, and you say okay, I'm just going to I'm going to do something completely different than what I've done before. It might work out it might not. And if you think about it not working out, it probably won't do it. And that could be the biggest mistake you made. You know, fortunately, if you're in the United States as I am, you know if you go belly up, you go Chapter 11. You can always rely on the skills that you learned in business school, for example, or whatever else whatever skill you have. Even if it's not business and you can always practice that trade, you know we no longer have debtors prison. So you just you start again. And for me, I never, you know, I never really was afraid of failing, and nor was I afraid of success. For me, it was just it gave me a sense of purpose, and that's why I think most if people can get over that sort of fear. I think many people will succeed. Ken WhiteYou said fear of success. That's interesting. David HuntYeah yeah. Ken WhiteWhat do you mean? David HuntWell, you know, sometimes, with success, you get problems that you didn't expect. I mean, you may be very good, for example, as an engineer, and you go into business, you're basically, you know, you're moving away from a specialty to maybe becoming more of a generalist where you're managing people as opposed to looking at mathematical calculations and so forth. So essentially, you may not enjoy being successful because the actual work will change in a way that doesn't please you. However, you know if you if at a certain point, you might be able to still practice those things that you like as long as you have other people around you that are good at picking up those other things. And so I think some people are afraid of change in the event that they become successful that it becomes a change that they're not willing to accept. Ken WhiteInteresting. David HuntYeah. Ken WhiteResilience. What role does that play in success? David HuntIt's everything. It's absolutely everything. In 2009 I had 109 180 employees, and in one month January of 2009, we lost 750,000 dollars in cash in one month. Our business dried up for the most part. And then I had to start shedding people, and I furloughed people, including myself. Of course, when I'm furloughed, I still work even though I'm not allowed to right. I'm working at home; I just can't stop. Ken WhiteSure, sure. David HuntBut I had to believe that things would get better, and you have to stick to it. You have to have faith in yourself and in your people and obviously in the larger economy. So things will happen that are bad that are disappointing. But as long as you you try to improve yourself, you try to improve your company, and you stay focused, and you don't give up. I believe you can succeed. Ken WhiteWhat advice do you have in terms of networking someone to share stories, advice? Did you have a network? Did you go solo? What do you recommend? David HuntI recommend having a network for sure it's important to have people around you that are will talk to you honestly and that are also skilled, perhaps in areas that you're not. My company, we didn't have a board, but I had an informal group of advisors. They didn't really know they were advisors, but I would call them up and ask for advice. So, for example, when I opened an office in Japan, there was a guy that was in the patent community who had left it was then in banking, and I asked him for all sorts of advice on how to open up a business in Japan and who to talk to, and he gave me names of accountants and government employees and personnel and lawyers and so forth in Japan, and he spoke Japanese American guy. But I learned more from him in just, you know, one session than if I had to hire somebody over there. So it's really important to get people around you that give you good advice and also people that are willing to talk honestly with you to say, you know that that sounds like baloney Dave. That idea you have maybe it sounds great to you but looks like you haven't shared that outside the shower, so you know, maybe show that to a few more people and see what they think. Ken WhitePeople who say that are great people to have around. Millennials. That's a totally different generation. We hear many are interested in entrepreneurship. Many like entrepreneurial thinking, whether they own a business or they at least want to bring that entrepreneurship cap with them when they go to work. What do you see for the generation in terms of entrepreneurship? David HuntI see lots of opportunities for them because technology is advancing at a rapid rate. And so I think if they can apply technology appropriately, they could take what would otherwise be a very old-fashioned process and perhaps make it better. They might be able to be in a technological field that is disruptive that could also be beneficial. I look at my children, for example, their ones in high school ones in college now, but they know so much more about technology than I do. I think the trap, though, for anybody, whether you're a millennial or not, is to love technology for the sake of technology. Sometimes people think you know this is the next best mousetrap. This is absolutely fabulous. This is going to take off. It's gonna make me, you know, the next Facebook billionaire. And you know what, for most people, that's not the case. I think that it's important that we appreciate technology and that we figure out how we can use it wisely. But as an entrepreneur, you're not thinking about getting rich quickly. You're thinking about what can I do to serve a specific market segment, a customer. What sort of need needs to be met, even if it's something that's very basic and not necessarily exciting or fresh or new. There's always an opportunity to be innovative and to develop that sort of company that does that sort of thing. But what's more important is to be able to sell something to customers who want it and will keep you in business. But I think having being a millennial and being open and know knowing a lot more about technology and social media and so forth could be a leg up over someone like myself. Ken WhiteYou've talked more about customers and delivering a really great product than profit or making money. Is that number one for you? David HuntAbsolutely. There's, you know, I learned this from, believe it or not, Professor Guerrero many years ago, Hector Guerrero. Ken WhiteAbsolutely, we know him and love him, and he's been on the podcast. David HuntYeah, I remember one class I took with him. He said you know what, folks? There's always room at the top. You know doesn't matter how competitive a particular industry is. If you're excellent at what you do, you will be unique. And consequently, you will have customers, and if you can keep those customers happy, it's easier to keep selling to them than to go out and try to find a new customer as a replacement. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with David Hunt. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals. With business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week David Hunt and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Ken Bouyer](images/ken-bouyer-104-thumb.jpg)
![Winning Through Inclusiveness](images/ken-bouyer-104-thumb.jpg)
Ken Bouyer
Episode 104: February 20, 2018
Winning Through Inclusiveness
Three out of four companies say diversity and inclusion is a priority. But saying it and doing it effectively are two different things. One organization that's out in front in terms of D&I is EY, also known as Ernst & Young—the multinational professional services firm and one of the big four accounting firms. For years EY has been committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce while making employees feel included and heard. Ken Bouyer is EY's Director of Inclusiveness Recruiting for the Americas. He leads the team that finds the best talent on college campuses and elsewhere. For Bouyer and EY, diversity and inclusion is a priority, and as the organization continues its efforts in this arena, it continues to experience success in many other areas as well. Bouyer joins us today to discuss diversity and inclusion, why EY makes the investment, and what you and your organization can learn from it.
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Ken Bouyer: Winning Through Inclusiveness TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Three out of four companies say diversity and inclusion is a priority, but saying it and doing it effectively are two different things. One organization is out in front in terms of D&I is EY, also known as Ernst and Young. The multinational professional services firm and one of the big four accounting firms. For years EY has been committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce while making employees feel included and heard. Ken Bouyer is EY's Director of Inclusiveness Recruiting for the Americas. He leads the team that finds the best talent on college campuses and elsewhere. For Bouyer and EY, diversity and inclusion is a priority. And as the organization continues its efforts in this arena, it continues to experience success in many other areas as well. Boyer joins us on the podcast today to discuss diversity and inclusion. Why EY makes the investment and what you and your organization can learn from it. Here's our conversation with EY's Ken Bouyer. Ken WhiteKen, thanks for being here. Busy day ahead, you'll be the keynote speaker at the student diversity symposium, and we'll talk about that in a minute, but welcome. Welcome to William & Mary. Ken BouyerWell, thank you so much, Ken. It is great to be back on this beautiful campus. Ken WhiteSo your field, you are the Americas Director of Inclusiveness Recruiting. How did you get into that? Ken BouyerIt's a great question, and sometimes I still ask myself that you know a little bit of background. I'm actually an accountant, so I came into EY many, many years ago, a little over 27 years ago, in fact, as an auditor, and spent many years doing audit for the firm and many years in our consulting advisory practice before essentially being tapped on the shoulder to say hey we have this need and opportunity diversity space and we would love you to lead this effort. And so I jumped at the chance and so through happenstance through luck. But certainly, I am thrilled to be in this role. I absolutely love it. It's incredibly challenging, but I really applaud the firm for taking a position and wanting to move the needle in the diversity space. Ken WhiteWe tell our students all the time opportunity you just never know where you'll end up. Ken BouyerSo true. Ken WhiteYeah. Ken BouyerI never would have literally an accounting major business major diversity. I never would have seen that in my future. Ken WhiteWell, when you're going to college, it was a job that didn't exist right. Ken BouyerThat's very true. Ken WhiteYeah. Ken BouyerYou're dating me now. Ken WhiteSo what do you like most about it? Ken BouyerWhat I love about is every day waking up thinking about how will I change and challenge the makeup of EY. That is a thrill. And I'm on the road a lot. I'm at a lot of universities. I will present at many conferences. I'll spend a lot of time with our clients. Believe it or not, speaking about diversity, they try to tap into EYs strategic direction, where we're fairly well known in the business world for being one of the leaders in diversity. So spending time with our clients who are either interested in setting up a program or devising a strategy or who want to take it to the next level. So I do a myriad of things, but every day I wake up thinking how will I change the makeup of EY. There's no greater feeling. Ken WhiteYeah, nice. There was, and I'm sure you've seen it, a LinkedIn study not long ago that surveyed companies, and the response was 78 percent of organizations say D&I is a priority. Is that true? Ken BouyerWell, I would say yes. I'm sure they do feel it's a priority. But the question is, what are they doing frankly to address the issue? And so that's what as I go out and speak at conferences, you know, whether it's business conferences or industry conferences. I hear a lot of people talk a good game, frankly, Ken. Ken WhiteRight. Ken BouyerBut really, as they say, the rubber meets the road with your investments, with your commitment, with your people that you have dedicated to really moving the needle, and I think that's still lacking in some institutions and some organizations. Ken WhiteSure, exactly why. Why I asked the question, you know when, when we talk to companies who in organizations who are involved, they say what I'll hear is we do it because we want to reflect our customer base. That makes sense. Some say we do it because it actually pays off. It affects the bottom line. Others say culture internal culture is improved. Those three. What do you think, all, some, none? Ken BouyerI think all in some form or fashion certainly depends. Right. One diversity is really complex in and of itself. When you think about bringing different cultures and people and how you define diversity within your organization, I think at a baseline. You've got to figure that out. And then you do have to start with the why right everything in life. I believe we have to start with why what's the purpose. Why do you want to do it? For they may want to reflect their business their customers, if you will. Some it is a cultural thing, and some it's just, you know, a business. Whatever the issue may be, I want to go into a new market. I want to expand globally. I don't have the people to understand how we operate business in China. You picked a country, so it could be all the above. But I do think you have to start with why. I think to jump into the pool without an understanding of why is this important to our business. I think you're going to have some challenges frankly moving a needle because you don't know what needle you're moving. Ken WhiteAnd people aren't going to follow unless there's a reason and a strategy, of course. Ken BouyerThat is correct. Ken, I believe that you know on this issue there. Some people will start to invest because it's the quote-unquote right thing to do. But frankly, many people that doesn't move the needle for them. That's not why they're going to invest or commit time and effort to be engaged in diversity. So I think from a business perspective what, how will that make your business grow? How will it make it better? There's certainly an element of it's the right thing to do. I believe that, but not everyone may believe that concept. But how will it impact our business? Well, our business may grow 50 percent if we expand in a new market. If we go to Latin America. Where we have no idea on earth how to do business in Latin America, well, you may need to think about engaging folks who grew up there who know the culture. How do you expand? That can have an impact on your bottom line. Start with why. Why do you want to do an invest in D&I diversity and inclusion? I think that's a great place to be, and then you figure out how you make it work within your respective organization. Ken WhiteAnd there are so many stories of companies and organizations that did go to a new market and made massive mistakes because they didn't have people from that culture on their own team. Ken BouyerThat's correct. Ken WhiteI mean, there's all jokes and advertisements we've seen in the past and so forth. Ken BouyerThat's correct. Ken WhiteHow do you define diversity, and how do you define inclusion? Ken BouyerGreat question, and I think one for those of you out there who are thinking about working with an organization. You know that definition of diversity is incredibly broad. And I'll take you quickly through an evolution. I think with the firm, we've been at this for over 20 years at EY. In the early days, I'd say we just focus on this thing called Diversity, i.e., let's go out and recruit people into the organization who are just different. So it was really just about recruiting difference. We define it now and in back then, frankly was really what we call minorities right. So if you're African-American or Latino or Native American in some spots, if you're a woman, if we were short in certain spots in the firm, we would focus on those groups. Now it's much broader. It's veterans. It's people with disabilities. It's, frankly, the LGBT community. It's certainly all of the minority groups that we've talked about, but we also talk about things like diversity of thought and perspective. We talk about generational difference. So our definition has expanded greatly as it should because the other piece around inclusiveness, and this is where in my mind, the magic of diversity really happens. Diversity is the focus on difference in hiring different people and bringing different points of view. Inclusiveness, though, is how do you leverage those difference. Most organizations and we were guilty of this way back when. We would go out and just hire people who were different but wouldn't focus on the inclusiveness piece. So if you went out and hired me and I was different in your organization, but your expectation was I come in and be just like everyone else in that organization, you lose the power of that diversity. You lose the power of diversity of thought and perspective that I could bring to that organization based on my experiences in life. So the inclusiveness how you leverage the diversity is the magic of the whole D&I component, in my opinion. Ken WhiteRight. Interesting. It's not easy, of course. I was just giving I was asked to give a talk the other day, and we were talking about communication, but it got onto multigenerational, and you had a number of baby boomers in the room. Unfortunately, there were a couple of millennials who felt really beat up, and they just rolled their eyes as soon as it came up. Those are massive differences, and sometimes there are groups that just won't give. So how do you build that culture that inclusivity where everybody is saying everybody's opinion counts, and this moves us? Ken BouyerYeah. Ken WhiteHow do you build that? Ken BouyerThis is huge for us. At EY, we have probably 67 percent of our total firm are millennials. Sixty-seven percent a huge number, right? But we have boomers, we have Xers, and we have so many different folks. You have to listen. You know, we have what we call people advisory forums. We bring together all those generational groups you talked about, and we sit around a room and have real frank conversations. I would give millennials a lot of credit in our firm for a number of things one. You know, about a year ago, we went to an all-jeans firm like, literally wearing jeans every day. You could do it. Certainly, you dress your client. Ken WhiteSure. Ken BouyerBut as a matter of policy, we said hey, you can wear jeans every single day. That was because our Millennials asked the question, and we listened. So I do think you know these groups, these generations have great ideas. We have to sometimes, as the older folks in the firm get out of their way. We certainly have a point of view. We bring it, but you have to listen. You have to have the right mechanism and modes that people can voice an opinion, and you do what's best for the organization, but you have to listen. Ken WhiteAnd I think it's interesting how there are so many commonalities actually amongst all the groups. Ken BouyerThat's right. Ken WhiteAnd we not don't necessarily think of that at first. Ken BouyerThat's right. Ken WhiteWe're all people. Ken BouyerThat's right. Ken WhiteRight. And we are driven by the same thing. Ken BouyerThat's right. We want to be part of a purpose-driven organization like we are at EY. I just want to do a seamless plug. I know building a better working world is kind of our tagline if you will, and how we live and whether it's with our clients or within our communities, we have to build a better working world. Purpose-driven and millennials are a big part of it. The Xers, the boomers. That's what we're about. And that's what we do every single day. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Ken Bouyer in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Once again, the Center for Corporate Education is offering its popular certificate in business management program in April. It's a five-day experience designed for the working professional who wants a better understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Ken Bouyer. Ken WhiteHow have you changed over the years the way you recruit new talent? Ken BouyerYeah. Part of this recruitment process is when you think about very specialized majors that we hire, and we hire a broad spectrum of majors from engineering, believe it or not, turning to accounting, business, finance, economics majors, and the like information systems. But what we have to do in some of those areas there are many groups that are still underrepresented. Right. So if you think about the broad definition of STEM, science, technology, engineering, math. When we look at and do our scans, there are a lot of women who are not or young women who are not choosing that STEM field as a major. So as a firm, we're investing in the high school level. And frankly, even the middle school level. And how do we build pipeline? So when you think about diversity when you have to define what it means your organization. You have to find out where are your differences and where are you lacking and short in certain areas. And what we've decided to do as a firm, one of the many things we do around diversity, is to help build pipeline. So by investing at the high school level, bringing our people and experts to talk about what it means to have a career at EY or in professional services, and then trying to change the makeup of people who come into a William & Mary or you would ever university and major in accounting or becoming an engineering major how do we shape the makeup. Well, you've got to go earlier. That's one way we've changed and evolved our recruitment strategy at the firm. Ken WhiteThat's big because you're not going to win everyone. I mean, this is a major investment with not probably a huge return at first, but maybe the industry will see it. Ken BouyerWe're planting trees, Ken. I like planting trees, and you know we have great recruiters and a great firm. We'll get our fair share. But we ultimately, all of us have to plant trees somewhere for the greater good. It's about the greater good in this one. Ken WhiteAnd have you been to high schools yourself? Ken BouyerI have. Every year I've been in many high schools. In fact, not too long ago was, that I went to grew up in New York City in Queens Holy Cross High School, I spoke about my career. I'm often in high schools. I often go to high school programs over the summer. If I had a lot more time, I could tell you about them, but I am there. I've even been in some middle schools. Next, we're gonna go to the baby wards at hospitals talking about the professor. Ken WhiteThat's a young age to be talking about career. What kind of reactions do you get? Ken BouyerYeah, we don't we play games, and we hand out a lot of things, but we talk about accounting in a way that they can relate. You know, we hope we would pick, like, for example, I'll pick a cartoon, and I'll speak to how do you think the cartoon is made and how where do you get money from. I try to break it down in terms of things they can relate to. I talk about brands. So we have a lot of clients who are well-known brands, Starbucks. I'll give an example Starbucks, so I'll bring a Starbucks cup, and I'll talk about the value of Starbucks but how we at EY help Starbucks, how we've consulted with certain organizations. So brands that they can relate to, and I talk about the quote-unquote behind-the-scenes stuff that they don't see right. That's how we hopefully will reach them because they can understand in terms of brands. Ken WhiteGreat. Ken BouyerSo that's what we do. Ken WhiteNow you're going to actually in about an hour we're recording on Friday, February 16th, here in the morning. I've got the agenda in front of me. Pretty soon a couple hours, you'll be the keynote speaker at the student diversity symposium, and thank you to you and Ernst and Young for helping us put this all together. We're you going to talk about? Ken BouyerYeah. No, it's our pleasure. You know, certainly, the Mason School here is so important to us. We have hired so many great people we have terrific alumni, and so I try to come back whenever I can. Forget about the beauty of the campus but certainly the quality of the people. I'm going to talk about a number of things. One, I'll talk about what it means to have unconscious bias. I actually think when you think about in terms of diversity, appreciating and respecting difference is really important as you go on this diversity journey. And so one things we speak about in the firm often is this thing called unconscious bias. We all bring a bias to the workplace, and we all bring a bias to the university, and sometimes bias is okay. But it's important to recognize that we all have a bias and how do we pause before we make a decision. Why should we pause before we make that comment? And I think a lot of people are really not understanding that we have a bias. But again, how do we tackle that? Certainly, at the university level, I firmly believe this is the right place to have true and real discussion around difference. I'm different. Let's talk about where you grew up, how you grew up what religion you practice. Let's just have great dialogue. We may not agree on the issue, but we should be able to sit across the table and have true dialogue. And I think if we're going to make a difference in diversity, frankly just for the nation, we have to respect one another. We don't always have to agree, but we should be able to have dialogue. I want to encourage students to learn, to ask questions, to diversify teams, and working on group projects. Those are some of the concepts that I'll speak about today. Ken WhiteDo you see a difference in in the older generations in terms of the bias they bring compared to the millennials? I do. I think they're more accepting than maybe their parents and grandparents were. What do you see? Ken BouyerIt's interesting. Not in all cases. You know, I think this could be another podcast. But I think as you think about the current environment, and I'm on a lot of campuses around the country, I hear, unfortunately, about some of the incidents that are happening now, whether that's a nation a notion of social media and the reporting aspect we're hearing about these things more frequently. There certainly tends to be a lot more of these incidents in quotes on campus. So there was a point time where I felt that the younger generation grew up with more diversity were more accepting. I'm not always so sure, and I'm a pretty optimistic guy. So I think this work that universities need to do to tackle this issue, to be open about it, to have discussions on it. And I think we have to continue to do that because I don't think we've won this race by any stretch. Ken WhiteSo as you talk to students or anyone in terms of D&I, what advice do you give them in terms of accepting and understanding that boy, we can, we can really win as an organization, as teams, and as individuals when we do this? Ken BouyerYeah. My message will be, students, you have to, for all of us, frankly, develop what I call a global mindset. There's a lot of research out there on global mindset. What does that mean if you go out and you can Google it? It talks about specific competencies in developing a global mindset. It's things like, you know, cultural competence and cultural dexterity, if you will, but a lot of it has to do with how do you do business around the world for professional services firm like EY. We have clients that are global in nature, for sure. And I personally have been on audits or consulting engagements around the world and growing up in New York City. I vividly remember my first trip to China. And I would tell you that I brought a New York-centric mindset to the client, which wasn't ideal but really, through that experience, I recognized the biases that I had and how much I needed to develop my quote-unquote global mindset, not this was the early 90s. The firm is laser-focused on this now, but for all of us out there, and certainly students, you think about the students who are sitting next to you from other parts of the world, the country even. Do you have real conversations with those students? Do you understand what holidays they celebrate? Why do they eat those foods, and how does your culture work? But having real conversations, I think that's going to be huge. So developing this thing called a global mindset and students can practice that every single day. You can read. You can watch the BBC you can you know go on certain websites. Get out of a US-centric mindset because if you want to be successful, you know a successful business leader, a successful entrepreneur, you have to understand how business operates outside of Virginia, outside of the US, and frankly out and about in the world. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Ken Bouyer, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you are interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Ken Bouyer. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Inga Carboni](images/inga-carboni-103-thumb.jpg)
![Gender Dynamics in the Workplace](images/inga-carboni-103-thumb.jpg)
Inga Carboni
Episode 103: February 13, 2018
Gender Dynamics in the Workplace
Sexual harassment. #metoo. Gender communication in the workplace. However you label it, it's become a topic many companies and organizations have placed on the front burner—especially in the past few weeks. But of all the work-related issues professionals face, this topic is proving to be challenging. There doesn't seem to be a universal approach to dealing with the issue. Inga Carboni is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Among other things, she helps companies and professionals communicate and interact effectively. She joins us today to discuss what professionals can do to move the sexual harassment discussion—an issue—forward.
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Inga Carboni: Gender Dynamics in the Workplace TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Sexual harassment. #metoo. Gender communication in the workplace. However you label it, it's become a topic many companies and organizations have placed on the front burner, especially in the past few months. But of all the work-related issues professionals face, this topic is proving to be challenging. There doesn't seem to be a universal approach to dealing with the issue. Inga Carboni is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Among other things, she helps companies and professionals communicate and interact effectively. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss what professionals can do to move the sexual harassment discussion and issue forward. Here's our conversation with William & Mary Professor Inga Carboni. Ken WhiteInga, thank you for taking the time to join us. It's your second time on the podcast. Great to have you back. Thanks for being here. Inga CarboniThanks. Great to be here. Thanks for asking. Ken WhiteSo you and I were talking earlier. You've actually had a couple of good group conversations about this topic with graduate students and professionals. What were those conversations like? What were some of the things they talked about, and how people reacted? Inga CarboniYou know it's really interesting. So I've talked now to, as you said, a couple of groups of people. And the thing that keeps coming up over and over again is how do I deal with these situations. And I'm hearing this from men, I'm hearing this from women, and there's a lot of confusion about what's expected of me in this situation. I have people who, in examining the exact same situation, have diametrically opposed interpretations of it. So that goes everything from, oh, that is sexual harassment, that guy should be fired, to, you know, stuff like that rolls off. I don't think it's such a big deal. So how do you figure that out? I think it's something that's becoming a real concern. Ken WhiteSo there's just a huge range of understanding. Inga CarboniYeah. And you know everybody has. So the questions that one group asked me was, how do I deal with it when somebody crosses the line? And we started talking about it, and it became really clear that everybody's line is different. And like I said, something that's incredibly offensive to one person is nothing, and even a sign of you're one of the group for another person. And so the issue becomes how do you express your line. How do you communicate your line in a way that keeps conversation going that doesn't shut things down? And that can be really tricky. Ken WhiteAnd very difficult. Inga CarboniYeah, it can be really difficult. Ken WhiteAre you seeing, in general, women saying one thing, men saying another, one generation saying one thing, one generation saying another, or is it actually individual all of these differences? Inga CarboniI think it's shaped by so many things. It has to do with how you were raised. You know what part of the country or what part of the world you're from. Sure it has to do with age. It has to do with your experiences. Certainly, somebody who came into the workplace in the 70s has a very different take on what's normal exchange than somebody who came into the workplace just a few years ago. But there's so many dimensions along which people differ that it really ends up being pretty much individual, I would say. Ken WhiteWhere does power come into play? Inga CarboniOh yeah, power is huge, and power is huge because it silences people. So when you're not in a position of power, it's much harder to speak up because it seems like the consequences are bigger. Am I going to lose my job? Am I going to get a reputation for being difficult? Am I going to be dismissed? Those are very real consequences. And you know we're seeing this explosion with the hashtag me too movement, and people are sort of saying, where did all this come from? Where's this coming from? But there's people out there in the forefront who started it, and that makes a big difference seeing someone else say something and then feeling like, oh, all right, I'm looking at their consequences. Maybe I can say my you know what means matters to me too. Ken WhiteRight. Inga CarboniSo power definitely plays a role in this, you know. Ken WhiteYou and I interact with many young women about to embark on their careers are still fairly early in their careers. What kind of advice do you have if they experience something? What do they do when they're new to an organization? Inga CarboniSo one of the things is, first of all, to sort of think about it. We spend a lot of time talking with our students about how to put their ethical values into action, and in a way, this is related to that, so prepare yourself stuff like this is going to happen. Surround yourself with people either in your workplace or in your rest of your network who you can talk to who you can run scenarios through. Who you can talk to about how things might happen? Prepare yourself in ways to talk about this that don't that aren't all or none that don't say I quit or I'm blowing up this company, but that say, listen, this is my line. I don't know if you know this. I want to communicate it to you. I still really want to work with you, but I need you to know this is my line. I mean, there's clearly some things that we've heard in the news, particularly that is way over anybody's line. Ken WhiteRight. Inga CarboniBut a lot of this falls into a gray area. So I would advise people going out into the workplace. Prepare yourself. Think about this how are you going to handle it? Are you the kind of person who handles things like this with humor? Do you need to step away and then come back? Are you the person who needs to send an email? You know, think this out and think about to your relationship with the people you work with and work for. Argue entering a place where you can talk. Ken WhiteRight, and just talk on that point. Talking, have you found that people are willing to talk about this? It seems like, at least from the conversations you've been having, you share with me with people. People are kind of willing to talk about it. Inga CarboniOh, there's another range there too. I mean, some people I talked about this the other night in a class, and there was a large percentage of the room that was I very wary scared even to have a conversation. And I think the fear is that you're going to be accidentally, you know, sexist, or some kind of ist without meaning to you're going to offend somebody without wanting to. And that's another real problem where people get so fearful of it. They back away, and one possible outcome of that is that they back away with working with people who are not exactly like themselves. So yeah, no, I think a lot of people have a difficulty talking about this, and I think it's something that we have to learn how to talk about. Otherwise, nothing's going to change or get better. Ken WhiteYou work with many organizations and all different types of sectors and fields. How do you? What kind of advice do you have for them in terms of creating inclusivity? Creating that right environment because that's a big hurdle. Inga CarboniIt's a lot about reaching out, and it's a lot about inviting people in. So making sure that you're hearing from everybody. Don't let some people sort of fall silent and not be okay. Invite them in. Haven't heard from you like to hear your thoughts. I'd like to see what you have to say or your opinion on this matter. So that's a huge part of it. Part of it is role modeling what the behaviors that you want to encourage other people to do so you might express some vulnerabilities to people. You might let them see you have an interaction with somebody where you're in a disagreement, but you resolve it. Don't shut, you know, don't shut down conflict, don't throw it away but use it as leverage and a tool for having productive conversations. So role modeling is important. Reaching out to people is important ensuring participation is important. You know, there's a lot of about being trustworthy and just building those relationships. That's one of the number one things that I teach, and I teach leadership is build relationships with people, get to know them get to know what makes them, what motivates them, how they work, and make it comfortable for them. Make it possible for them to be able to speak because they'll know you're listening. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Professor Inga Carboni in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is offering business analytics for strategic leaders starting April 18. It's a two-and-a-half-day program for executives, high-potential managers, and business owners who want a greater understanding of business analytics and how analytics can be used to build a data-driven organization. The programs taught by the award-winning faculty who teach in William & Mary's Master of Science and Business Analytics program. To learn more about it, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Professor Inga Carboni. Ken WhiteThere's so much being debated and talked about so much information about the topic just in the last couple of months. Has this had an effect on the way organizations do train and affect on the way organizations are communicating to their employees about this? Inga CarboniI think that they are as confused as the rest of us in how to handle this, in terms of things like the hashtag me too movement. I think there's lots more going on around sexual harassment, lots more training going on around that but around the other more sort of awkward scenarios, the scenarios where someone says something that some people might take the wrong way. But some people don't. And, of course, office romance and how that's handled. You know, someone wants to go out on a date and all that kind of mishmash. I don't think they're handling it very well right now. And they're not sure what to do. And I think the worst thing that could happen is what I have seen happening in some places is that fear kicks in, and people are like, all right. You know what. Let's just avoid any kind of potential litigation. Let's keep everything separate. Let's not talk about this for the possibility of ruffling feathers, and I don't think that's the way forward. So I don't see a lot of organizations really having come up with some answers to this. I'm hoping that that will start to happen. Ken WhiteBut just based on your experience, just talking about it has really been helpful. Inga CarboniYeah. Ken WhiteSit down and talk in a group. Inga CarboniYeah. You sit down and talk about it. It helps to have a little of training in it. Ken WhiteSure. Inga CarboniOr somebody there who can help facilitate a conversation. Ken WhiteAbsolutely, yeah. Inga CarboniBecause you know those are going to they're sometimes charged. These are charged topics and learning how to interact with people and to let them have their say and then yet to step in there and share. I see good managers do this all the time and good leaders do this all the time, but it's hard. And yeah, that's just sort of have to step in. Ken WhiteI'm interested in your opinion on this. A professional came to me the other day and said that she was going to recommend that her organization have discussions. If you'd like to come, please come make yourself comfortable going to talk. She thought it was the best way to go was to separate the genders in the discussions. What do you think? Inga CarboniYou know I've got mixed feelings on that. So women definitely have a different experience than men do. And there's a different history there and a different subculture there. So I think it can be very beneficial certainly in the beginning for women to have a place maybe where they feel a little safer to have these discussions, especially women who aren't used to having those kinds of discussions, and men may need something a little bit different in terms of raised awareness of what's going on. But I think at some point, we're gonna have to get men and women talking to each other. Right. That's the whole point. We don't want this to turn into women have to be put in a separate room or something like that. You know, we've got to learn how to work together if we're going to get through this and have a truly diverse workforce. And there's sort of no going back. We have to go forward and do that. Ken WhiteBut maybe starting off separate, I could see that maybe people will be a little more comfortable in a setting like that. Maybe. Inga CarboniI think now, in this highly charged, it might be the way to start. And I just say that because there are so many emotions around this. For men, for women, that maybe that's a safer place to start. And it's probably a little easier, too, for organizations, but it can't stop there. It can't be a segregated thing where it turns into almost more of a support group. Then let's learn how to talk to each other productively. Ken WhiteDo you have any advice for women and men today in terms of their the relationships that they have, whether it's a direct report, whether it's managing up, whether it's dealing with colleagues? How do you go into work today and make sure that you're having healthy relationships and getting work done too? Because that's why we're going to work in the first place. Inga CarboniWell, I think more and more managers and leaders are understanding that you can't lead without people right. You can't still lead in a vacuum. And the only real way to do that is to find out what is it that you can do and how conversations that you can have to bring people in a certain direction. And there's just no way around it other than getting to know people. And so inquiring and asking questions reaching out, and then as a person entering into the workplace feeling that you have the right to be able to sort of express yourself and bring your real authentic self into the workplace and not feel like you have to conform to a standard that that doesn't fit you. You find the right organization that it's got a good cultural fit for you, and you shouldn't have to feel like you're some kind of outsider looking in. So it has a lot to do with starting those conversations. It's lots of small things. You know, it's not like you should go in there, and here's the five things, and once you do those, you're your team, and your relationships are off to a good start. It's ongoing. It's creating an atmosphere. It's creating a certain culture. It's creating a safe place where you can not only say things like you're crossing the line, but you can also say things like, you know, this might be a crazy idea, but here's what I think we might want to do on this project or you know I might be wrong or maybe we should go about this project a different way. So you're not just bringing sort of the what's going on. You're not just forming those relationships in order to find points of connection for the purpose of people feeling included. I mean, that's definitely one of the benefits. But when you start opening up those channels, and people feel they can bring their real self, then they can also contribute to the work in a fuller, deeper way. They can bring all their experiences into work and use that to fuel the work. And we find that when people can do that. Teams are more productive when you can really leverage diversity in that way in a really inclusionary way. Performance goes up. Productivity goes up. Satisfaction goes up. Organizational performance goes up. So lots of work-related positive work-related outcomes come out of this. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Inga Carboni. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals. With business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to our podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest Inga Carboni. Thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Thomas Taylor](images/thomas-taylor-102-thumb.jpg)
![The Business of Public Education](images/thomas-taylor-102-thumb.jpg)
Thomas Taylor
Episode 102: January 17, 2018
The Business of Public Education
When you think about K-12 education, you might think about academics, homework, athletics, and other education-related topics. But in many respects, public schools and public school districts are much like companies and businesses. Chesterfield County Public Schools, located just outside Richmond, Virginia, is a large school district with over 7,000 employees serving almost 60,000 students. In order to be successful, it employs a business-like approach to education management. Thomas Taylor is Chesterfield's Chief Academic Officer. Earlier in his career, he was an award-winning teacher and principal. As he climbed the ladder and became a superintendent, he realized he needed more training in business and leadership. So he went back to school and earned his executive MBA at William & Mary. He joins us today to discuss the business of public school education and how school districts can win when they adopt business practices.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. When you think about K through 12 education, you might think about academics, homework, athletics, and other education-related topics but in many respects, public schools and public school districts are much like companies and businesses. Chesterfield County Public Schools, located just outside Richmond, Virginia, is a large school district with over 7,000 employees serving almost 60 thousand students. In order to be successful, it employs a business-like approach to education management. Thomas Taylor is Chesterfield Chief Academic Officer. Earlier in his career, he was an award-winning teacher and principal. As he climbed the ladder and became a superintendent, he realized he needed more training in business and leadership. So he went back to school and earned his executive MBA at William & Mary. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss the business of public school education and how school districts can win when they adopt business practices. Here's our conversation with Thomas Taylor, Chief Academic Officer at Chesterfield County Public Schools. Ken WhiteThomas, thank you for taking the time to join us. It's great to see you back on campus. Thomas TaylorIt's an honor. Ken WhiteYou're going to be talking to our executive MBA class soon. You were in that seat couple of years ago. Where did you get the idea? I mean, you're in education. You're an educator to pursue an MBA. Thomas TaylorWell, I took the traditional educator path up to leadership. I was a classroom teacher. I became a principal and eventually a superintendent of a small rural school division, and in that superintendent seat, I was the largest employer in my community. And the more and more I looked at that, I saw that most school divisions were the largest employers in their community. And with that being the biggest business in town, I thought it was important for me to have a better understanding of how business operated and how my business could operate better. Ken WhiteI think when the average person thinks of School District schools, they tend to think academics that's just a piece of it. Thomas TaylorWell, that's great that they do because that's our core business. But on the other side of that, there is the financing of our school division and, of course, the expenditures of our school division. And that is very much a business function. The inherent connections that we make in business school to organizational dynamics and the human resources aspect, and even the IT leadership, all of those things are present. But a lot of people don't think about the balance sheet or the income statement or what actually gets done with our taxpayers once those funds have been transferred to the schools. Ken WhiteHow much of your day would you say you estimate spending on the quote-unquote business side of things? Thomas TaylorIn my function right now, as the Chief Academic Officer of Chesterfield County Public Schools, we're a pretty big company. We have nearly 8,000 employees. We serve as 64 schools that service is just short of 62,000 students. We've got a big constituency, and we spend a lot of our time, of course, working on our core business which is academics, but a huge part of that in my function as Chief Academic Officer is making the wheels run. And with that is making sure that people have the right resources that they need to be successful in the schools and in the classroom. So I would say that that is 80 percent of my job function. As a school division superintendent and my previous role, it was on nearly 95 percent of my function. Ken WhiteYeah. And one of the positives that I see working in the space I'm in graduate business education and undergraduate business education is if we wanted to, we could go and make money. Thomas TaylorRight. Ken WhiteTo pour back in. Are you able to do that, or do you have to work with what you what you've got? Thomas TaylorWe generally have to work with what we have. It is a political process. On the revenue side of the shop, and I think everybody is most commonly familiar with that aspect of the school business function. Tax dollars do at the federal, state, and local level do go to support public schools. But I think one of the things that gets lost is what happens after that. And what does the expenditure side of our business look like? What do we do in terms of procurement for large contracts and support of textbooks or instructional materials? Presently right now in Chesterfield, at one time, we had the nation's largest Chromebook deployment in a public school system that was a few years ago, and that was a big procurement project, and a lot of work went into that. We have currently nine capital projects going on right now for one new school build and eight renovations. With that is a significant commitment to time resources and having people with the background and the energy and the understanding of how those things work becomes really important. And just having folks who are conventionally trained as educators seems a little insufficient when you're dealing with an organization that's that size where we've got about a billion dollars worth of revenue, about 700 million in operating every year, and about 300 in capital every year. It's pretty significant. Ken WhiteOn-the-job training without a business background can only get you so far. Thomas TaylorExactly and that's where the NBA made a significant impact in my practice because it gave me some of the beginning pieces of a starter toolkit on how to really process, understand, and ask the right questions on how to run my business better. Ken WhiteYou also teach you, and I've had a conversation. You teach at the Curry School at UVA from time to time, and you said boy, my syllabus. I don't know if you remember you telling me it's my syllabus sure did change after I completed the program. How did you approach that differently? Thomas TaylorYeah. The course that I teach most often for the Curry School of Education at UVA is the school finance course. And before coming to the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at William & Mary, my course was very heavily focused on the day-to-day bookkeeping operations of what a principal might experience versus the 30,000 foot ten thousand foot and even five-foot views of what a superintendent principal, bookkeeper, CFO, and the community expects from the school system in terms of stewardship over their tax dollars. So I would say that this has this experience at Mason has dramatically changed my outlook in general. In addition to my outlook as a teacher and helping, folks understand how schools are financed and how they run better and more efficient. Ken WhiteAnd do you also try to give them the more you mentioned a longer outlook, ten, five years, ten years? Thomas TaylorYeah, the forecasting element, I think, is something that has been absent in a lot of school divisions for many years. And one of the I'd say unintended consequences and even a positive consequences of the financial crisis in 2008/2009 is it forced us to take a hard look at our stewardship over our tax dollars and to think really deliberately about how we can look at school finance in the long-range and really consider our long-range goals and work to get them get to those goals and achieve success. Because you can't do it all in one year when you have limited resources and to be really, really considerate and deliberate about how we use our resources and think about that in a more meaningful way. Ken WhiteYou've talked about operations, capital projects, the budget. In education, and do we refer to it as public education? Is that the right term? Thomas TaylorI think so. Ken WhiteYeah. Well, if you were to go meet with a 100 of your colleagues across the nation, what would some of the big issues be today that you're talking about? Thomas TaylorWell, in Virginia in particular, and I think we're ahead of the game in Virginia. We are heavily interested in workforce development. We are looking at the long-term outcomes of what a profile of a graduate in Virginia would look like in terms of what do we expect of our kids once they graduate, our pre-K 12 experience, and they're ready for life after high school, whether they are going to a traditional four-year college, a two-year community college, or trade opportunity, or they're going immediately into the workforce. You know what skills and things do they need in their toolkit to be successful and what that translates for us is how do we create opportunities for kids to have meaningful career exploration, develop their skills in a meaningful way so that they are prepared for the workforce? Are they great citizens? Can they communicate very well? Do they collaborate with others? Can they critically think? And are they creative in their problem-solving? Those are all of the kind of key issues that we're we're grappling with right now. Ken WhiteAnd great skills that they'll need for life, right? Thomas TaylorAbsolutely. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Thomas Taylor in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Once again the Center for Corporate Education is offering its popular certificate in business management program in April. It's a five-day experience designed for the working professional who wants a better understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Thomas Taylor. Ken WhiteAre we, as a nation sending too many students to college? Thomas TaylorThat's a great question. I wouldn't say that we're sending too many students to college. I would ask maybe a different question and say are we sending too many students to college focused in areas that aren't going to yield outcomes that are going to move productivity for GDP in the long-range? And that may be a better question for us to ask. Are we meeting expectations for productivity based on what we are sending kids to college to study? That might be the question. Ken WhiteAnd what do you think might be the answer? Thomas TaylorNo, we're not. We probably need to retool a little bit and come up with different ways to maybe monetize some historically humanities-based liberal arts instruction or to come up with different ways to look at some traditional pathways. Not that those traditional pathways are bad. In fact, they are what enrich our society and give us meaning in life. But to come up with new ways to turn that into productivity I think it's going to be really important. Ken WhiteHomeschooling. Growing? Stagnant? Where does that stand? Thomas TaylorI think about stagnant right now just based on some prime efficient look at trends. It's not growing. It's not going away. It's kind of flat. Ken WhiteWhat about online learning? How is that affecting a public school? Thomas TaylorThere's lots of different ways of doing effective online learning. Online learning can service a need, or it can help you know in the public school system. It can even be a profit center if you versus a cost center. If you really wanted it to be an additional component, I would say that the most effective online learning that I've seen, in particular with some of our learners, has been motivated learners who are seeking a specific task completion. We see this in the professional world like Lydia.com or even Khan Academy or something along those lines where a learner has a specific task that they're looking for filling a gap or are closing a gap and an online learning provides a supplement to the work that they're doing but wholesale online learning as a replacement in terms of replacing the brick and mortar setting in exchange for a virtual setting. We're not there yet, and it's maybe a good thing that we're not there yet because there's tremendous value in the interaction between peers. The interaction between students and the interaction between faculty and students in a meaningful way. That being said, you can't ignore the fact that this is a great way to help people who don't necessarily have access to that face-to-face environment. And this is a way for motivated learners to be very successful in trying to complete some tasks that they have set as an objective. Ken WhiteHow would you define a good parent in a school district? What would do good parents do? Thomas TaylorGreat parents are engaged, and that really is the bottom line. I'm a firm believer in that every parent sends their best to us every day. I'm also a believer in the general principles of public education that we teach who comes through the front door. We don't pick and choose who we teach. We take the best that parents give us every day. There are sometimes great heuristic value in what comes through the front door. But at the same time, any parent that is interested in is interested in advocacy is doing the right thing. It doesn't always materialize the way we sometimes want to see it in some traditional senses. But any parent that is interested in their students performance is doing a great job. Ken WhiteSo engagement means in their child. Thomas TaylorYeah, engaged in what their child is doing. Talking to their child about what they're doing in school. It's difficult to say what's a great parent and what's a bad parent because it's such a hard job to be a parent. And I think every parent can admit that there are some days that they do it better than others. Ken WhiteSure. Thomas TaylorAnd I think knowing that knowing to be as gracious as we can with parents on a day-to-day basis is really important. But I would. If I had to distill it down to one thing, I would distill it down to the fact that a great parent is a parent that's interested, and the great parent is the one that's engaged. Ken WhiteRight. There are teachers that will be listening to this who say I'm I might want to do what you're doing. Someday I might want to be a superintendent, a principal. What should they do in terms of business education to prepare for a role like this? Thomas TaylorWow, that would be wonderful. And I like I said earlier I've gone through a traditional path. I got a bachelor's degree in social science. I taught social studies. Got a master's degree in educational leadership and kind of learned the tricks of the trade, so to speak, for the principalship. Got a doctorate in policy from UVA, and those were great degrees and very helpful. But from a practical sense, the MBA kind of trumps them all, and not to say that everybody needs to get an MBA, but some kind of continuing education and understanding of basic business functions in accounting, in marketing, in organizational behavior, communications, IT management. These are all things that are going operations. These are all things that are going to serve the principal, serve the superintendent, serve the community in a very meaningful way. That have tangible outcomes on the bottom line for kids and tangible outcomes on the bottom line for stewardship of the tax dollar. So I would say, in general, seeking any type of professional continuing education that's led by outstanding business faculty would make a significant difference. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Thomas Taylor, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals. With business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to our podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Thomas Taylor and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Faculty & Staff](images/faculty-staff-101-thumb.jpg)
![Good Reads for 2018](images/faculty-staff-101-thumb.jpg)
Faculty & Staff
Episode 101: December 28, 2017
Good Reads for 2018
As the new year begins, you might spend some time creating lists—lists that include resolutions, goals, and maybe good books to read. That's where this week's podcast comes in. As 2018 kicks off, we spoke to some professors and professional staff members at William & Mary's School of Business and asked them to recommend a book for you and other professionals to read in the new year—a book that can help you in your career. We spoke with three professors, the Head of our Graduate Career Management Center, and the Executive Director of our Executive Partners and compiled a list of six books we think you'll find interesting and helpful in the year ahead.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, as the new year begins, you might spend some time creating lists. Lists that include resolutions, goals, and maybe good books to read. That's where this week's podcast comes in. As 2018 kicks off, we spoke to some professors and professional staff members at William & Mary School of Business and asked them to recommend a book for you and other professionals to read in the new year. A book that can help you in your career. We spoke with three professors, the head of our Graduate Career Management Center, and the Executive Director of our Executive Partners and compiled a list of six books we think you'll find interesting and helpful in the year ahead. Ken WhiteWe'll begin with operations and information technology Professor Monica Tremblay. As access to information continues to be readily available in 2018. Professor Tremblay recommends Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. The book's author Joel Mokyr examines the role information and knowledge played in the industrial revolution. Monica TremblayHis premise is that there's two types of knowledge: there's propositional knowledge and prescriptive knowledge. So propositional knowledge or what the people that create the set of knowledge he calls the knowers kind of the what is the discovery observation the laws of nature. And then there's prescriptive knowledge that are more the how-to. So how do you build an engine? And his claim is that, basically, the industrial revolution happened because suddenly, there was an intersection between propositional knowledge, so the what, and prescriptive knowledge, the how. Right. So previously, it was difficult to get access to propositional knowledge because of changes in technology, and technology doesn't have to be IT. It can be the printing press. Ken WhiteRight. Monica TremblaySuddenly the doers had access to propositional knowledge. So there was suddenly an intersection between proposition and prescriptive knowledge. And he described this as practical men gaining access to propositional knowledge. So in the past, knowledge was it was tacit, and it was oral. It was passed down, and specifically, the propositional knowledge was more for the elite. And so he claims that we started to codify knowledge, and we started to document propositional knowledge. And this created the industrial revolution and not necessarily the creation of new knowledge but the ability to allow knowledge to trickle down from the elite to the middle class. Ken WhiteThat's Professor Monica Tremblay. Her recommendation is Gifts of Athena by Joel Mokyr. Our next suggestion comes from Terry Shannon, Executive Director of the Executive Partners at William & Mary. The EPs, as they're known, serve as leadership coaches to the business school's MBA students. As a certified leadership coach, Shannon recommends the 2014 book Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence: How Extraordinary Leaders Build Relationships, Shape Culture and Drive Breakthrough Results by Chalmers Brothers & Vinay Kumar. Terry ShannonWhat he identifies is five fundamental leadership competencies the functional, technical, conversational, relational, and emotional. And if you think about it, it suits the frame that we work with and identify with our students very often. You know the technical skills and functional skills that you have, and resumé development will get you the interview. What gets you the job is the soft skills. That's your conversational skills. It's the relationship-building side of things. It's your emotional intelligence. How you come across and frame yourself in an appropriate fashion. So those are things that we work with the students on all the time from a focus standpoint. They're going to get all the technical and functional stuff that blocking and tackling in the classroom with our professors but from an EP standpoint and coaching standpoint, focusing on those soft skills are most critical. Ken WhiteYou're talking about students you also coach people who are quite experienced. Do you find this relevant to those folks as well? Terry ShannonRight. Because when it helps them do is create a framework of understanding because one of the areas that Vinay that the book dives into is what's referred to as speech acts, and he refers there's actually six of them assertions, assessments, declarations, requests, offers, and promises. And as a leader, understanding the distinctions between the different component those different components and how you come across in conversation, either in a group environment or in a one-on-one basis, can very clearly help drive awareness and activity and the culture of an organization. Ken WhiteLeadership coach Terry Shannon's recommendation for 2018 is Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence by Chalmers Brothers & Vinay Kumar. The Executive Director of the Graduate Career Management Center, Phil Heavilin, also suggests a book on leadership for the year ahead. This book, though, offers a unique take on the subject. Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALS Lead and Win by Willink & Babin. Phil HeavilinThis book intrigued me because, you know, here at William & Mary, we have a lot of military students, and so this book provides sort of a perspective from the military side in terms of leadership and leading teams and how they do it effectively. Cause, you know, the circumstances they're under are pretty extreme, to say the least, and certainly Navy Seals. You can't think of a group who works under more extreme conditions than that group. And so I was really intrigued in terms of what they had to offer from what they do and how it applies to business. Ken WhiteHeavilin says the book's three laws of combat are especially interesting. Phil HeavilinThe first law is cover and move, and this is all about teamwork and, most importantly, making sure that the individuals on your team understand what it is that they need to do and how it impacts the broader mission. The second law of combat was all about simplicity, and I really appreciate this because I think it's very common for us to overcomplicate things when we're looking at a problem and trying to think creatively about how to solve it. It's very easy to come up with a very complex solution to that problem. But they say keep it simple. Keep it simple so that your instructions to your team are easily understood, and they know exactly how it applies to the broader mission. The third law of combat is prioritize and execute. And this was great because it discussed the importance of knowing what it is your top priority is, what's your number one problem, not your top 50 your number one problem identifying that as a team, and then putting together they go through this step-by-step process of evaluating what that problem is. Making sure that you simplify it and then determine the solution as a team, and then put in place the solution that you need to execute to solve that problem. Then when it solved, you go back as a team and say, okay, what's number two? What's the next singular problem that we can tackle and execute? Ken WhitePhil Heavilin, Executive Director of our Graduate Career Management Center, recommends Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Willink and Babin. If 2018 is the year for you to closely examine your career and life. Marketing Professor Dawn Edmiston has a recommendation for you. She likes Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well Lived, Joyful Life by Burnett and Evans of Stanford University. Dawn EdmistonWhat these authors have done is they've taken the basic principles of design thinking to include the need to define ID8 prototype and test concepts, and then they've applied them to the process of designing your life or designing your career. And essentially, the authors want readers to get curious, talk to people, and try stuff. And they give us plenty of practical advice and exercises to use the phrase that they often use. We frame our thinking. So as an example, very often, individuals believe that my dream job is out there waiting. Instead, we could reframe that thinking whereby it would be you design your dream job through a process of actively seeking and creating it. Ken WhiteVery different approach. Dawn EdmistonVery different approach. Ken WhiteTo most people are looking at work and life. So why is it you like this? Dawn EdmistonI like it because it provides us with practical concepts. So it's very applied, which I think is important. For being a book out of Stanford University, one of the most renowned universities, and out of their D School to take these really tried and true academic concepts to be able to apply them to our daily lives at such an important part of who we are to understand what we can contribute and what we value and where we have purpose. And this book helps you do just that. Ken WhiteThat's Professor Dawn Edmiston and her recommendation Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well Lived, Joyful Life by Burnett and Evans. Well, regardless of your profession, job, or role, or your goals for 2018 being more influential can help you succeed. That's why Organizational Behavior Professor David Long is recommending Robert Chaldini's his book Influence. David LongOne of the fundamental things that any leader, communicator, manager, business person tries to do is try to get others to say yes, or to move closer to his position, or to conform to your opinion. Just you're trying to nudge and move someone along to get them going in a certain direction that you hope that they'll go in. And this book has done a great job of surveying the literature for decades and distilling down just a few principles that can guide others behavior. And it's based on fundamental drives and needs that others have. And if you can understand these principles, you can kind of capitalize on those on someone else's drives and needs to get them to move in your direction or say yes to your requests. It's really useful, practical, applied book for any person. Ken WhiteCan you share some of those? David LongSure. Ken WhiteYeah. Great. David LongSome of the principles that are identified in this book, for example, the principle of liking. People like and want to say yes to other people who they find appealing and attractive. So any way that you can do to get someone to like you, and this whole book is based on ethical practices, there's a lot of kind of manipulative and deceitful ways to do this. But if you can stay. Use your moral compass stay in the ethical realm. They're the most effective and appropriate ways to use these tools. But some of the most practical suggestions that Chaldini has for the principle of liking is uncover similarities. So if I know you're from Pittsburgh and if I've been to Pittsburgh and had food from Pittsburgh or I happen to like a sports team from Pittsburgh, uncover those because the person is probably going to start liking you more just because they feel closer and connected to you. And once you establish that relationship, they're going to see things the way that you hope that they'll see them and then maybe say yes to a request of yours. Ken WhiteOrganizational Behavior Professor David Long recommends Robert Chaldini's Influence. And lastly, if you don't mind, I'll share a recommendation for the year ahead. I like Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte. I especially like Duarte's approach to communication, which has an audience-centered approach, and that's what we teach here. Making it all about the audience are always about the other person. And this book focuses on the audience, and it helps the reader create stories and presentations that truly connect with that other individual. Also, Duarte makes sure through the book that your presentations cause others to take action, and that is effective communication. So to review our good reads for 2018, our professors and colleagues recommend the following books The Gifts of Athena by Joel Mokyr, Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence by Chalmers Brothers & Kumar. Extreme Ownership by Willink and Babin, Designing Your Life by Burnett and Evans, Influence by Robert Chaldini & Resonate by Nancy Duarte. We encourage you to read any or all of these to help make your 2018 your best year ever. Ken WhiteWell, that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals. With business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to all of our guests this week, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. And from all of us here at the Mason School of Business in William & Mary. Happy New Year. |
![Quimby Kaizer](images/quimby-kaizer-100-thumb.jpg)
![Your Why, How & What](images/quimby-kaizer-100-thumb.jpg)
Quimby Kaizer
Episode 100: December 20, 2017
Your Why, How & What
The end of another year. A good time for reflection. A good time to examine your life and career. In terms of your profession, one question you may want to ask yourself is: "Why?" Why do you do what you do? And is it the right fit? Our guest today encourages others to take time to examine their "why." Quimby Kaizer is a Principal at KPMG. She recently spoke to MBA students at William & Mary about their "why" and the way it connects with their "what" and "how." The point being, when the three are aligned, you feel happy, fulfilled, and successful.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. The end of another year. A good time for reflection, a good time to examine your life and career. In terms of your profession, one question you may want to ask yourself is why. Why do you do what you do, and is it the right fit? Our guest today encourages others to take time to examine their why. Quimby Kaizer is a Principal at KPMG. She recently spoke to MBA students at William & Mary about their why and the way it connects with their what and how. The point being when the three are aligned, you feel happy, fulfilled, and successful. Here's our conversation with Quimby Kaizer, Principal at KPMG. Ken WhiteWell, Quimby, thanks for being here. It's great to have you back on campus. How does it feel to be back here? Quimby KaizerOh, it always feels great. Feels like home. Ken WhiteYeah, and you just talked to a huge group of MBA students. What kind of what was that experience like for you? Quimby KaizerGreat to come back to think about being a first-year MBA again. It's a great opportunity to sort of put myself in their shoes, you know, two decades after I went through that process myself. So quite a treat to talk with them today. Ken WhiteAnd it was a career symposium, so that was you were the keynote, and the whole idea was talk about career. What did you share with them? Quimby KaizerI shared a couple of core messages around really owning your journey, owning your career, and to accomplish that. You have to be very clear about who you are and what drives you, what inspires you, what your purposes as an individual, as well as what you're trying to achieve, and hopefully, it's not always something that everyone focuses on when they're going through school but hopefully helping people pause and spend some time getting clear on those things so that they can communicate that to others. Ken WhiteAnd you talked about the why, the how, the what can. Can you walk us through that? Quimby KaizerYes. So for those that might be familiar. Simon Sinek wrote a book, Get Your Why, and has provided guidelines on how exceptional leaders get clarity on and come from a place of why versus the what and the how and I guess just to maybe thumbnail sketch it for people you know every single organization and individual has you know three elements the what the how and the why that drive them that really make up their existence again as an individual or an organization. Everybody can clarify and point to the whats because that's what you do right. It's what you get up every day. You get in your car. You go to work. This is what I do. So it's the products and services you sell. It's the subject matter that you know those type of things. Ken WhiteRight. Quimby KaizerThe how is more about how you bring those products to market. And so all organizations have, and I use my own example of management consulting because that's the industry that I'm in. You sell, you're doing business development, you're developing proposals, you have to hire people, although all organizations have to do that. You might have some secret sauce that you say hey, we do this how better than anyone else. You know you can differentiate yourself with your how, but truly exceptional leaders and truly exceptional organizations focus on the why. The center of his what he calls the Golden Circle and the why is really what inspires you, it's what drives you, it's your purpose, whether that purpose is you as an individual, which is, of course, what we were talking with the students about today but it's the why that can also rally an organization as well and give it meaning to give it purpose. And so we've talked about really needing to be clear on two things what your why is and what your goal is. And having that help drive your career journey. Ken WhiteAnd trying to get the why or purpose and the goal on the same page. Quimby KaizerCorrect. Ken WhiteSo they intersect. Quimby KaizerRight, because if you can get it on the same page, if you know what it is when you'll see it, when you'll recognize it when you see it out there in the world, and you also can start to align it with what you know the conversations you're having now we were talking about getting a job right. Ken WhiteYeah, sure. Quimby KaizerAnd getting and having a career. So if you know what drives you, you can start to see options in the you know in the environment about how your why can be applied, and if you don't, then you may end up focusing on the how or the what, which will be less effective. Ken WhiteHow important is that why? I mean to someone's success. Quimby KaizerI think is critical because it drives your satisfaction with what you do. It's your contribution to the world. It's how you serve others, and you'll be motivated by that regardless of whether you know it or not. Right. So if there is alignment and you're aware of it, you can look for opportunities that help you live your purpose live your passion. If you don't, then it's what I said that the students you could be miserable, right? You could be restless in your career. You don't like what you're doing. You don't understand where the alignment is with organization or with the things that you're doing when there's alignment with the why, the how, and the what. That's sort of true authenticity. That's when you're getting the most impact right in the world, and in your contribution, the best leaders in the premise, which I do believe in is that when you lead with your why and the how and the what are aligned to that, you can build trust, you will get customers you'll sustain your customers you'll retain employees because there's purpose there's clarity of purpose. Ken WhiteAnd be happy while all this stuff is going on. Quimby KaizerYeah, love what you do. We were talking about how wonderful it is to come to work every day because we love what we do, and we're excited about it. Ken WhiteI've asked a number of people on the podcast this question. I'll ask you how critical is it if someone wants to be successful. What's the role of passion? How passionate do they have to be regarding what they do? Quimby KaizerI think you have to be passionate because you want to be motivated, right? You want to get up in the morning with a spring in your step and not be dreading right having to go to work right. There may be moments that you dread, right? You may have a difficult conversation or, you know or an employee you gotta have a talking to or things like that, but I think, and this is what I also tell my staff as well, go where your passion is because you're gonna do it anyway right. You're your it's the things you're going to do without thinking about doing it. And you'll have more energy. You'll have more attention. You're going to go the extra mile when it's lined to your passion than if it's not. And you can start to see as you develop your career you start to see where that passion is, what do you do that you do even if no one's watching right. What do you pay attention to? And I think the passion is critical. Ken WhiteYou know I have a great opportunity to meet students constantly, not just at William & Mary but all over and whether it's an MBA or a senior who's an undergraduate. I think they get that why they get that purpose and the passion, but that salary is just is right in front of them, and they see that all the time, and you're a certified coach. So if one of those students came to you and said I know what I want to do, I don't see how it's going to be lucrative. How do you balance that? What kind of advice do you share with them? Quimby KaizerYou have to know what your goal is right. And so if your goal is to make a certain salary, then you should be aware of that, of course, right, because that could be a goal of yours. And then, you have to be clear about what your why is so that you can look for options that have that salary and meet your needs. Right. So what I would say is that you could have that as a goal, but you then have to be flexible about how your why is manifested in the world, right? So it might not be the job that you think it is or that you know about now. You may have to be more creative on how you stay focused on and have experiences or align to that why, but or at a certain salary threshold, right? Or you have to be okay with that not being a goal and then say you know what? I'm going to do something else. And because I'm making it more fulfillment or I'm going to get more joy right and passion out of this other thing I'm going to do. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Quimby Kaizer in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Once again, the Center for Corporate Education is offering its popular certificate in business management program in April. It's a five-day experience designed for the working professional who wants a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Quimby Kaizer. Ken WhiteYou talked a lot about the career progression. Some people see it as a ladder, and you talked about it being more like a rock wall. Can you share that with us? Quimby KaizerRight, so I think we've all heard about a career ladder we think about all you're moving up the ladder, right? Where are you on the ladder? And my premise was just giving a different analogy of a rock wall. And so the visualization we had was this huge massive cliff with lots, and lots of toe holds and finger holds for this little rock climber to move up and around. And when you think about what's in common with a ladder as it goes up and down. Right. So you could progressed in your career. You can also fall off. I didn't talk about the students, but you can fall off right. And that happens sometimes. You get bruised and bumped, but really the rock wall allows you to move laterally. I think that's one of the big differences and why the analogy I think is better is you have more flexibility to move around 360 and still be growing right. It doesn't have to be just up, and I think up also assumes you are progressing in your career, getting more different titles. I think a rock wall it's not about title. It's about experiences and about having options. The last analogy, you know, element that I like a lot, too, Is it because if you think of the total holds and the hand holds as options, you have lots and lots of choices. Right, you go down, you can go up, you can go sideways. It's really about gathering information and having a sense of what you're trying to accomplish. Having an informed decision based on information you gathered and then I wouldn't say reacting but proactively then taking that next step. Ken WhiteSo thinking more about the experiences versus the title and the promotion. Quimby KaizerCorrect. I've worked with lots of people who just say well, how do I get promoted? What do I need to do for that next level? Ken WhiteNo doubt. Quimby KaizerAnd I don't know. And you say, but that's just the wrong question, especially in the management consulting profession. I think that's a wrong question. It can be a goal. But it's a bad question to ask. Ken WhiteThat's so interesting because on the podcast and with so many people we interact with, especially when they're dealing with new employees, younger employees, boy, you know I've been here six months. Where's my new title? Where's my new raise? And so don't approach it from that standpoint, is what your saying. Quimby KaizerThink of it as experiences. There's so many dimensions of a job, right? You think about all the things you have to do now. I can tick off a couple of things just from management consulting for illustration purposes, but you've got your subject matter expertise and how you're doing that. You've got your client management right and developing relationships you've got. Your project management keeping projects on track. You've got financial management making sure that that work is profitable. You've got employee development that is critical. You've got business development and proposals that you have to do, so when you start to think about all the dimensions that make up being successful in a career. You need to move and get experiences in all of those dimensions, and those don't necessarily happen on a time schedule. Ken WhiteRight. Quimby KaizerRight. It's not a ladder where you have equal rungs, and you can just move up incrementally some. I would say some careers are more ladder-like than others. They're more structured. Ken WhiteSure. Quimby KaizerBut certainly, I think a lot are not that rote, and it is more about collecting experiences so that you can then work at that next level and understanding what those dimensions are. Being honest with yourself about where you are on those dimensions. It's not just about time in grade but about being aware of your proficiencies in those and then being ready for the next step through those experiences. Ken WhiteYeah, you mentioned being honest with yourself where you are, and as I mentioned, you are a coach. At what point should someone seek out a coach to help them along the way so that they are doing what they need to do? Quimby KaizerI think coaching is wonderful when you might be at a crossroads, or you might be stuck right. You might just not know what you need to do, and you need some inputs and maybe some structure help to guide you to think through what you're stuck on. So I hate to make the analogy to therapy because it's not therapy, but it's sort of analogous to getting some help, getting some insights, doing some work, and then taking action right, and having a coach doesn't have to be a forever thing. It's to help you get unstuck and get focused. So I think I think it's helpful at any point in your career, and I think at different times in your career could be helpful because you're working on different things. Ken WhiteYeah. Quimby KaizerIt's also a nice way to have someone who's supporting you. That's an outsider who can see things you can't see right. Sort of the blind spots and things like that, so it can be very insightful as well. I know that you know the organization I'm with now does help people get coaching support when they're working on certain aspects that we know that you know they might need to work on. So I'm I am very supportive of people getting support when they're stuck. Ken WhiteRight. Quimby KaizerSure. Ken WhiteYeah. You also talk to the students about plan-do-check-act. Can you tell us about that? Quimby KaizerWell, so I leveraged the plan-do-check-act model which Dr. Deming W. Edwards Deming came up with. He sort of the father of TQM Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Quimby KaizerWorked in Japan at the post World War 2 and supported the what they call the Third Industrial Revolution. So he's a rock star in the operations world and the total quality. Ken WhiteTQM, absolutely. You bet. Quimby KaizerYeah, there you go. Yeah, it's morphed over the years, but the basic premises are the same, and he used a simple model plan-do-check-act. So what I wanted to do is just use that simple formula to reinforce thinking of your career as an experiment and one knowing your plans to know your why, know your goal. And we talked quite a bit about that but then to when you're actually then doing checking, which is studying the results of what you've done and then acting on that. Doing it in a more research-like way. So that's why I use the experiment analogy, which gathers data. Right. You have an hypothesis. You gather data. You collect the data, you look at the data, and say okay, well, what does this mean to me? And then you adjust your plan and having that be a more positive way to think about your start of your career when we're talking to MBAs. But even thinking about your journey even within an organization as well because, you know, I think some people are afraid to get it wrong. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Quimby KaizerSo if you can think of it like an experiment and then you have incremental improvement, which is really what Deming plan-do-check-act model is about incremental learning incremental improvement. There's really no concept of a mistake right or a failure. It's all about just getting clarity and making choices with the data that you've collected. And that was what I was hoping to arm them with is, something simple to just think about their careers in that way. Ken WhiteTakes a lot of heat off a lot of the pressure off. Quimby KaizerYeah, exactly, and I think there's a lot of pressure right when you're come out of graduate school. You took two years off. Now you're stressed out about getting a job, and it helps you. It helps you not be as worried that if hey if I make a mistake, I'm still. This is still a continuous improvement process. You know my life and my career is going to evolve. Ken WhiteYeah, so final question. If someone's listening, who is either going to graduate with any kind of a degree soon or wants to make that change? What kind of advice do you have for them out of the gate to get started? Quimby KaizerKnow what you want, right know why you're doing it right. So I highly recommend that you know what your why is. I mean, there's lots of ways to do that. It could be finding your purpose to be working with a coach to find that it could be your passion, you know, highly recommend. Being clear on what drives you what inspires you so that you can align to that, you can be aware of it, and you can make choices based on that. Know your goal and to talk to people right. Use a method to gather information to inform your choices so it's the best choice you could make with the information that you have. That's all a decision is. Is just making the best choice you can with the information you have. I also recommend experimenting. I think we have lost the art of experimentation in the sense of try it out, see, you know, if it's shadowing somebody or you know, the best way to, I think, gather information is when you're not trying to find a job right. When right when work, when you're just exploring, and you're having a conversation, and I think most people want to help others get clear or to share. Everyone likes to talk about themselves right and to share their experience. So if people are thinking about a change, gathering information people you trust, or even taking a risk and reach out people that you don't know to try to get advice. Or if you have the opportunity to actually experience something, it may help solidify what you do and your decision right. If you're still unclear or you're uncomfortable, then it's probably you need to collect more data. And the question is, will then what data will help you be confident with the decision that you're trying to make? Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Quimby Kaizer, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks again to our guest this week Quimby Kaizer and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week., and productive week. |
![Joanna Stern](images/joanna-stern-99-thumb.jpg)
![In the Elevator With](images/joanna-stern-99-thumb.jpg)
Joanna Stern
Episode 99: December 12, 2017
In the Elevator With
The elevator. Certainly not one of the great venues for communication. When most of us are in an elevator, we usually look up, look down, or look at our phones. Having a conversation in an elevator is rare and often uncomfortable. In October, the Wall Street Journal changed that when it launched an online video series that has quickly become popular with viewers and leaders. It's called "In the Elevator With." Each episode features a short conversation—around two minutes in length—that takes place in an elevator between reporter Joanna Stern and a business leader. Guests have included the CEOs of General Motors, Intel, and Buzzfeed. Ariana Huffington, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Shaquille O'Neal have been featured on the series. Stern, who is the Wall Street Journal's tech columnist and Deputy Head of Video, joins us today to talk about "In the Elevator With," how it's produced, and what it's like to interact with the best in business.
Podcast (audio)
Joanna Stern: In the Elevator With TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. The elevator certainly not one of the great venues for communication. When most of us are in an elevator, we usually look up, look down, or look at our phones. Having a conversation in an elevator is rare and often uncomfortable. Well, in October, the Wall Street Journal changed that when it launched an online video series that has quickly become popular with viewers and leaders. It's called In the Elevator With. Each episode features a short conversation around two minutes in length that takes place in an elevator between reporter Joanna Stern and a business leader. Guests have included the CEOs of General Motors, Intel, and BuzzFeed. Arianna Huffington, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Shaquille O'Neal have been featured on the series. Stern, who is the Wall Street Journal's tech columnist and deputy head of video, joins us on the podcast today to talk about in the elevator with, how it's produced, and what it's like to interact with the best in business. Here's our conversation with The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern. Ken WhiteJoanna, thanks so much for sharing time with us today. I absolutely love the series. How did you come up with the idea? Joanna SternWell, thank you for saying that. I feel like we should have done this interview in an elevator, but we should get some dings in here. We should get some floor ding. Ken WhiteRight. Joanna SternSo the idea actually came out of a brainstorm we had here at The Wall Street Journal. We were gearing up for one of our bigger conferences of the year. It's called WSJT Live, and it's a tech conference where some of the biggest and brightest names in technology come and speak to us in front of a audience in Laguna Beach, and we had wanted to come up with a new way of sort of presenting conference video because video with two people sitting on stage doesn't tend to be all that enthralling to watch. And so we had this big brainstorm, and somebody in the room said, you know, something that always happens to me at conferences that get stuck in an elevator with someone really important, and I'm not really sure what I should ask or should I ask them anything. And is there a way to recreate that? And so a bunch of us started thinking, oh God, it's so hard to shoot in an elevator. How would we do that? How would we stop the elevator? How we would stop people from coming on? How would we even get these luminaries in the elevator? And a couple months later, we had a elevator set and a great production team to make this thing come to life. Ken WhiteYou've got to be having fun with this because you look like you're having fun when we watch it on video. Joanna SternI'm definitely having fun. Though, like, I think maybe I'm getting pretty good at concealing how nervous I am that some parts of this production won't go right. Obviously, there's a lot of magic in editing, but right now, we script out the questions we ask. I ask about 15 to 20 questions of the guest. And then we sort of edit together some of the best, and some are not that great. Some are some answers are not that great. Some are stronger, and then we try to find the best balance of good questions vs. bad questions or bad answers. Ken WhiteThe guests are fantastic. I mean CEOs of Intel, General Motors, Buzzfeed. How do you come up with who you want to interview? Joanna SternSo I mean, the beauty that we had was we rolled this out at our WSJT Live conference. And so we had on on the docket there a great list of people we had appearing on stage and I sort of narrowed down that list to the people I thought would really be well and do well in this setting and were to answer questions in a really lively way in this setting and also, of course, we look at sort of what is our audience interested in right. Our audience is obviously interested in technology. They're interested in bigger picture themes about what is the emerging technologies are coming out, so someone from Intel would be good, but obviously, are audiences also interested in media, so somebody from BuzzFeed would be good. Ken WhiteWhat have you heard from your audience? What kind of reaction have you gotten? Joanna SternSo there's a mix. I think some people really feel like there's a lot of fun in this. There's fun in pretending at least that we catch some of these people off guard, and there's also the interesting side of seeing some of these guests, you know, a little bit laid back, and we're asking some fun questions things from what did you want to be when you grow up to you know what's one way to make sure meetings don't suck so there's a lot of good reaction on that. I think some people feel like, oh, this is really staged, and there's, you know, some of these guests are trying to act, and it's not working for them. Ken WhiteWow, I think they come across great. It's funny. I think we forget when we see CEOs and leaders. We know they can communicate. We just assume they can communicate in every setting. This is an odd setting. There's a camera, two cameras probably in the set. You've got a set. You've got lights. It could be, you know, it could really throw them a curveball, but I think they come off fantastic. What kind of reaction do you get from the guests when they're done recording? Joanna SternSo definitely, the guests feel like, oh wow, this is something I've never done before because many of these CEOs or luminaries have obviously been trained. They're media trained, but they're definitely not media trained to sort of act as if they've been caught off guard in an elevator with an interviewer. So they all sort of step out and say oh wow did I do good there? Did that make any sense? That's going to be a terrible video. Then many of them are always pretty shocked when we edited it together that it actually seemed like a pretty natural conversation on an elevator. But yeah, it's a set. So there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of acting that has to go into this. I mean, you know, I would say really true method acting that we have to all get into our roles, but we you walk into a set, you pretend to push a button. We don't actually have a button there. And then we've got three cameras. And a crew of people watching. So it's you're also sort of performing for the people in the room. Ken WhiteYou know, I get the feeling, having been a big television fan throughout my life, you know, there are certain series where actors just really want to be on as guests friends was one of those shows. Will and grace was one I can see this year series becoming one of these as CEOs and especially their PR people saying wow, this is a great setting for our CEO to be in. So do you have people pitching to you? You know, talk think about our CEO or think about one of people from our company as a guest? Joanna SternYeah. So so we right now, I'm getting lots of pitches from public relations companies, etc., talking about or asking for their clients or different people they represent to appear on in the series. Right now, I'm trying to keep it to really C-suite executives and people who you know we had Shaq in there for the last time, so Shaquille O'Neal, who is working with a tech startup called ring, had been sort of for lack of a better word schilling for four ring but we got him in the elevator, and we got him talking about a lot of different things. Yeah, we definitely have a lot of people interested. It's now just making the call on which are the right guests and what do our audience actually want to see. Ken WhiteSo you said you started at the conference. Did you have the set set up at the conference as well when you first started shooting? Where's the set now? Joanna SternWe did. So we had we actually had the set built for the first time in a hotel room at the conference center. So it was in a hotel suite which was a was a very tight squeeze in there both in the elevator set and in the actual room, and now we have in our Wall Street Journal studio in New York, which we've just recently redone. We have it positioned in the studio, and we know where we're trying to schedule shoots about one or two days a month so we can get you know a number of people in and out of the elevator so we can shoot all at once and don't have to keep tearing down the cameras and the lights. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Once again, the Center for Corporate Education is offering its popular certificate in business management program in April. It's a five-day experience designed for the working professional who wants a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management program, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Joanna Stern. Ken WhiteYour primary role is tech columnists, right? Is that correct? Joanna SternIt is, yes. Ken WhiteSo this was somewhat new for you. Is that right? Joanna SternIt is, and it isn't, so my role at the Journal since I started about four years ago has been a tech columnist. So I was hired as one of the tech columnists to replace the great Walt Mossberg, who really pioneered tech or gadget reviewing in the media world. And so when I was hired, part of that was that they wanted to have someone who was strong at video, and one of my one of the things I've worked on over the last ten years is how to build a personality on video around reviewing gadgets and reviewing technology, and so I had a lot of video experience I had come from working at ABC News Network then both on the TV network and on their digital properties. And so every week I did a column, but I also did a really nicely produced video where I was sort of telling the story in video form, and that's how I've I've really kind of, I think, come to be known at the Journal and outside the Journal as being sort of having this unique video voice and then actually about seven months ago it is now there was a big turnover in our video department here, and I helped sort of spearhead the change, and we are I am now currently one of the deputies of the video department. So I also help run the video department, so that was sort of the melding of two worlds. Here I was on camera, but I'm also helped manage behind the scenes this project. Ken WhiteYou know, back in the day, a print reporter was a print reporter, and someone who did television was television. The media are blended now, aren't they? Reporters are expected to know how to communicate on all channels, it seems. Is that a fair statement? Joanna SternYeah, I mean, I would say one of the challenges and one of the things I do here at the Journal is help people or help print reporters figure out what their video voice may be. And recently, I've worked with our tax reporter Rich Rubin who is very busy this week informing a series around taxes and how do we make a video series about taxes that's lively and interesting and fun and really leverages Rich, who is just a world-renowned reporter on taxes. And so it's a challenge. It's not as simple as just throwing a reporter in front of a camera and saying tell us what you know about this subject, and in some cases, I mean in the case of the talking taxes series, there's multiple editors in there in sort of the process of both scripting Rich but also figuring out what are the visuals that help enhance an explainer on taxes. So yes, I would say it's changing, and you find many reporters who are open to figuring out how to take on a different medium. But it's very different, and the storytelling you do on the page is very different than the storytelling you do in front of the camera or behind the camera. Ken WhiteWhy is it important for the Journal to do cool series like these and post videos like these, and showcase their reporters online? Joanna SternYeah, I mean, I think it's important in the sense of what what we feel at the Journal is important is that we want to be the leading publication for business, finance, markets, news, technology news, and we want to be that leading publication in all forms for our audience. And so part of that is obviously reaching people in the ways that they've known about the Journal, may that be on the page and that be in actual print and newsprint or whether that be in the digital, you know our website or our apps and video is a really interesting distribution for us because we can reach our current audience, but we can look at other types of audiences who are looking to consume news in a different way in a more visual way. And so, for us, it's about the tried and true mission of the Journal, which is to be this outstanding publication but to deliver the stories in new and different ways. Ken WhiteThis might be an unfair question so I won't ask you who your favorite guest has been. But do you have a favorite experience that maybe you've had since you started producing the series? Joanna SternI think the Arianna Huffington experience was very fun. It was very funny. It was our first one, and you know for, people have an eye for how video should and shouldn't look. You can see that we clearly didn't know what we were doing fully on the technical and production level there. Like the lighting cues didn't work, the shots weren't the best, but the funny story really is we told all of the guests, you know, we want to go through the questions two to three times, and we laugh off a period of time. And Arianna came in. She did the interview, and it was good. It was really good. And you know, people who watched that one really appreciated her and appreciate the questions I asked. But we went through it once, and so I said, okay, it's great we're gonna go through it again, and she just said no. She said no, that was great. I nailed it but we're done. And we were like, but we still have 10 minutes left. She is no, no. We're done here. So she felt really confident in her performance, and you know, she felt like it was time to move on. Ken WhiteThere you go, one take, and that was it, right? That's fantastic. Joanna SternShaquille O'Neal, I think you know you see it there in his presence how much bigger he is than me. But I think that actually like kind of psychologically affected me because I was standing when we first started. Like going through the interview, I was realizing, God, this guy is really huge, and you know, he was definitely a little bit more on the dry and sarcastic side than I thought. And so I felt sometimes I was kind of pulling at him for some answers, but yeah, it was a real that was a very interesting experience. Ken WhiteYeah, and that was the first one I saw. And I just thought it was fantastic. Yeah, he is very dry and very sarcastic, but some of the questions, especially when you ask him if he's jealous of any of the players in the NBA today, and he's, yeah, all of them because they're not half as good as I was and they're making a lot more than I was making. I just thought, you know, great. It seems like a lot of really good give and take, and it seems like the people, the leaders and CEOs and guests you have, they've got to be authentic, but you've got to know how to have a little fun too, don't they? They can't be so serious. Joanna SternOne of the issues that we do run into is that many of these CEOs and media or executives are media trained, and so they want to say the answer that they've prepared in their head, but it's actually not the best answer or the best delivery for this format. And so you really have to have someone who's sort of good at improv, good at really winging it and responding to a question off the cuff. Ken WhiteYeah, and you're media coaching in a way as you're interviewing them at the same time that it sounds like. Joanna SternYeah, it's tough. It's a different. Ken WhiteMoving forward, not to give away any secrets, but is there anyone you'd really like to have on as a guest or someone you're looking forward to having on? Joanna SternI do have some hopes and wants that should probably actually start to ask these people, but I guess so. If Tim Cook if you're listening, I'd love to get you. I'd love to run into you in the elevator. Funny enough, Tim Cook is, was the one who prompted this idea because we ran into Tim Cook in the elevator in real life in our at our conference, and you know what do you say to the CEO of Apple in a conference? Can you fix my iPhone, maybe? So that would be one. Mark Zuckerberg if you're listening would love to get you inside the elevator. I think those are my top ones from the tech perspective. I'm sure you know anyone else any other big names out there right now. People are buzzing about would be good. I think we would actually leave Harvey Weinstein off the list. Ken WhiteGood point. Yeah, good point. Joanna, thanks so much. I know you're busy. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Thanks very much, and good luck with the In the Elevator With. We appreciate it. Joanna SternThank you. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions pertaining to the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Joanna Stern, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Marcelo Barros](images/marcelo-barros-98-thumb.jpg)
![Coming to America](images/marcelo-barros-98-thumb.jpg)
Marcelo Barros
Episode 98: December 5, 2017
Coming to America
Some young professionals living outside the United States today see the American MBA—the Master's Degree in Business Administration—as a pathway to a job, and life, in the US. Many of those international students enroll in full-time MBA programs where they quit their jobs, leave home, and study full-time on campus for two years. International students are important to US business schools. Among other things, they bring diversity, a global viewpoint, and tuition dollars to the business school. Depending on the full-time MBA program, international students make up one-third to one-half of the student body. But getting a job in the US can be a challenge for them. Marcelo Barros works with international students to help them find work in the US. He's a coach, consultant, and author of "The International Advantage: Get Noticed, Get Hired." He joins us today to talk about how international students can find work after graduation.
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Marcelo Barros: Coming to America TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, some young professionals living outside the United States today see the American MBA, the master's degree in Business Administration, as a pathway to a job and life in the US. Many of those international students enroll in full-time MBA programs. Where they quit their jobs, leave home, and study full-time on campus for two years. International students are important to US business schools. Among other things, they bring diversity, a global viewpoint, and tuition dollars to the business school. Depending on the full-time MBA program, international students make up a third to half the student body. But getting a job in the US can be a challenge for them. Marcelo Barros works with international students to help them find work in the US. He's a coach, consultant, and author of the international advantage get noticed get hired. He joins us on the podcast today to talk about how international students can find work after graduation. Here's our conversation with Marcelo Barros. Ken WhiteWell, Marcelo, thank you for joining us. First of all, it's nice to see you. You and I worked together a few years ago. It's great to have you back again to campus. Marcelo BarrosThank you, Ken. I'm so excited. Beautiful day at the William & Mary campus November 28th just thrilled to be here. Ken WhiteIt's nice to have you here, and you just finished a couple of sessions with full-time MBA students who come to us from other countries, and they're labeled as international students. Many of those in United States MBA programs from around the world, and you deal with those types of students and help them get jobs. What do you see as the landscape today for that that that international student who comes to the US and would like to work here? What's it looking like for you? Marcelo BarrosIt's a very difficult journey for these students. Ken, as you're probably aware, a lot of us are hearing the news. There is a lot of talk about making it more difficult than in previous years for companies to hire international workers. So it's always been a little bit of a battle for a US firm to bring a foreign worker on payroll, but now we see additional scrutiny from the White House and other agencies on the process that firms need to go through to hire international students. So definitely a tricky environment for our international students. Ken WhiteWhat's the work visa situation like at this point? Marcelo BarrosWell, the good news is that the typical visa that international students need the so-called H1B visa. The rules about this visa haven't really changed. So that is surprising news for a lot of people. But the rules are what they've been for many years, for the most part. But we have a climate of uncertainty and a climate of fear, and because of those two factors, companies are even more reluctant to consider international students because they fear that down the road, they could be under more scrutiny, and they need to be giving the government more paperwork about international hires, and no company likes that. Ken WhiteIf a company is they may be smaller and does not have any employees who are outside the country, what do they have to go through to hire an international applicant? Marcelo BarrosYeah, it's actually not that complicated of a process. Maybe it's no harder than filing for your taxes. That's the way I put it. But the reality is there's risk. There's risk because the demand for H1B visas today far exceeds supply. So if I'm an international worker and you hire me, Ken, to work at your firm, there may be a chance that you're going to lose me come H1B lottery time, and that's, of course, not a good situation for US employers. Ken WhiteRight, now, oftentimes, what we'll hear from international students they'll see a company they really like. They'll meet somebody from the company, and the organization says. Unfortunately, we don't sponsor. What advice do you have for international students who hear that? Marcelo BarrosWell, my advice is talk with companies that do sponsor. I think that's very critical. You have to align yourself with names that have proven to be historically friendly towards international students. And luckily, we're able to access those names. So it's not a secret to understand which firms have sponsored in the past. So when international students tell me hey Marcelo, we're hearing a lot of sorry, we don't sponsor. I sort of say you are knocking on the wrong door. You should be speaking with firms that do sponsor. Ken WhiteMakes sense. Now and there has been success. I mean, you go around to top business schools all over the country our international students have had great success. So it's not all doom and gloom, but it's a lot of work, isn't it? Marcelo BarrosIt is a lot of work, but you're so right. As I'm talking to you here, I'm thinking of a couple of international MBA students from William & Mary from the Mason School of Business who found great jobs in the US. So the, success stories do exist. They are not rare. I think though international students underestimate the amount of readiness and work that's really needed for them to be successful. There is a limited number of firms that provide sponsorship. Therefore a lot of competition for those few jobs, so you really have to be a top applicant in order to win. Ken WhiteAnd which you help students with all over the country is networking. And this is something that's quite unusual for some cultures. In America, as you say, it's often who you know, but for other cultures, networking is really something they've not experienced before. Marcelo BarrosYou know, so true, and when I first arrived in this country 24 years ago as an international student, I had a host family, and they were asking me about my plans after graduation. And I told them I think I would like to work in the US if possible. And that was the first time they told me. Marcelo, remember, in the US, it's who you know. It's not what you know. That was 23-24 years ago when I learned that from a local American family. And I've tried to instill in our international students the need for them to be proactive and create genuine relationships with individuals who could potentially refer them to jobs. Many of our international students are too academically focused. They are phenomenal students, but they worry so much about grades and GPAs. And they don't pay enough attention to that relationship part of the job search journey. Ken WhiteBut that's a cultural thing, right? That's just who they are. Marcelo BarrosIt is a cultural thing. They are wired to be focused on academics. That's what they've done all their lives. A US student, for example, is just much more used to working high school kids work at McDonald's or deliver newspapers, so the working culture the relationships are much more common for US students, in my opinion, compared to our international students. Ken WhiteSo one of the things you, well, many of the things I think you share with MBAs and STEM students and graduate schools across the country is set up the informational interview, and that works for domestic students and international students as well. Can you tell for someone who's not familiar what's the informational interview and how does a young person go about creating one? Marcelo BarrosI think the informational interview is an opportunity available to all of us. It's an opportunity for us to learn from people who have jobs that we think are interesting roles that perhaps we are excited about pursuing as well, and we all know that most folks they are excited to talk about their lives. They like to talk about what it is that they do. So an informational interview is a chance to collect some data about a particular job, a particular industry. It's a way for a job seeker to become informed. It's a way for you to know do I really fit in that job. Is that the right position for me? Do I have the skills that the employer is looking for? So it's data gathering, in my opinion. Ken WhiteBut I want a job. And is this still a good tactic? I assume the person knows I want a job when I'm asking them for the informational interview, but your strategy is learn so much first and not necessarily give me the job correct. Marcelo BarrosYes. I usually say, Ken. I tell students. If you ask for a job, you get advice. If you ask for advice, you'll get a job. So I think that when you approach people with this desire to learn. When you're immensely curious about what they do and who they are. When you ask thought-provoking questions, these start really appreciating you. And then oftentimes they say, Ken, I think you would be a great fit for my team, or I know somebody at this company who I think you would be terrific for them. So I think folks have the opposite reaction when you call them, and you say I'm looking for a job. Do you have an opportunity at your firm? They may not know you too well. They don't have a connection with you. So it's a little too aggressive too fast. We have to build a connection with people when and when we do that correctly. Often times they proactively offer job leads to all of us. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Marcelo Barros in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering customized business and leadership development programs taught by William & Mary's world-class business school faculty. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Marcelo Barros. Ken WhiteEven when I think of the domestic student raised in the US who happens to be an introvert trying to arrange an informational interview, is gets them out of their comfort zone. I can imagine it's ten times for the international student. So how do they go about arranging an informational interview? Marcelo BarrosI think our international students are very puzzled by the idea that in this country, we're free to contact anybody. It doesn't matter if this person is the CEO of a firm. It's a very egalitarian type of culture, and it's a luxury that the United States provide us, and we have great tools available today that make it pretty easy for us to identify professionals. Again who have jobs and careers that we like, so we all have the opportunity to contact anybody in the United States as long as we're genuine. As long as we're professional, we're respectful, it's very okay, and I encourage folks to really take the opportunity. You never know you may get a response back. Sure I would love to talk to you. It happens a lot, but we must take the initiative. Ken WhiteAnd I notice I've heard you mentioned the students in the past. And just because it's the CEO, don't write that person off. Not many people ask the CEO to connect. Marcelo BarrosIt is so true. That's one of the barriers we pose. We see a job title, and it says CEO, and as a student, as an MBA, I'm thinking, wow, why is he going to take a minute? Well, you should email that person again if you're interested in that CEO's firm. If you're interested in his life journey, don't let that title keep you from reaching out to that person and exactly what you said. That individual probably does not get that many requests in the first place, so he or she may really enjoy hearing from a student. Ken WhiteHow does the applicant get people to want to talk with them on an informational interview? Marcelo BarrosWhat we talked about this morning with the international students was we must when we approach individuals, we must make it precisely clear why it is that that person is the only person on earth that is ready to help us. So when you approach somebody, you need to be able to say, Ken, I've decided to contact you because and I need to answer that question in a way that really makes you feel, wow, this person really knows my background. This person just didn't spend two seconds on my LinkedIn profile. This person really understands what it is that I do and wants to talk to me. And when you do that in a very genuine way, people feel that your outreach to them was very professional, very genuine, and they are more apt to say yes. Ken WhiteYeah, it's impressive, right? You did your homework. Marcelo BarrosYou did your homework. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. You also talked a little bit today. I thought this was real interesting about vulnerability in this whole process. Can you share that with us? Marcelo BarrosYes. So you attended the session this morning here at the Mason School of Business, and I really focus on the concept that it's okay not to have all the answers. It's more than appropriate to really be very frank with people and say I've been looking for a job. I think I've been doing everything correctly, but the reality is I'm not getting any interviews. So when you put the cards on the table with people, when you're very frank and honest with them, they are much more willing to troubleshoot your situation with much more precision and care. The opposite happens when you approach people in a guarded way with this notion that you have to impress those we talked to. When networking, we're trying to build relationships, and the best way to build relationships is through honesty. And if you're being if you're having difficulties getting a job, whether you are an international student or a domestic student, you must disclose that to people. You also though for vulnerability to work. This is what we discussed today with the students that we talked to. You must demonstrate value and that you have done your homework. So the equation of being competent but vulnerable they seem very counterintuitive, but they can coexist. Ken WhiteInteresting. Now, as you go around all over the country and talk with students, what are some of the common questions you hear from them or some of the hurdles they're experiencing that are quite common? Marcelo BarrosWell, so going back to the session we had this morning, I think the conversation that we had with international MBAs today is a conversation where it makes me feel vulnerable because I'm talking with something I'm talking about something with them that goes a little bit against what they believe they need to do. They believe that they need to pitch. They believe they need to sell themselves at all times. They believe they need to be perfect and tell the world exactly what they want to do after graduation. So a common question that I get from international students is, Marcelo, how do I find this balance of showcasing my skills but also doing what you're asking us to do, which is really to be very honest with people about our difficulty? So finding the right balance is a common question that students ask me. Ken WhiteInteresting. I love what you said earlier today you don't go to the gym once a week and expect to be fit. Don't expect to network once a week and expect to find a job. This is work, and this is something that people have to do on a regular basis get out there and connect with people. Marcelo BarrosIt is something that needs to be done on a regular basis, and it's not something that many of us like to do. It is, but it is just as important as exercise. So even you need to find a way to motivate yourself and give yourself a goal and say I'm going to create two new contacts this week, and that's your target, and you drive towards that number. And if you do it often enough, it starts getting easier. It starts getting more fun. It's not so painful. It's just like going to the gym. Those first few tries will be extremely painful, but then you get into a good rhythm. And what we try to do here with the international MBAs today is to put them on this path of finding their rhythm so they can self-sustain and continue the activity. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with consultant, coach, and author Marcelo Barros. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals. With business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Marcelo Barros, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dr. Kelly Crace](images/kelly-crace-97-thumb.jpg)
![Human Flourishing](images/kelly-crace-97-thumb.jpg)
Dr. Kelly Crace
Episode 97: November 28, 2017
Human Flourishing
When it comes to your life and your career, how are you doing? Would you say you are flourishing? Most people don't use that term to describe their life, career, and mindset. In fact, most of us are chronic evaluators. We spend much of our time judging ourselves, and when we do that, it becomes difficult to flourish. Our guest today helps professionals and students get to a deeper place—to a consistent level of productivity, fulfillment, and resilience. A place of human flourishing. Dr. Kelly Crace is Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at William & Mary, and joins us today to discuss human flourishing, and how you can move to a different—and better—level.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. When it comes to your life and your career, how are you doing? Would you say you're flourishing? Well, most people don't use that term to describe their life, career, and mindset. In fact, most of us are chronic evaluators. We spend much of our time judging ourselves, and when we do that, it becomes difficult to flourish. Our guest today helps professionals and students get to a deeper place to a consistent level of productivity, fulfillment, and resilience. A place of human flourishing. Dr. Kelly Crace is Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at the College of William & Mary. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss human flourishing and how you can move to a different and better level. Here's our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace. Ken WhiteWell, Kelly, thank you for taking the time to be with us today. You and I are recording right before Thanksgiving. So the holidays are upon us. It's a busy time. Thanks for joining us. Kelly CraceThank you, Ken. I appreciate the invitation. Ken WhiteWould you describe what you do? I was going to describe what you do, but I think it'd be better coming from you. In your profession, what is it you do and try to do to help people in their lives, I guess? Kelly CraceRight, well, it's been a long journey of over 33 years of really just a fascination and a curiosity as to what really truly predicts human flourishing. Flourishing has been defined a lot of different ways, and it's a very popular term today, but back then, when we were studying it, it was really kind of a consistent level of productivity, fulfillment, and resilience. So when we're flourishing, you feel like you're doing good work, you're finding meaning in that work, and you're able to be resilient through the hardness and sometimes unfairness or harshness of the world around that work. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceAnd that's when we're flourishing, and in our studies of that, we realized that people that consistently flourish they weren't born that way. They work at it. They are very intentional about it until we became fascinated with can you train this? Can you actually develop a training program to help facilitate and foster flourishing in a world where it's hard to do that? Ken WhiteIs flourishing another word for happy happiness? Or how do you define it? Kelly CraceNot exactly. In fact, one of the things it's interesting it's kind of paradoxical but one of the things that we learned is, and it's related to some of these paradigm shifts that we're going to talk about today is we found that people that consistently flourish they actually don't strive for happiness they strive more for meaning they're more intentional around what is meaningful to me what what is right for me from a values lens. And paradoxically they experience more happiness, but they don't strive for it whereas when we strive for happiness, we become overly sensitized to how are we feeling right now so if I'm happy how do I hold that happiness. And if I'm not happy, what I need to do right now to get happy? Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly CraceAnd it's more of a volatile experience. Ken WhiteIt's sort of like going up to the plate and telling yourself I have to hit a home run. You're just not going to do it. Kelly CraceExactly. Ken WhiteThat's not going to happen. Kelly CraceYou're exactly right. Ken WhiteTell us about the authentic excellence initiative. Kelly CraceThat is the kind of a mental training program that we developed from our research as we started learning the factors that people do that consistently flourish in our fascination with can you train that? This training program is designed to kind of move people through thinking differently and kind of training their brain. It's a brain training program of getting them to be more intentional around certain paradigm shifts that foster a deeper level of excellence a deeper level of productivity, and fulfillment. And it's just centered around doing that training program around these five paradigm shifts. Ken WhiteAnd you call it paradigm shifts for moving beyond our neurology. Kelly CraceRight. Ken WhiteYeah. What an interesting title. Kelly CraceYes. Ken WhiteThere are five, and can we walk through them? Kelly CraceWe can. Ken WhiteThe first one from values clarification to values relationship. Kelly CraceRight. So when we talk about moving beyond our neurology. What exactly does that mean, and what we're finding in today's world? The most natural human motivation is fear. We are naturally motivated by fear, and we also have a nervous system that is designed to respond to that. And so our nervous system is wired for crisis and regulation. That's kind of what we're wired for, and we're finding that in this world of relentless change, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of pressure, and a lot of structure in our lives, our children have experienced structure in their lives since they're two years old all the way through getting to college and building that portfolio to get them to college. That kind of world creates a certain level of stress and pressure that kind of causes us to hover around our neurology and what that means is I'll lead with my natural motivation of fear. Fear will kind of guide that, and we'll kind of base our day based on have to and comfort. So the crisis and regulation thing is we'll create little mini-crises of what do we have to do today what has to be done today in our system gets geared up for that. And after we've done that, we naturally seek comfort. We naturally look for some kind of way of finding comfort or regulation to our life, which is fine. That is fine. But it's also what keeps us moving to this deeper level of effectiveness, this deeper level of meaning and excellence. The five paradigm shifts are designed to move you to that deeper place. We are a purposeful relational species. So we're intended to be more than just living at our neurology. And so, for you to have any chance to flourish, we must have a sense of purpose, and we must understand that purpose in the context of the relationships around us and the world around us. These five paradigm shifts kind of get at that. So that first one. But does that make sense? Ken WhiteYes, absolutely. Right. Kelly CraceSo the first one is this shift of how we've always heard that values are good for us and that it's important to be value-centered in terms of how we live and how we lead. It's very common in our language today. But what we learned is people that flourish. They move beyond values clarification. Values clarification can become this kind of badge of here are my top five values or here is my badge of my values, which can often become like a platitude or an idealistic mission statement personal mission statement which are good, but we find they really don't tap into a deeper level of motivation. While fear is our natural motivator. The deepest form of human motivation, the purest form of human motivation, is our values, but only if we move from what my values are to a relationship with your values. So interestingly, we find that people that flourish they usually one to two times a year will get away by themselves and either formally through some kind of assessment program or through just their own reflection. They ask themselves what matters to me now and how well does my behavior reflect that. How would people know that about me? And they start to understand the relationship they have with their values. How is it healthy? How is it unhealthy in the same way of their relationships with other people? They really strive to develop a closer relationship with their values in a healthy way. That's what moves them to this deepest form of human motivation that can stay consistent through stress through pressure, and through mood. We can not be in the mood to be motivated, but when you lead with a deep relationship with values, you can, you can tend to stay motivated through hardship. Ken WhiteInteresting. Is this? Do you take them step by step? Is this where you start? Step one from values clarification to values relationship. Kelly CraceSo part of our research has been on the empirical assessment of values. We spent over ten years taking a completely empirical approach to really trying to assess values at a level that was culturally sensitive. That was generationally sensitive, and that was less about values and fusion. Instead of this is, what you should value is know what are your values. But the assessment was a little different instead of being just a values assessment or a personality assessment. It's designed to be a snapshot of what your current relationship is with your values. So that's the process of the values. So what we'll first do is take them through that assessment it's called The Life Values inventory, and it's an open educational resource, so it's free and available to anyone. But it takes them about 20 to 30 minutes to go through that, and then we walk them through a process of asking them questions about their results that are more relational. So, what value is causing you the most fulfillment in your life and why. What's causing you the most stress and why. What has changed, what value has changed the most for you over the past few years and what value are you hoping to affect this coming year? Just relational-type questions to actually create this bond with their values that is a deeper motivation. Ken WhiteYeah, and you say most of us do take a little time here and there to think about it. What do you prescribe? What should we do? Kelly CraceAt least once a year, sometimes twice a year but at least once a year when you can feel somewhat clear-minded and clear-hearted that you can really get away and be compassionate in your thinking, not judgmental. That really open-minded and open-hearted of an intent to understand. We kind of talk about it's better to be in an analytical framework than an evaluative framework cause analytical is the true intent to learn. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceEvaluative is very personal. Good, bad, successful. Ken WhiteJudgmental. Kelly CraceExactly. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. Kelly CraceSo in that analytical framework, it is about just asking those very open, honest questions of what matters to me now. Respecting the dynamic nature of who we are as human beings, we used to think that values were fixed, that you had these values, and they stay with you unchanged forever, and that's not true. We are dynamic individuals, so things shift in terms of what's important but more importantly, which kind of leads to the second paradigm shift is it's not only what your values are and your relationship that matters, but how would I know that? It's your values in action that really matter. It's not about aspirational values. It's about operational values. It's putting your values in action to where you start to shift what you give most worth to. Our world kind of defines our worth, and we can get into a pattern of defining our worth by equity. So I put in this hard work, and I hope for a return. I need an outcome. I need it to be a fair outcome. I need an honest return on my investment which is good. Never anything wrong with wanting equity, but when we need equity when we need fairness, that's what causes the level of stress and anxiety and pressure that actually gets in the way of us being at our best. That comes from kind of defining values by how we experience them. That's how we naturally think of values. How do I experience my values? So if I value belonging. How connected do I feel if I value achievement? How well am I achieving? Well, we have found with people that flourish they pay less attention to their experience of their values. What happens from their values and give more attention to the expression of their values? They define worth by healthy integrity and what we mean by that is integrity is essentially the alignment of your behavior with what you say is important. They're never perfectly aligned, but when my behavior aligns with what I believe matters to me, that is when we are. That's when we feel the best about ourselves. It's the cornerstone of adult self-esteem is predicated on integrity. So they shift defining their success and their worth by the expression of their values. And then they just treat the experience that happens from that is kind of icing on the cake. It's life-enhancing. If I get a fair outcome, well, that just is a great day. But the success of my day is defined by how I act according to my values. So if you followed me around for a month, would you know what I value from just observing my behavior? And that if you did, then that would be me acting with integrity. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceAnd if you didn't, then that would be me more acting on fear and more acting on my neurology. Ken WhiteOh, how interesting. And it comes back to fear again. Yes. Takes you off your game plan. Kelly CraceWell, the reason for that is we've learned that there's this dynamic relationship between values and fear. You can't care about anything without fear being a part of that because of the uncertainty of what we care about. You never completely control what you care about. And so in that uncertainty, fear and values has this very dynamic relationship, in fact, with some young adults who say I don't know what I value. One of the ways to clarify what you value is to think about what you fear. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceBecause what you fear will be related to something that's very important to you. Ken WhiteInteresting. So number one, from values clarification to values relationship, and you just explained number two. From defining worth by equity to defining worth by healthy integrity. The third from reducing fear through control and avoidance to holding fear well. Oh, that's interesting. Tell us more. Kelly CraceIt gets at that kind of dynamic relationship with values and fear, and so when we studied people that flourish, we found that they're not less afraid than others. They just hold fear really well. And what we find is when we lead with fear or kind of live in our neurology where fear is kind of guiding our motivation, our most natural way of managing fear is through over-control or through avoidance. So perfectionism and procrastination is the neurologically natural way we cope with values-based fear. So once I care, then the uncertainty about what I care about evokes fear, and we don't. We don't experience that as danger fear. It's more like pressure. We experience it as pressure. We will naturally manage that pressure through control and avoidance. It's called the fear-based model of excellence because you actually attain excellence with it. But it also eventually hits a ceiling effect in an increasing cost. And again, it keeps you at your neurology. Keeps you at that more surface level. Well, what we find is people that flourish spend as much time holding and managing fear and stress so that they can stay focused on what they value. They put fear in its sweet spot. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly CraceAnd they put stress in it's sweet, sweet spot because they realize stress is a function of importance. You will never hear in our programming that we do with students and with organizations about stress management. We'll never use the term stress reduction because we don't want you to reduce your stress because you're stressed about something that matters to you. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceWe want that to stay in the foreground what matters to you. What we want you to learn how to do is how to manage the stress and manage the fear that comes with that without going into your most natural way of doing it, which is through perfectionistic control or procrastinating avoidance. Ken WhiteIs it compartmentalizing? Kelly CraceThere are several things that several strategies that are related to it. So that paradigm shift of how do you hold fear well. How do you put fear in it's sweet spot? It's actually thinking differently about fear, and so we take them through a few strategies to start thinking differently that their wisdom already knows to be true. They're just not focusing on it. So it's not like you have to convince yourself of it. You already know it's true. You just have to be mindful of it more intentional of it. And some of those strategies include shifting how you think about the emotion of fear instead of seeing fear as an emotion of threat. You start to think differently about fear and seeing it as an emotion that's associated with importance. So people that flourish. They actually look for the emotion of fear to confirm they're on the right track. Ken WhiteThere you go. Kelly CraceThat the fact that my heart is racing or my palms are a little sweaty that confirms that I am doing something that matters to me. That I am engaged in my life. Shifting the paradigm of thinking about failure differently. That failure can be seen as this very personal statement. Fear of failure is actually about fear of another F which is the fear of future. It's people don't mind failing. They mind being a failure. And so when they have a failure experience, they immediately go to. What does this say about me? What does this say about my future? What does this say about the world around me? Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceAnd that brings fear right to the foreground. It puts it in the foreground of their thinking. Instead, people that flourish treat quote-unquote failure experiences more truthfully. They see it as worthy disappointment. They see it as worthy in that I was engaged at something that mattered to me, and I worked hard for it and didn't get what I wanted. And they honor the disappointment. They honor this thing. They don't just immediately go well. What can I learn from this? They honor the sting. Ken WhiteWow. Kelly CraceI worked hard for this, and I didn't get it, and it's disappointing to me. But they go. They don't go one step past that. They keep it only at disappointment because you need no advanced coping strategies to cope with disappointment. Everyone feels capable of coping with disappointment, but no one feels capable of coping with failure. And so they just try to stay very honest, and they work hard for something if they get it. They celebrate it. If they don't, they still see themselves as a success because they engaged in something that was worthy that was worthwhile for them. And they take care of themselves by saying I'm disappointed, and I'm going to honor that. And will take care of myself. And then I'm going to learn from it. And so we that different level of thinking about fear differently. A paradigm shift instead of striving for happiness which keeps people constantly in the state of fear of am I happy now? Am or am I not happy now? What do I need to do to get happy now? They focus on meaning. Instead of passion, they focus more on purpose. Instead of work-life balance, they strive more for harmony instead of balance. And instead of striving for potential, they focus more on expression. Expression of their values. All for one reason when I strive for passion, for balance, for potential, and for happiness, there's so much uncertainty to that that I don't control. It brings fear to the foreground, but when I focus on purpose, and harmony, and expression, and meaning, I completely control that. And that's the compartmentalization that you're talking about is keeping things within your level of control. Those are just some of the strategies that we kind of to holding fear really well. Ken WhiteAnd it makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering customized business and leadership development programs taught by William & Mary's world-class business school faculty. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace. Ken WhiteFourth, from avoidance of hurt to confidence in managing hurt. Kelly CraceYeah. So we are a society that awful lies as hurt, and that is not an actual word, but you, I think you know what I mean. Ken WhiteYeah, of course. Kelly CraceIs we are obsessed with not being hurt, and when we are hurt, how do we feel better? And in that, what we find is if you look at it from this process of the paradigm shift is one that we've started with. I have clarified my why. I know what my meaning is. I know what my values are, and I've developed a relationship with them. I am moved to a greater sense of integrity to where you see my values in action. I'm holding fear really well. Well, what happens when life in the world hands you something that is heartbreaking? That's hurtful. That's distressing and that you can't completely fix. In other words, you have to cope. This is really about coping strategies. We always say if you have a problem and can solve it. Go solve it. If you have a concern and can fix it go there first. Go fix it. But what do you do like with grief and loss and other things that are unfair in your world that I can't fix but I have to cope with? How do you thrive and flourish through heartbreak? How do you flourish through times when you're feeling bad for honest reasons that have to ride that storm out? And what we find is people that flourish. They accept the hurt instead of trying to avoid it, which puts us in a protective mindset when we try to avoid hurt. We get very protective, and again that affects how we manage fear. Ken WhiteSure. Kelly CracePeople that manage this well. Is they accept that the hurt is about the fact that I'm engaged in my life, I'm taking risks of meaning? And sometimes, it's not going to work out well. And during this time of hurt, how do I cope in a healthy way? And they basically kind of focus on three things to develop confidence in managing hurt. First, they honor their reaction and challenge any conclusions. We tend to do just the opposite. We tend to not want to feel what we're feeling when we're hurt. We tend to try to feel better immediately, and we get very conclusive. See, you can't trust anyone. See, there's no fairness, or we become very conclusive about ourselves and our future. What they do is just the opposite. They honor the reaction by saying I'm upset because something upsetting happened. I'm hurt because something hurtful happened. They honor that reaction, but their work is they're very intentional when they start getting conclusive. They say stop. They take a deep breath, and they say this is normal for me to think, but it's not helpful. What is something healthy I can do right now? That would be better for me, and they basically focus on self-care. So the second thing they do is they move from they honor the reaction, they challenge any conclusions, and then they move immediately to self-care. But not with the intention of feeling better. They do so with the intention of for the health of it. It's healthy for me to take care of myself right now. So it's not like they do it to rush to feel better. They just do it because they know it's healthy for them. And then they do a third thing is that they then engage in something of values-based meaning. They step into one of their values even while affected. Even if they say, I'm at 10 percent. They'll still step into a value and say well, let me go take care of others because that matters to me or let me go pour myself into my work for a little while or let me go talk with someone and let me do some physical expression or meditative expression or mindfulness around self-care. But what this does is it builds a sense of confidence that when I get hurt again, not if or I hope not. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceWhen I get hurt again, I have the confidence that I can manage it in a healthy way. And with that confidence, you no longer fear it. I don't fear being hurt. I don't like it. I don't strive for it. I don't want it, but I don't fear it. And because of that, you stay in this deeper level of engagement in your life instead of this protective level of never being hurt again. Ken WhiteInteresting. Fifth and final, from chronically evaluative mindset to expressive mindset. What do you mean by that? Kelly CraceSo when we lead with fear, we're in this constant state of evaluating ourselves. Judgment and evaluation becomes very important because when I lead with fear, I need reassurance that everything's going to be okay. I'll look for that reassurance by becoming very dependent on outcomes, and in that, I'll start keeping score. So I'll just constantly keep score comparatively. How am I doing compared to others? How did yesterday go? What do I need to do tomorrow to make up for yesterday? We're in this chronically evaluative mindset which is actually a big predictor of insomnia today. Of quieting our body, our mind activates and starts judging. Starts keeping score. Instead of this chronically evasive mindset. People that work at flourishing part of their work is moving more into an expressive mindset, and they kind of do five things each day to foster that expressive mindset. An expressive mindset is essentially giving more worth to what you do than what you get from what you do. Both matter, both matter outcomes matter, and people that flourish acknowledge the reality of outcomes. I have to have outcomes to create opportunities for me. Ken WhiteSure. Kelly CraceThey just focus on what can they do within their control that helps them be their best. And so they focus on getting. They focus on being more verb focused, to be honest. They focus more in their actions than now I'm focused. Being now I'm focused is being outcome-oriented. Being verb focused is focusing on your behavior because you control. So what that actually looks like, Ken, is they kind of focus on five things. To be, to foster an expressive mindset and that starting off every day with what's the most right devotion of my time and energy. The word right is important because that activates their values. Not what I have to do today or what I want to do today. But what's right for me to do today? And then they take a pulse of how am I today. From the standpoint of when I look at this list of what's right for me to do today. Is there any part of me that says I don't know if I can do this because I'm sick, or I'm tired, or I'm sick and tired, whatever it is? Is they're not at 100 percent? What they do is when feeling can't, they focus on what of this can I do, and they get a clear picture of what that is. That's relying on volitional confidence. Volitional confidence is confidence by choice, which basically means when feeling can't, what of this can I do and every time you step into some can when you're feeling that can, it actually neurologically changes how we process fear. Ken WhiteI'll bet. Kelly CraceYeah. Ken WhiteYeah, that's powerful. Kelly CraceYeah, so they get at that aspect of finding that acceptable can, and then they imagine that because they want to visualize what they value because if you don't visualize what you value, you imagine what you fear, and you'll move into this place of control and avoidance. So they start off every day what's the most right devotion of my time and energy of that what can I do. Now imagine that. And then they engage in the rest of the day with full engagement of their talent and energy and expressing what matters to them that day and then any time during the day if they get a decision point of, well I could go here they ask that question again. What feels most right at this point in time? So they've activated that deeper level of motivation which is their values. They're working with themselves and engaging in that. At the end of the day, they take a moment and appreciate what they did and why and then ask themselves one question what is one thing I can learn from the day that will help me for tomorrow? So that includes analysis and reflection. I won't go to that last question unless I'm at a place of gratitude. Unless I'm in a place of self-compassion. So that's one of the reasons why you do this aspect of what did I do today and how can I appreciate that. So they take a moment to appreciate what they did. And that's different than a gratitude journal. Gratitude journals are wonderful, but they typically tend to be things I'm grateful for what happened to me. Ken WhiteAh yes. Kelly CraceWhat we want to do is get them to appreciate how are you engaged in life. And how is that related to your values? And then, what can you learn from the day that will help you for tomorrow? Those five things foster an expressive mindset, and here's the coolest thing. An expressive mindset is what you're in when you're in the flow or the zone experience. That's actually what you're in when I am at my optimal in terms of thinking and performing. Ken WhiteYeah yeah. Kelly CraceAnd so it's when we let go of the need for these kind of experiences and define ourselves by the expression of what we do as it relates to our relationship of values that you actually start getting more outcomes and getting better experiences because you're operating at your optimal. Ken WhiteFor our listeners who find the paradigm shifts for moving beyond our neurology interesting, and I'm assuming most of our listeners will find that. Where can they learn more? What can they do? We have talked about the life values inventory. I'll give the web address on that in a minute. We encourage listeners to do that. But beyond that, what about the paradigm shift? How can they learn more? Kelly CraceSo the heart of that is embedded in that online resource. So it's an open educational resource. It's a dot org. So if they go to lifevaluesinventory.org, they can go and find this content. And it's kind of structured as an online mini-course, so they can go into it and dip in and then pull out and come back to right where they left off. There's some dense information there, but it's a way of being able to kind of go with what speaks to you and go a little deeper into those areas. One of the things that I encourage people to do with these five paradigm shifts. Is for the next six months; pick one. Just pick one to be more intentional. Pick the one that speaks to you right now and understand that a little more spend a little more time being intentional about that one paradigm shift, and that's enough. That's enough to make a difference. Our authentic excellence initiative is a program that we're have been offering at our university and will make it more available to other programs in the future, but that's another area that they can look up and go to the university's website and learn more about that. Ken WhiteExcellent. But the bottom line it comes down to flourishing is the word not, not all these other adjectives we might use, all these other words you might use how to flourish in your life. Kelly CraceHow do we move from fear-based excellence to this deeper authentic excellence? To where excellence is defined by your authenticity by your values, what matters to you, and holding fear well and holding stress well in the process. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace, Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at the College of William & Mary. Kelly reminds us that next year William & Mary will launch its Center for Mindfulness and Authentic Excellence. The center will provide resources teaching and research not only for the college community but for individuals and organizations outside William & Mary as well. Also, in the podcast, Kelly mentioned the life values inventory. If you're interested in checking that out, it's online and free. The address is lifevaluesinventory.org. Well, that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Dr. Kelly Crace, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dianne Greene](images/dianne-greene-96-thumb.jpg)
![Millennials at Work](images/dianne-greene-96-thumb.jpg)
Dianne Greene
Episode 96: November 21, 2017
Millennials at Work
Millennials, the generation whose members are between the ages of 16 and 38, make up the largest percentage of the population. By 2020, researchers say almost half of all US workers will be Millennials. And while there's no doubt Millennials are here, and their impact continues to grow, many organizations and companies struggle to attract and retain members of the generation. One organization that has it figured out is ADP, the Fortune 500 company that offers human capital management services, payroll services, HR software, and tax & compliant services for businesses around the world. Dianne Greene is Division Vice President and General Manager of ADP in Norfolk, Virginia. Seventy percent of her employees are Millennials. Greene joins us today to discuss the little things and the big things ADP does to attract and retain high-quality Millennial talent.
Podcast (audio)
Dianne Greene: Millennials at Work TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Millennials, the generation whose members are between the ages of 16 and 38, make up the largest percentage of the population. By 2020 researchers say almost half of all U.S. workers will be millennials. And while there's no doubt millennials are here, and their impact continues to grow. Many organizations and companies struggle to attract and retain members of the generation. One organization that has it figured out is ADP. The Fortune 500 company that offers Human Capital Management Services, payroll services, HR software, and tax and compliance services for businesses around the world. Dianne Greene is Division Vice President and General Manager of ADP in Norfolk, Virginia. Seventy percent of her employees are millennials. Greene joins us on the podcast today to discuss the little things and the big things ADP does to attract and retain high-quality millennial talent. Here's our conversation with Dianne Greene of ADP. Ken WhiteDianne, thank you for taking the time to join us. First of all, welcome to William & Mary. Great to have you on campus. Dianne GreeneThank you. I'm so excited to be here. It's been a great day so far. Ken WhiteAnd you had a nice lunch with some of our undergraduate students. Dianne GreeneI sure did. They blew me away. Ken WhiteAren't they amazing? Dianne GreeneThey are amazing. Ken WhiteI was nothing like that at that age. Not even close. Dianne GreeneI don't think I was, either. Ken WhiteOh, I know I wasn't. Dianne GreeneMy brain just didn't work like that. Ken WhiteIt is. It's amazing, motivated, and smart. Dianne GreeneThat's right. Ken WhiteAnd it's fun. That's great. Tell us about your role in the organization. What do you do? What's your organization do? Dianne GreeneYes. So I am the Division Vice President and General Manager of one ADP Norfolk. It is one of ADP newest facilities in the Norfolk area. We're right there in downtown Norfolk, and we're nestled amongst many other businesses in the Norfolk area. Norfolk's going through quite a revitalization right now. And so ADP has come in at just the right time, I think. I think being on the front end of all of that has really served us well, and our goal is to hire the best and the brightest in the area. Hampton Roads and beyond. We have when I say one ADP Norfolk, the one ADP methodology is part of our win as one strategy, and that is where ADP is really looking to break down silos. Really looking to collaborate and to get to market faster with solutions and services for our clients. And since we are the world's largest human capital management company serving over 650,000 clients worldwide in 110 countries, we have to do it right. We've got to manage our own human capital resource the best way possible, and so we are leading the charge around that and really doing things differently in these one ADP locations. We have brought all business units, all functions, and disciplines under one roof where you have leaders side by side with associates, that leads into many opportunities whether we are looking at development opportunities. Whether we're looking at growth opportunities, innovation getting to market faster, all of that happens when you have all of the resources, all of the discipline, all of the mindshare in one place, and we're able to feed off of each other. Ken WhiteOne of the things it seems that you have really got right is hiring young new professionals or millennials, and it's an area that that many companies really struggle with. What do I do with these millennials, and they just really struggle? It has just been a grand slam for you. How did this happen? How did you approach it? Dianne GreeneYeah. So like I mentioned, you know, being the world's largest human capital management company, we've got to drink our own soup. We've got to get it right. And so, in one ADP Norfolk, we have 22 hundred seats at max capacity. We are just about midway through. So I'm at my halfway mark. Just about and 70 percent of them are millennials. 70 percent. Ken WhiteWow, 70 percent. Dianne GreeneAnd I'll tell you. You know we've got everything there. Let's talk about the amenities because I think sometimes, when companies are hiring for a large millennial base that they think about the fun stuff and the fun stuff is good. I'm not discounting that at all, but that cannot be the end all be all of your recruiting formula. And so we have we've got the basketball hoops, we've got a, you know, the ping pong tables on every floor and corn hole and all sorts of table games and the video gaming room. I could go on and on. We've got you know 24 by seven gym and a doctor on site. It just, you know, amenities just abound in that particular facility, but that's not what keeps them or and that's not what will attract them. What attracts them is the ability to understand the role that they're coming into and how that applies to the bigger picture. Right. So to the business at large, how is everything that I'm doing on a daily basis adding value to your business? So they want to make sure millennials do. They want to make sure that there is a purpose and a value to the work that they're doing every day. They also want to make sure that they're getting the training and support. So we've changed our training and our support. When I talk, I'll talk a little bit about our leadership support and our management support completely different from what it used to be several years ago. The training is now quick. There are new methods of training. Let's use video vignettes. Millennials want the information fast. Give it to them in small bites, give them a sandbox to play around in to make mistakes, to break things, to understand how the process works, and what what is the outcome of that. Give them a safe place to do that. The support it's, you know, looking at how leadership really develops your associate base. Our leaders know that you bring an associate on. You assimilate them to ADP culture overall. You train them on the tasks or the job that they were hired to do. But beyond that, you've got a mentor, monitor, and coach them. You know that you have to manage on a situational type basis, meaning it's not one size fits all. Leadership isn't one size fits all and what presses your button to get you engaged and to make you successful is different from the button that needs to be pressed for me. And we train our leaders to understand that. To understand how to look at the gaps on their team, how to identify fit, and then also how to know from a situational perspective which buttons to press to get everyone to be successful and to have the engine working as efficiently as possible. The other thing that we do is open two-way communication. So I remember my days on Wall Street it was very stiff. I was always afraid to talk to my leader's leader. In fact, I wouldn't even. Ken WhiteSure. Dianne GreeneI would hide; I wouldn't want to have a conversation with that person. You know leadership is changing now. Millennials want to know that they can walk up to you and ask you a question. Ask you any question, and that you're not going to sit in judgment, and you're not going to think that because of your title that you can't answer. And so, you know, it's two-way communication and giving some level of transparency to the work that is being done and to the goals and the opportunities. We also really promote an environment where ideation and experimentation are welcome. Feel free to publish your ideas to share your ideas on collaboration sites in collaboration spaces. No idea is too big or too small. Let's fail fast, and let's move on to the next thing. That's big for Millennials because they want to test things out. I think there's this preconceived notion that they're the generation where everyone gets a trophy, but I don't know that they all expect a trophy. I think they all want to get their hands dirty and try to figure things out and fail at some things and get up and keep going. Try something else till you get the right formula. So that's been really, really helpful for us. Sharing across the employee community, opening up and being more transparent as leaders, and making sure that we are leading them in a way that isn't one size fits all and that we are listening. And then you layer on the basketball, and the Ping-Pong and everything else. All of that seems to work very well for us. Ken WhiteIt sounds great. It sounds like something I could read in an article and say yeah, sure. How do you implement this, but you're implementing it? Dianne GreeneWe are. Ken WhiteHow? I mean, that takes an incredible amount of effort and buy-in from everyone who's not in that 70 percent. Dianne GreeneAbsolutely. It starts with the leadership. It starts at the very top, and so you know our CEO is himself very approachable. He understands. He listens. And so that filters all the way down to all levels of leadership, and so as I lead that area or that particular facility, what I'm looking for as we bring new leaders on whether we're hiring them from the outside or whether we're relocating them from our other parts of ADP. I really look to test for an understanding of the new world order in terms of leadership that it is not stuffy. Stay in your office all day long. You must interact, and you must understand the people who are part of your organization. We know that we've got to start with. You know, we've got to make sure that we have diverse slates, and it's not ethnic diversity only. It's diversity of experiences, social, economic. It's, you know, diverse backgrounds and upbringing, all of that generates ideas and all of that helps us to be far more innovative than we've been in past years. And so we take that really seriously. We take it really seriously. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Dianne Greene of ADP in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering customized business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Dianne Greene of ADP. Ken WhiteWe see, and again I don't like to generalize. You use that title, millennials. But we see with younger workers younger professionals today after a few months. I want promoted. How do I move up? How do you tackle that? Dianne GreeneSo I will tell you that is that's always an issue in any organization where you have, you know, a broad base of millennials. They, you know they, expect things to come quickly. However, I'll tell you if you are appropriately setting expectations from the get-go. They come in understanding that it's not that you can't move up the ladder. It's not that you can't get up that learning curve faster than others. It's not that opportunities don't exist. However, we do need you to become proficient in your role. We do need you to understand the job that you have been hired for. We do need a return on the investment of investing in you and bringing you in. And I think when you are truly honest and transparent at that level, we found that they understand. So I'll share with you that before I got to Norfolk, we'd been operating since June, and I think there was that misconception that I'm gonna get this job and within three months, I'm going to be in the next role. And so when I got there, I really had to spend time resetting expectations to say, let's think about this a little bit. At the three-month mark, you're still in training. You still haven't learned the job that you were hired for. Let alone you know being proficient in the role. So let's just think this through a little bit and really talk about, you know, we know that you may want to do something else. What are those opportunities, and how do you get to that next thing as you ramp up the learning curve, and so then you start talking to them about career development and career discovery? Where they can explore other areas of the organization, and they can learn from others, and do some job shadowing. You make those available to them, and you make it available to them quickly. So you say three months, you're still kind of in training. How about you sit in your seat six months so you must be in your seat six months before you can start looking around and exploring wide possibilities within our organization? And that's gone really, really well. Ken WhiteYou've done so much. How long does that take? For an organization that's struggling with this that hasn't done it. That says, for crying out loud, 70 percent of my workforce, you know could be could have these desires and these expectations. How long does that take you to get the plan and to implement? Dianne GreeneI think for us at ADP because we do this for ourselves, and this is part of what we offer as a service to our clients. We've been able to ramp it up pretty quickly. Leaders are held accountable. So my leaders in one ADP Norfolk know that beyond their day-to-day job. So let's take maybe VP of Finance beyond the VP of Finance role. There's a whole lot more to it. You are in a location where we are one ADP, so we are looking beyond finance. We're looking into service, and we're looking into implementation and sales and procurement. So you're getting outside of your core discipline, let's say, and everyone has skin in the game. We are all responsible for hiring the best talent. We're all responsible for leading our associates in a manner that provides them with opportunities to be successful. That we are investing in their success, they, too, are investing in the success of the business. And so you make sure that at the very highest levels that that is part of the culture of the organization that is being infused that in and of itself, I think for our location because it's new. You get to pick who you want, and you get to pick who is on board with that methodology. In other places where let's say, more strategic locations that have been around a lot longer. It does take a little bit more time, but I would say the new one ADP locations it's faster because you are bringing that new talent or you are bringing talent that is hand-picked from other places within ADP into the location. Ken WhiteSo one ADP from a leadership standpoint, yep, we're on board. And what about toward the bottom of the org chart that that new employee? How do they feel about being a part of this huge organization and hearing about other functions that in the past may not have quote unquote affected them? Dianne GreeneMm-hmm. So I think you know, for our new associates, sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. We are a big organization, and as I said, we're going to be 22 hundred strong in another, you know year year year and a half or so. And so it can be daunting. You know you come into this organization, you know that you're hired for a particular role, but there's this sea of opportunity. We try to support them in many different ways. We give them the opportunity to join what we call business resource groups or a BRGs. BRGs are groups of people with like interests, so you we have a Cultivate for African-American. We have Adelante for our Latino. We have Asia for Asia Pan. Just coming together with like ideas like interests and you form, you join these groups, and it suddenly makes this big place feel smaller because you have a ready-made network of people that you can touch base with that you can bounce ideas off of. That you can do fun things with while still adding value to the business itself. And so we've got eight of those groups. There's one for generations that has all five generations coming together and sharing ideas. There's one for innovation. There's golly. There's one for women called I Win. And so you can join one, you can join all. I'm in all of them because there's nothing to be lost from being in all of them. But it's a ready-made network that makes the place seem smaller and a ready-made group of friends. When you first come on board that you can just bounce ideas off of, and you can learn about the businesses that they're in because everyone's in a different group or a different function. Ken WhiteWhat a great idea you feel at home right off the bat. Dianne GreeneYou feel at home right off the bat. Ken WhiteInteresting. Dianne GreeneRight off the bat. Ken WhiteWe talked mostly about the organization for young professionals going out looking for that first job. Any kind of advice you have for them to get off on the right foot and get a good first job? Dianne GreeneA good first job. I always say one of the mistakes I made when I was coming out of college is I think I tried to be someone that I wasn't because, in my head, I had this thought about what the professional looked like and how that professional should be. Whether it's in dress and the way that I spoke, and that was hard. It was hard coming out of college and trying to be someone that I was not trying to fit a template. I think our Millennials are coming out in an environment that is far more inclusive. It is an environment that values differences. And so the biggest piece of advice I could give to anyone graduating college and going into the workforce is be yourself. Know that your uniqueness and the differences that you have versus the next person that's your selling point that that's appreciated. That's your value. And so if you try to hide that to be something that you are not, you'll probably end up in a role that is the wrong fit for you and one that you won't be happy in. So I just say be your authentic self. It's so much better. It's so less stressful trying to, you know, be someone that you're not and to really know and understand that it is in our differences that there is the greatest value, and that's how we get ahead. Ken WhiteAnd for the organization who needs to get moving on this path. What kind of advice do you have for them? Dianne GreeneYeah, I would say listen, break down the walls and break down the silos and really be open to communication. Two-way communication with millennials. Be open to their ideas. Engage with them. That's how you get them on board. Engage with them. The old ways of leading are disappearing. They really are. They're really disappearing, and you know, I'm of the opinion that they need to for us to be innovative. And for us to move ahead in this fast-paced world, they need to go away. They need to go away. So engage with them you'll learn a lot. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dianne Greene of ADP, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals. With business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guests this week, Dianne Greene, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Ryan Malone](images/ryan-malone-95-thumb.jpg)
![The Remote Workforce](images/ryan-malone-95-thumb.jpg)
Ryan Malone
Episode 95: November 8, 2017
The Remote Workforce
Over the past few years, organizations have wrestled with the concept of remote employment—having employees who work from home. Much has been written about the effectiveness of the remote worker and how to lead a remote—or virtual—team. A recent Gallup study revealed that more Americans are working remotely, yet not all industries and organizations have embraced the concept. As many companies struggle to find the sweet spot, one organization has gone all-in with a 100% remote workforce, and it's been a big success. SmartBug Media is an award-winning, full-service inbound marketing agency with clients in several industries. Its CEO founded SmartBug to provide clients with outstanding results while offering employees a fulfilling life outside the office. SmartBug Media CEO Ryan Malone joins us today to discuss how a fully remote workforce can produce winning results.
Podcast (audio)
Ryan Malone: The Remote Workforce TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
Podcast (platforms)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, over the past few years, organizations have wrestled with the concept of remote employment. Having employees who work from home. Much has been written about the effectiveness of the remote worker and how to lead a remote or virtual team. A recent Gallup study revealed that more Americans are working remotely. Yet not all industries and organizations have embraced the concept, as many companies struggle to find the sweet spot. One organization has gone all in with a 100 percent remote workforce, and it's been a big success. SmartBug Media is an award-winning full-service inbound marketing agency with clients in several industries. Its CEO founded SmartBug to provide clients with outstanding results while offering employees a fulfilling life outside the office. SmartBug Media CEO Ryan Malone joins us on the podcast today to discuss how a fully remote workforce can produce winning results. Ken WhiteWell, Ryan, thank you for taking the time to be with us today. It's great to have you on the podcast. Ryan MaloneThanks for having me. I appreciate it. Ken WhiteSo SmartBug Media, you know, I think a lot of people would see and say, oh, it's an agency or maybe a digital agency. How do you explain and describe it to people what you do? What your organization does? Ryan MaloneSo we are a we do what's called intelligent inbound marketing for revenue growth, and that's kind of way where we have positioned ourself. And what that means is that we combine several different strategies to help companies increase their lead flow, their sales pipeline, and how they interact and create goodwill with customers that have been closed. So we use things like inbound marketing, which is a combination of Search Engine Optimization and blogging, and content marketing. We use things like public relations and web development, and sales enablement to create. Effectively a marketing system for companies that starts from the time that they've defined a product and they're going to market. All the way to the time where they need to provide a reasonably qualified lead to a sales team. I think what's unique about us is that we've got about 36 full-time people in 15 states. We're 100 percent remote, and that model has been very good for us for a number of different reasons, which I can get into later if you'd like. Ken WhiteYeah. I mean that that is absolutely phenomenal. I mean, anyone with agency experience knows what that world is like and to be successful in 100 percent remote. Where did you even come up with that idea? Ryan MaloneThere was really two things when I used to run marketing for technology companies, and I was working at an early-stage network security company, and a good friend of mine who I worked with earlier in my career was at the tail end of his career and was working for me at the time, and we won an award for a client, and our CEO insisted that he go visit the client to tell them about this reward award and it was a Friday, and it was literally like a 10-minute phone call that could have been a telephone high five and call it a day, and he ended up missing his nephew's birthday party. And at that time, I real I had just gotten married, and I realized that I had decided that I wanted to start a company. And I realized that our unique thing was that it's about life memories. And the analogy that I like to use is that it's more than likely that you and I won't remember this conversation when we're retired, but you're going to remember the things that you do with your family this weekend. And as an employer, if I can create a challenging work environment for people but give them the flexibility and the mind space to create life memories, whether that's volunteering in your kid's school or spending time with a sick grandparent, or training for a triathlon or we've had people one of our lead developers is a rock climber. So he wanted to go rock climb in Portugal for a while. So he picked up his computer and went to Portugal and did a great job. If we can do that, then it addresses a whole bunch of issues from tenure to talent to culture to employee happiness and all kinds of things, and so we decided to do a remote model because we felt like if we did a partial remote model or a headquarters with a few satellite people that those satellite people would never really be in the know as much as if we were to do 100 percent remote model and remove all of those barriers. Ken WhiteThat's fascinating. I can't imagine. Yeah. People are so extremely happy with life. They're gonna bring their A-game to work every day then. Ryan MaloneExactly. Ken WhiteHow do you create a culture when no one you don't see each other, you're not in the same facility in the same building? How did you go about that? Ryan MaloneWell, the first thing is it all starts with hiring. So you know, there are kind of the litmus test we use, and we hire people as we'll ask a question around like what's the first thing that you like to do socially when you come into the office on a Monday. And what we're trying and what we found out is that the people who like their social life really depends on coming in, going cube to cube, and talking about the weekend, and that's really what drives their entire kind of identity. They don't work really well remote. The people that work really well remote are the people who really want to do quality work. They don't want as many distractions. Yeah, they have friends at work, but they also have a lot of friends outside, and they have an identity outside of work, and they're very driven and accountable. And so if you start with that, it's kind of like, you know, a basketball analogy they always say you can't coach height. It's just something that you have, and it's the same with this. You have to have a certain kind of DNA and disposition from a personality perspective to handle remote, I think. But once you have figured out how to identify and find those people, you do have to do some things that force culture a bit. For example, since we're all remote, we use video a lot. And we kind of have a video mandatory policy, and there's, you know, there's bad hair days and stuff like that, and that's fine. But in general, we have a video-only policy with ourselves and with our clients since we work in different teams as we're an agency. We try to have projects that are outside of client work, and we mix people up so they have a chance to work with each other outside of their normal teams. We have biweekly meetings, which are essentially an all-hands meeting, and they can be really silly. They could be like a baby photo contest. Where you have a chance to share something about your life that you otherwise wouldn't do, and the winner gets a prize, and it's a great way for people to get to know each other. In fact, when you start working here, your first two weeks, all you really do as have these half-hour video phone calls with the team, and the only rule is that you can't talk about work, and then finally, what we do is once a year because you still haven't seen each other at this point and you know spouse or life partner or whatever that works with on the other side of the screen from your colleague all they know is what gets interacted through the screen. So we usually fly everybody out and their families to somewhere some resort on the West Coast, you know, like a Pelican Hill or another kind of five-star resort. We have a three-day what we call SmartBug a-palooza. It's one day of work, three days of fun, and it's a chance for these people to get to meet each other, get to know each other, get to know their families, and it's really interesting that people go from you know I've worked with you for six months but never met you do I shake your hand do I high five you uncomfortable kind of thing, and then 10 minutes later they're hugging each other and then three days later everybody's crying because they have to leave and they've never been in a place that is able to provide that. So we work really hard at it. But if you work really hard at it, it creates a really strong bond with people. Ken WhiteYou know, there's a lot of parallels as I listened to it talk about this in my field of education with online education, and you know the successful providers in online did not try to recreate the face-to-face experience online. They created something brand new, and it seems like that's what you've done. Forget the old rules. Let's create something new that will work with this type of individual in this type of environment. It seems to really be working. Ryan MaloneSo far, so good. Yeah. Ken WhiteSo how do clients react when they or do they react when they learn that this is the way the organization is organized? Ryan MaloneIt's funny. When we started, I had a mentor who said you know, this is really crazy, like, you know, you might be able to get five people, and then you're really going to have to get an office, and five people came, and he's like well you know when you get to 10 or 15 that's really kind of, and it just kept happening. And now he's a believer and recommends people do this. But clients say the client thing was interesting because, at first, you know, when you're just a couple people, it's not that big of a deal. Clients actually react in a couple different ways. Probably the ones that are most connected to the face-to-face thing will ask us if we can come out for a quarterly business review or something like that. And that's great because we love to get to see clients and, you know, check out the facilities and stuff like that. But the vast majority of the clients either say are fascinated with the fact that we're remote and depending on the consultant that they're working with and kind of where that person is located, it's kind of like they're following them in the sense that we had a gal who was a consultant of ours and she was lived kind of a nomadic life. So she had a really nice camper, and she would drive to Yosemite and live there for a month, and then she will drive to Santa Barbara and live there for a month, and they always wanted to know where she was at. And it was kind of like this source of excitement for them. And then the third reason is that I think a lot of times clients, you know, people are so busy, and they want to get what they need to get done and have a good relationship with their agency, but they don't always want to go to lunch or have a four-hour meeting or things like that they just want to get it done. And I think that we're able to provide that with enough personality, and our culture has us becoming friends with our clients that it doesn't really matter. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Ryan Malone Founder and CEO of SmartBug Media, in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering customized business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Ryan Malone, CEO of SmartBug Media. Ken WhiteWe talk about the culture you know you have your five values that you created. Could you share that with us? Walk us through that. Ryan MaloneYeah, sure. Every company has values, and I think they're really really important, and we execute them. We do our annual reviews and quarterly reviews on them, and we hire based on them. The most important one, which is actually the one that wraps everything together, though, is what we call rocket for the customer. It's fundamentally the idea that you need to have empathy with the customer and the challenges that they're going through and the goals that they're trying to achieve, and the fact that they may or may not have a good day or a bad day. And you need to be in a position to be a hero if you can. So that's a really important trait for us because, at the end of the day, people hire agencies because they want peace of mind and they want to know that somebody has got their back. And that's really important. Get it done for us is about accountability which is probably the most important value you can have as a remote company because you can't really walk down the hallway and ask somebody how it's doing. So we've spent a lot of time and money to create systems and handoffs and checks and balances to make sure that things are getting done properly with the right level of quality and that there's enough space for creativity. But at the end of the day, you've got to get stuff done because your clients depend on it, your teammates depend on it. And so people that are accountable are people that we really look for. At the same time, right as a, you know, as a digital company, you have to stay curious, and so we look for people that continuously want to learn. They're not people who always ask like hey, how do I do this. But they try to figure it out themselves first, whether it's in their personal life or their professional life. And they know that there's always something to learn, which means that they have to be open-minded to innovation in the sense that there's always a better way, your way not always may not always be the better way, and you should always listen to see if somebody else has a slightly better idea. And if they do, jump on it and incorporate it into what you do. And then the last one is just have fun because, you know, at the end of the day, like I mentioned, it's about memories, and we want you know when you hang up your, you know, your computer for the day we want people to realize that they hung out with some people that they have a lot of intellectual respect for, that they have a lot of fun with, and that they had a great time doing work for their clients. So it's really important for us, and we actually dedicate a good chunk of our interview process just to figure out how well they align with our values. Ken WhiteYeah critically important. I'm guessing the vast majority of the team would be considered millennials. Ryan MaloneA good chunk, yeah. I'd say probably at least half, maybe a little bit more. I don't really use that word because I think I actually wrote an article about this in CNBC. But I think the millennial label is a little bit misused. Ken WhiteSure. Ryan MaloneBecause it's actually interesting if you go through and they say, you know millennials are so entitled and this and that. But it's pretty funny if you go through I looked at some data from Gen X which is what I am about what our needs and wants were back you know 10 15 20 years ago when they were at that that we were at that stage of our career and that they were almost exactly the same. And with the baby boomers, wanted were exactly the same, and so I think it's more about a function of the period of your life that you're in rather than whether you're a millennial or a Gen Xers. Ken WhiteYeah. And then, being surrounded by millennials every day in higher education, I can tell you that the future is in incredibly good hands. This is a motivated group who really knows how to get things done. Your organization, especially the remoteness of it. Do you see it working in other sectors? If someone from other industries were to come to you. Would you encourage them to consider this? Ryan MaloneI do, yeah, I do. I think there's there's certain things obviously where you can't. Right. Obviously, industrial manufacturing and kind of stuff like that. But if you're a service or knowledge industry, there's really no reason why you shouldn't. And I think that companies do themselves a disservice by saying, you know, we really have to have an office, and people need to collaborate, and you can't collaborate with a remote company. Well, I have proof that you can. Because yesterday we found out we won 36 Marcom awards for our creative work, and if people tell you that you can't do creative remote, then I usually point them to that list, and 24 of those were for clients. So but people, I think, are very shortsighted because that's what they've done and what they realize is it's really hard to find talent 10 miles around your office. I can find talent anywhere in North America and which gives me the opportunity to choose the best of the best. And each of them gets to spend more time with their family and spend more time doing stuff that they want to do and have a higher kind of happier demeanor, and they come to work every day, and you know there's something to be said by you know for working in your Maryland basketball shorts every day to make you happy, and I think I'm able to offer that and the people that haven't kind of come around and thought that remote is a good idea are at a disadvantage and in a way I hope that they keep doing that. Ken WhiteAny less. First of all, congratulations on the Marcom awards. That's a great award. That's no small victory there. That's great. Congratulations. Ryan MaloneThank you. Ken WhiteAny lessons learned or any stumbling blocks? If someone were to say you know, I love what I'm hearing. I want to try this. Is there something they should watch out for or anything you learned along the way you'd share? Ryan MaloneYeah. So one of the things that you will get hung up on is, as a business owner, you're going to. And you come from more of a in-person environment is, the first thing you're gonna wonder is are people actually doing their work. And I will tell you that for the vast majority of businesses if you hire the right people, it doesn't matter. You'll never have that question. And the reality is that, you know, based on the way you've set up your company, whether or not somebody is getting their work done really quickly anyway, it's just the nature of running a business. That's the first thing. The second thing is that sometimes service companies have a hard time with process. So I would air on the side of creating your processes early because as you start to add remote people, you start to then have to create process for a larger and larger group that are interconnected, and it becomes a bigger lift, so if you spend a little bit of time ahead of time and fix your processes. It doesn't mean they're going to be perfect or not modified down the road but try to figure out what your system is first, and then the third thing is I recommend that you. It's really easy to use phone calls and stuff like that. But I highly recommend you use video as much as possible because the one thing you do miss when you do remote is you don't get nonverbal communication, and it's so important. And if you can have somebody on a video camera, you can just you get all that, plus you get to meet their family and their kids and get a sense of who they are as a person. So those are three things I would probably start with. Ken WhiteGreat advice. So bottom line, talented people who are creative and get work done, are will succeed if you give them the opportunity in a remote work environment. Ryan MaloneAbsolutely. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Ryan Malone of SmartBug Media, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Ryan Malone and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Bill Crawford](images/bill-crawford-94-thumb.jpg)
![The CEO](images/bill-crawford-94-thumb.jpg)
Bill Crawford
Episode 94: September 29, 2017
The CEO
What makes an effective CEO effective? For Bill Crawford, CEO of United Bank, it means realizing you don't have to know the answer. Instead, you need to know where to find it. Crawford credits much of his success to the talented people with whom he surrounds himself. He's quick to say he's far from the smartest person in the room. Thanks to his leadership and round-table culture, where everyone's encouraged to participate, United Bank has gone from $1.7 billion to $7 billion in assets. As CEO, Crawford focuses on helping employees and customers succeed. He also has a real passion for banking—one that began in college. He joins us today to discuss the role of the CEO, how he approaches his position, and how people make the difference.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. What makes an effective CEO effective? For Bill Crawford, CEO of United Bank, it means realizing you don't have to know the answer. Instead, you need to know where to find it. Crawford credits much of his success to the talented people with whom he surrounds himself. He's quick to say he's far from the smartest person in the room. Thanks to his leadership and roundtable culture where everyone's encouraged to participate. United Bank has gone from one point seven billion dollars to seven billion dollars in assets. As CEO, Crawford focuses on helping employees and customers succeed. He also has a real passion for banking. One that began in college. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss the role of the CEO, how he approaches his position, and how people make the difference. Here's our conversation with Bill Crawford. Ken WhiteBill, thank you for being here. Welcome back to your alma mater. It's nice to have you here. Bill CrawfordKen thanks. I'm thrilled to be back huge fan of the College of William & Mary, grew up here in Williamsburg, and it's always a treat to come back, and it's been so much fun to watch just great progression of the college over the years. Ken WhiteAnd you just had a sort of a breakfast meeting with a number of MBA students. What was your takeaway? What did that feel like? Bill CrawfordFantastic. You know, I just love the energy in the room, and it was so neat to hear about all their different backgrounds and, you know, the personal decisions they made to come to William & Mary. I was very impressed. I mean, I found a group that was willing to take risk, take action, and go after something they want. I think that's so important in all of us. Ken WhiteYeah, great. As CEO, when you were growing up in Williamsburg, ten years old, probably playing little league, did you ever think I want to be a CEO? Bill CrawfordNo, I didn't. I thought I was going to be a pilot. So I actually grew up here in Williamsburg and learned to fly airplanes. I was actually the youngest pilot in America, probably for about a minute or two. So I got my pilot's license when I was 17. My father was a fighter pilot and an airline pilot. And so that's what drove that interest. It was funny. It was here at William & Mary. Professor William O'Connell taught in the finance area, and he taught money and banking, and that course really connected with me. And he did. He connected with me and Stu Williams was another that connected with me, a professor here. Another professor was Len Schifrin, who taught Econ101 connected, and that really galvanized my interest in finance and banking. And that led to me pursuing the industry and ultimately becoming a CEO. Ken WhiteHow important is love and passion for the industry to be an effective CEO? Do you have to love the field? Bill CrawfordI think so. I think that is critical. And the reason that's so important is one people connect with passion, whether it's customers or whether it's employees. The other thing that it drives you to learn. If you don't love it, you're probably not going to study it right. And so that's the thing with golf. I love playing golf, and I'm always studying that how can I get better. You know what I need to do. And it's that pursuit, and without the passion, I think it would be hard, I think to be a tough job. I'm not sure you'd enjoy it. Ken WhiteRight. I'm one of the lucky ones who loves what he does. I can't imagine having to lead and not absolutely being in love with the field. I can't see it. Bill CrawfordWhat I love about banking is, you know, we get to spend a lot of time with different clients and watch, you know, help them. Our real job is to help them be successful. And so it's so neat to look at all these different industries and what it takes to be successful how that works. And I've been fortunate to recruit a terrific team around me, and it's really fun to watch people that are better at it than I am. Going out there and doing it every day on the behalf United Bank. Ken WhiteWhat do you seek when you're looking at people to bring on to the team? What kind of qualities and talent do you seek in people? Bill CrawfordGreat question. The biggest thing we look for are people that have a great sense of client advocacy, and we really obviously want them to understand the business that's important but a proven track record of developing a book of business or experience in the business, success in the business and then people that can bring talent with them. So the company I'm with now, United Bank, I started January of 2011. We had 200 and some employees. Now we're at 800. And the real power, I think, in the CEO job is recruiting great talent. Bringing in really strong leaders, having them recruit really strong people throughout the organization, and then getting them to work as a team. You know, one of the things culturally we do if you come into my office it's a roundtable. If you go in our boardroom, it's a roundtable, and that's by design because when you recruit great talent, they want a voice. They want to be heard. And so what we do is we like to throw whatever the question the day is in the middle of the room, and everyone goes at it. And I don't care about level. One of the people I spend a lot of time with is a 24-year-old. Now you know he's absolutely brilliant. And so when we're looking at different things, one of the first things I do is throw it over there and see what he brings back. So I think that's really important that you have a culture where you throw that question in the middle room everybody goes at it. And what that does is it brings a lot of different perspectives, and ultimately you know you're going to drive for the right answer. That was one of my challenges in college. I had to take those tests with a blue book by myself. So the first one Len Schifrin gave me back it was econ 101 class and had 17 written on it in red ink, and I asked him I'm like, professor is that out of 20? He said no, it's out of 100. I'm like, how did you get 17? He said don't worry about it. It's a B plus. You know, that's the William & Mary thing. Ken WhiteAmen. I was going to say William & Mary all the way. Bill CrawfordBut my point is now I don't take any more tests by myself. Now it's, you know, with the team we have, with the network we have now when there's a question of the day, we literally just throw in the middle of the room. We go at it. We try to figure out right who knows something about this, and if it's not inside our firm, where outside can we go to get it? And that's what's really fun is watching these really bright, talented people every day go at it with passion, and that's why I think engagement is so important whether it's at a university, a business wherever you are. Ken WhiteNot everyone has the personality, or they think they don't have the personality to jump right in and answer that question at that roundtable. What advice do you have for those who say I'm an introvert? I can't do that, or I'm a little quiet. What do you tell them? Bill CrawfordThe first one I really try to talk to is leaders like we have to be careful to set that environment. So when somebody does dive in, even if it's, you know, not the right answer or whatever, that their head doesn't get taken off, you know. And so the leader has got to be okay with it and set that tone. And then I think once the leaders set the tone, there's always some brave soul that does dive in, and then all of a sudden it's like watching popcorn, you know, but you've got to get that first one to really dive in. The reason I always tell the story about the roundtable is that story gets repeated inside our company all day long. So there's people that you know, I don't know. Unfortunately, I haven't met them yet. They've joined our company, but that's probably one of the things they hear is, yeah, they want to hear from you. They expect you to dive in. And so it's all about, I think, the cultural norms that develop, and it's really less about what we say. It's really about what we do and how we act as leaders. Ken WhiteWas there a particular point in your career where you said I really want to lead; I want to do this? Bill CrawfordI decided I wanted to be a public company CEO is really out of a tough situation. So I worked with a great company called South Trust. I worked for Wallace Malone. Just an absolute terrific CEO learned a lot from him. He was very he is a challenging guy very difficult pushed us really hard. Wachovia bought that company and went into Wachovia as regional president. You know, loved it great company. It was during the financial crisis, and you know, it went down, and it was surreal to watch that. Ken WhiteI bet. Bill CrawfordAnd after watching a great company like South Trust go away and then Wachovia going away, you know, Wells came in, they saved the day, and it's a great company. At that point, I decided I'm done with these big banks. I want to go be a CEO of a bank and kind of run it my way. And so I started looking around different opportunities. And my thesis on wanting to be a bank CEO is simple. I really believed there was going to be a lot of very talented bankers and customers who were very frustrated by the bureaucracy of these large organizations. And so I figured if I can just create a platform where these really talented bankers can go take care of their clients and do a good job for clients, and then we can pay them well and treat them well, we'll make a business out of that. And so we've gone from one point seven billion assets to seven billion. We've grown earnings per share 27 percent compound annual growth rate for the last six and a half years. And so that thesis proved to be correct at that particular time. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Bill Crawford, CEO of United Financial Bancorp and United Bank, in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is once again offering its popular certificate in business management program starting October twenty-third. It's a five-day program designed for the working professional who wants a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the CEO of United Bank, Bill Crawford. Ken WhiteWho were your mentors, or who did you watch and try to learn from as you came up? Bill CrawfordI had, I think it's funny, when I was interviewing to be the CEO, my board was like, what's it like? You gonna be okay having 12 bosses, and I was like, don't worry about it. I think I've had 27 up till now. So I've had a lot of different bosses. I learned a lot from the good ones. I probably learned more from the bad ones. You know what not to do. But I definitely had some guys along the way. I mentioned Wallace Malone. Another guy I had at Wachovia, Walter McDowell a terrific leader at Wachovia, and he was one that what I loved about Walter is he wanted you to be successful, and you knew that. And so that was his focus. And if you think about it, whether you're a student at William & Mary or you're starting a new company at United Bank, you didn't sign up to fail. You want to be successful. You want somebody to help you figure out how to be successful and when a boss comes at an employee that way, that's a great first start, and then it's being authentic and being okay with really giving tough feedback when you need to. Be encouraging when you need to. But when they know you want to see them succeed, that's the beginning of something good. Ken WhiteYeah absolutely. What's your day like? What do you do? I know no two days are ever alike. Bill CrawfordExactly. Ken WhiteIf someone had no idea what a CEO was or what a bank was, how do you say what you do? Bill CrawfordWhen I first got there six and a half years ago, it was, you know, 12 hours a day. I was in all sorts of. You know, detail up and down the different business lines. Now six and a half seven years into it got a very strong team around me. We have pretty well-developed three-year strategic plan. Three-year financial plan. Quarterly financial plan. So really, it's just staying in contact with my key direct reports, and we talk about the business, you know, where the challenges are, where the opportunities are. You know, if we're back to my pilot days, if we're off course. How do we recorrect? And you're always going to be slightly off course. I mean, obviously, nothing goes perfect. So it's more fine-tuning really running the business, and then we're heavily regulated. So we spend time with regulators in the banking world, spend time with investors, and then you know there's different companies that we can do different things with that we're always talking to different lines of businesses or companies we can do business with. And so we spend a lot of time there. But at the end of the day, it's really about figuring out where we're off course and how do we correct. And then looking for those really transformational opportunities that come along every now and then. Ken WhiteHow do you go about learning and staying on top of the field? The environment? Bill CrawfordIt's about, I think, really creating a great network. And so I do have a pretty extensive network of different advisors John Doyle who's here today, is one of those for me. Sandler O'Neill is a great resource for me. As our you know, some other investment banks around in the space. The other thing is other CEOs, and so you know, I built a network of bank CEOs around the country, and it's great to be able to pick up the phone and say, hey, you know what, I'm working on this problem. I see where you guys have dealt with that. How did you do that? How did you learn? So this group of CEOs is very willing to help. And so that's a great source for us as well. Ken WhiteIs that a formal setting or something you have put together? Bill CrawfordThere are some formal settings and but that really evolves into, you know, more of one-off phone calls and that sort of thing. We meet at different events. I mean, we have to go to the same investor conferences we end up playing golf together at some of those things. There are some organizations mid-sized bank coalition, for example, where CEOs go. So I think having that network is really helpful. But that's really what I've learned about the CEO job is you really don't have to have the answer. You have to know where to go to find the answer and then ultimately who to trust, and ultimately you've got to make that decision. Ken WhiteYeah, I think I think some of the myths of a CEO is that you must be the smartest individual in the room. Bill CrawfordIt's actually might be the reverse. I think it really comes down to putting great talent around you because you can't know all things. You know, I went out and recruited a really strong person in the IT area because that was a challenge for us. You know, what I love about John is, you know, he's able to really help me understand what we're talking about, you know, and really get it to where okay, I understand what we're doing here, and that's really important I think to be able to boil things down to where you could simply understand it. Ken WhiteMillennials, I mean, that's a very different group. Have you done anything to onboard to recruit anything differently with that group? Bill CrawfordYes, we have an internship program. It's mostly undergraduate. It's been for the last three years, and we've really attracted some terrific talent there. And you know, it's one of these things where we're in Hartford, Connecticut every, one wants to be in Boston and New York, but we've actually been able to bring some people into that program who've joined our company and stayed with our company and are even recruiting their friends. I think the thing we know about Millennials is they want to be engaged. They want to be in a passionate environment. They want to contribute. They don't wanna get bored. And so you know, when we bring these folks in, that's what we're really thinking about how do we keep them challenged. They will not sit there and do drudge work all day. Ken WhiteRight. Did you have a leadership or an executive coach coming up? Bill CrawfordI have, yeah. When I was at Wachovia and both South Trust, that's something that we did a lot of, and it's important to get a 360 view of yourself. Ken WhiteRight. Bill CrawfordIt's really important to see you know how do your peers view you. How do those below you view you? You know how do those above you view you because it's different than you think. Ken WhiteNo, no question. And that can be tough to take. Right. You might hear or see something you're not all that crazy to hear about. Bill CrawfordIt is. You're gonna. It's like looking in the mirror. You're like, really, that's it. But it's really important because you know it's the only way you get better. It's like golf. You know you see your golf swing on video, and you're like, oh no wonder I'm not playing so well. Ken WhiteYeah. Bill CrawfordBut I think in life, it's all about just getting incrementally better wherever you are. Ken WhiteI asked that question because we actually just recorded a podcast that we'll post soon with two leadership coaches, and so that was a topic that's interesting. What, what, how people became coaches, but who needs that sort of coaching and that input along the way? What advice do you have for people who have the CEO role in their future? Bill CrawfordInteresting, it's one of those things where the CEO role is one where you know there probably is a point where you think you're getting close to it. And I think be patient. I think continue to really build the network around you. Get clearer about how you're going to lead. You know, for me, it's really have to understand true north. You know the first thing I decided after watching a company like Wachovia basically fail was we're going to be really strong on risk management. That's something we're going to do. The other thing we've decided in advance is we want to win, but we want to win with integrity because the larger this thing gets. I mean, it's not you. It's that tone you're setting out there. And so what I would say is whatever your actions or inactions are. Just be careful because it is those actions that speak louder than words. I know that's an old cliche, but it's so true. They're watching everything you do, and you're sending signals. I mean, Wells Fargo great company, John Stump great leader gone through a lot of challenges, you know, and it's like I think what they wanted was let's go and help customers, and that's going to ultimately do more business with customers. Probably what people heard is no, go get the number. Those are two wildly different messages. You know, one is very constructive for the customer, but at the end of the day, I think the feeling there was how do you keep the organization really focused on serving customers and not that's why I have to be really careful the CEO because you know we have earnings per share targets. We have production targets. I've got to talk about risk-adjusted return on capital and all those things. But at the end of the day, I've got to keep the organization focused on what's doing right for the customers. Protecting the depositors, and ultimately I'm really a steward for shareholders to earn them a reasonable return. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Bill Crawford, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Bill Crawford, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Margaret Liptay & Terry Shannon](images/margaret-liptay-terry-shannon-93-thumb.jpg)
![Working with a Leadership Coach](images/margaret-liptay-terry-shannon-93-thumb.jpg)
Margaret Liptay & Terry Shannon
Episode 93: September 22, 2017
Working with a Leadership Coach
It's difficult to reach your goals by yourself. We all need help along the way. The best quarterbacks in football work with quarterback coaches. The best actors have acting coaches. And in business, the best leaders have leadership coaches. At some point in your career, you may decide to work with a leadership coach. It might be your idea, or your employer may make the suggestion. Either way, finding a leadership coach and creating a one-on-one collaborative relationship with the coach can have a dramatically positive effect on your career. Today we're joined by two certified leadership coaches: Margaret Liptay is CEO of MLC Consulting; Terry Shannon is Executive Director of the Executive Partners here at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Executive Partners provide leadership coaching to the students in the business school. They join us today to discuss how they work with their clients and what you should expect from your leadership coach.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is Leadership & Business. The podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's difficult to reach your goals by yourself. We all need help along the way. The best quarterbacks in football work with quarterback coaches. The best actors have acting coaches. And in business, the best leaders have leadership coaches. At some point in your career, you may decide to work with a leadership coach. It might be your idea, or your employer may make the suggestion. Either way finding the right leadership coach and creating a collaborative one-on-one relationship with the coach can have a dramatically positive effect on your career. Today we're joined by two certified leadership coaches. Margaret Liptay is CEO of MLC consulting. Terry Shannon is Executive Director of the Executive Partners here at William & Mary's Mason School of Business. The executive partners provide leadership coaching to the students in the business school. They join us on the podcast to discuss how they work with their clients and what you should expect from your leadership coach. Here's our conversation with Margaret Liptay and Terry Shannon. Ken WhiteWell, Margaret and Terry, thank you very much for joining us today. This is an exciting time we're actually recording just as all the students are coming back to William & Mary. You've both been very involved with students and leadership and coaching. We're all so welcome thanks for taking the time to join us. Margaret LiptayThank you, Ken. Ken WhiteMargaret, we'll start with you. Your background, your story. How did you become a leadership coach? Margaret LiptayWell, Ken, that's a great question. I always encourage the clients that I coach to become very good storytellers. So I'll hope I hope you'll let me share a story Ken WhiteSure. Margaret Liptaywith you this morning. First of all, let me start a little bit with my background in my career. I had an absolutely fabulous career with a Fortune 100 professional services firm. I was a managing director and enjoyed every single day of my career. Lots of pressure, lots of clients, internal-external, you know, as the senior executive, you have lots of decision-making authority. You have a lot of people that you need to tell what to do day in and day out. You're sort of the ultimate decision-maker with both your internal and external clients. And I loved it. I loved every minute of it. The challenge and the regret that I have was that I really didn't have enough energy and time in my day to spend a whole lot of time on leadership development. Particularly in service of our emerging leaders or our transitional leaders. And I always regretted that. So after 25 years and just enjoying every moment of my career, I had an opportunity to work for Fordham University Graduate School of Business, where I was an adjunct professor, and I taught team dynamics, and Leadership, and Change. And I loved it, and I worked with the executive MBA students, and I was so jazzed. I loved working with them hearing their stories. We'd it'd 10 o'clock at night, and we'd still be talking, and it was great. But to me, there was still something missing. There was still something I wanted to do with my career to better pay it forward. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptaySo coincidentally, again, I happened to have an opportunity with some leadership coaches, and it was an aha moment. The clarity of what I wanted to do after those conversations, which were very powerful, and I asked a lot of. You know, inquisitive questions was just amazing to me. So I applied to Georgetown University and became eventually certified as a leadership coach. But I want to talk about that journey. So I go to Georgetown. I really didn't know as much as I thought I knew about leadership coaching. And one thing is clear about leadership coaching it's about listening, not telling. So let's reflect back on my background. That was my 25-year career, telling. I have an MBA in organizational behavior that was all about telling and organizing around organizations. So when I went to Georgetown and they said you really can no longer tell. You're only going to listen. I said what. Ken WhiteYeah, no kidding. Margaret LiptayHow can that possibly be? So they it took a while. They actually had to break me of a lot of habits where I wanted to be in control. I wanted to be the managing director in chief. I wanted to be the strategist in chief. I wanted to be the professor in chief, and they were like no, no, and more, no. You will become the listener in chief. And about halfway through the program, it was again a moment of true clarity where I realized it is so much better to be a listener than a talker and a teller. And I just stepped right into it. It became transformational for me. And it changed my life. It changed my behavior. It changed the way I listen. It changed the way I view people, their problems, how I listen to them, how I feel about them. And so I would have to say that my journey from the chief telling officer to, in my world, you know, the chief listening officer has been just incredibly powerful. And what I love about it is that my clients own it. I don't own it. And so, in paying it forward, I help them see with new eyes, feel with new spirit, do things they couldn't do before. And at the end of the day, they move forward, and they own it. So that's my story. Ken WhiteGreat, Terry, what about you? Terry ShannonWell, my story. I spent 35 years in the food distribution industry. The first 26 of it on the corporate side, food service distribution. Started in sales and marketing and, as Margaret said, moved up through those telling kind of steps where you were managing people and working with folks. After 26 years in that industry. I crossed over to the nonprofit sector and became CEO of one of the largest food banks in the country in Phoenix, Arizona. At that time at, that transition moving from the corporate world to the nonprofit sector was quite an adjustment. And one of my board members at that time suggested that I connect with an executive coach to work with me leadership coach. To help make those changes and make those adjustments along the way. It was a terrific experience, and I spent nine years at the food bank and found it to be my the most rewarding part of my working career. After retiring moved here to Williamsburg and got involved knew it wasn't going to be all about golf and drinking coffee because I'm not that kind of guy. Got involved with the College of William & Mary and the Executive Partner Program, and I soon realized that would be helpful for me to have a little bit of framework. Very quickly realized the framework around working with today's students and then in helping them. Went back to my leadership coach and started talking about programs for coaching. She pointed me towards the Georgetown program and applied to it, and like Margaret, it was an incredibly transformational situation. The first three day in session seminars, a set of seminars, I remember calling my wife at the end of the first day and saying you're not going to believe this. It was much more emotional and touchy-feely than I thought that I was going to be walking into, and you know, half the class was in tears during the first-afternoon session, and it just opened eyes and was just the incredible transformational experience, and it gave me framework to be able to work with students and with outside clients that I work with now that I have just found the whole coaching profession to be incredibly effective for the client but also very rewarding for me as their coach. Ken WhiteAnd you mentioned the executive partners. That's a group of one hundred and twenty or so semi-retired, retired executives who work with the business school here at William & Mary and serve as coaches to our students. Terry ShannonYup, we work with the students at all levels. Grad and undergrad and grad level students actually have a specific executive partner assigned to them for the full first year that they're here to work through their personal and professional development process. Ken WhiteYou got a coach fairly late in your career. I mean, you weren't in your 20s, and this was later, after what, 25 years in the private industry. What was that experience like? Terry ShannonIt was difficult at first and challenging because I know you come from that corporate world, and you think you know it all and you have all the answers, but in crossing over from the nonprofit or from the profit sector to the nonprofit sector, I didn't have all the answers. So really helped me work through how to deal with that and how to open myself up and soften some of the edges because the nonprofit sector needed that as you're working with the donor community and the client community at the food bank environment. Ken WhiteMargaret, how does a client find you? Margaret LiptayA bunch of different ways. Lots of referrals through website or LinkedIn, where we are found. We also get recommendations or what I call testimonials from our clients. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptaySo one client begets another. A lot of my work are through corporate sponsors. So one corporate sponsor will generate another corporate sponsor, and we do a great job, it becomes evangelistic. I mean, the word gets out. Ken WhiteSo from a client standpoint, an individual could approach either of you individually or through their company. Is there a percentage of work you've done corporate versus individual? Margaret LiptayI've done a lot of work with individuals approaching me. I've done the vast majority of my work collaborate through corporations, and they seem to have very rigorous programs in some cases around coaching. I like the idea of coaching at all levels within an organization. The trend is getting more to that, but right now, there's a lot of senior leadership coaching that goes on. I would say the vice president director level and above. In my world, I would like to see a more holistic approach to coaching, and I would like to see leaders learn some aspects of coaching. But to answer your question, it comes at you from all different directions. Cause you could coach someone within an organization and they have such a good experience, hopefully, that then they might refer their brother-in-law or their sister-in-law or a colleague, and that might be an independent assignment. So you know engagement, so you can work it either way, really. Ken WhiteAnd from the client standpoint, they may pay or their organization? Margaret LiptayWell, if it's an individual that you're coaching, they would pay you on an individual basis. If it's a client, we call it the sponsoring firm, the client sponsor firm they would pay. However, you know, you sort of take that off the table early on. It's not about who's paying. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayIt's about who the actual client is. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptaySo the client becomes the person that you're coaching. And that is a very sacrosanct, very confidential, very one-on-one relationship-building process. And you do. There are ways to report back to the actual person or corporation that pays, and you work that out on the on the go inside when you negotiate your engagement, and the way I do it, Ken, is that if a corporation hires me, then we have to have clarity. There has to be an agreement between the corporation and what their roles and responsibilities are. What my roles and responsibility are. And what the client's roles and responsibility are. And that responsibility and has to be, you know, very well expressed, very well put in writing, and then everyone knows where they're at, and there's no lack of confidentiality or no requests for information that you know you're not in a position to give. However, I can ask my client if they mind if I have a conversation with their leadership and if the person says yes, that's fine. Your ideal is we have a three-way conversation. Ken WhiteGot it. Margaret LiptayBecause it's not once again about me telling, it's about me sitting with them and saying how do you two feel we're going in progressing in this relationship. Ken WhiteTerry, your relationships with a client. How long does it last? Terry ShannonVary from six months to a year, typically, and it depends on the frequency of that you're connecting as well. You know, early on with some clients, it may be every other week kind of thing, and then it may spread to a monthly kind of scenario because, you know, what we're talking about with the client is behavior change and ultimately to orchestrate behavior change you need time in between sessions for them to experiment and try new things and be able to come back and talk through. How that went? How it impacted? Is it making the progress they were looking for? So you need that those gaps to be able to give them an opportunity to do it. Margaret LiptayTo Terry's point, the whole aspect of coaching it's not talk therapy. You know we're not their friend, we're not their minister, we're not their psychologist. We are their coach, and in the front end, you establish what it is you are coaching to and around. What you want to accomplish, and there's actionable items along the way. There's a lot of rigor, and then there's expected outcomes. Let's face it a firm is not going to hire either Terry or I if, in fact, there is no outcome. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayThey need results. And that's certainly understood by everybody. And I think that one of the key issues is that you have to concentrate on making sure that there is progression along the way. That's why this is a rigorous process. It's not just talk therapy. Ken WhiteRight, no. Before we started recording, we were talking about the core components of coaching. Listening, powerful questions, and then the process. Margaret, would you talk us through the listening piece? What takes place in that component of the relationship? Margaret LiptayWell, this is where you really have to learn not to tell because, at the end of the day, you want the individual that you're coaching to own their outcome. You want them to own their behaviors. You want them to own how they show up. So having said that, what I go through with my clients is in terms of the listening skills. I try to reflect for myself and them on what I call global listening. And we talked a little bit about this. If you recall, Ken, in our leadership presence presentation, there's three levels. There's a level where you're listening, but you're not really listening. You're thinking of your next question. You're kind of listening, and there's a level to where you are listening, you're intently listening, you're really engaged. And then that global listening, that beautiful place that you both can get to and that we strive to have our clients learn, is where you're not only listening, you're listening profoundly, you're also watching, you're watching body language. And then lastly, through listening for what's not said. How many conversations have we been in where you know, when someone left the room, they were not telling you something? Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptaySo we as coaches have to work on those listening skills and really be intentional about listening and about presenting the powerful questions that will get us to sort of peeling the onion, as I call it, and get to the core of what we're trying to not only establish but how we're going to get to the results and the actionable items. Ken WhiteI assume if I'm the client, I would like you to tell me a few things once in a while, Terry. But that's not where the aha moments happen. Terry ShannonNo, because the ability to reframe that the impulse for us to tell into a question so that the discovery process comes about for the client. That's the remarkable kind of part of the conversation and the true aha part of it along the way. The ability to interpret body language and say oh, I notice you're holding back. You're sitting there with your arms crossed. You're not making eye contact with me when you just said that. What's behind that? What's causing that? How are you feeling about that kind of situation? And going through that discovery process is really really what gets the client to move from A to B to C and get down the path. Ken WhiteAnd how do you learn to ask those powerful questions? Terry ShannonThrough the Georgetown training and just lots of experience in it. As Margaret said, it's that comfort level in not worrying about what my next question is gonna be. I'd need to be paying attention to the client and immersed in the situation. I need to be focused and centered 100 percent. Margaret LiptayTo be totally in the moment. Totally in the moment with that person. Terry ShannonYou know, an hour-long conversation with a client. It takes me an hour to recover after. Ken WhiteI bet. I was going to say that. Terry ShannonIt's a cool-down period because the adrenaline is high, I'm pumping, I'm focused, you know, zeroed in on everything. Every word they're saying, every inflection in their voice, the body language that they're demonstrating, and trying to feed that back because I'm a mirror. Picture I'm a mirror. I'm trying to hold that mirror up for them to see how they're showing up in that particular moment. Margaret LiptayOne thing about coaching: it's totally selfless. You have to take yourself out of it and make it 100 percent about the person that you're coaching, and that is quite hard. Ken WhiteI'll bet. Margaret LiptayParticularly when you have a very rich and vast background, both educationally and career-wise. You want to help, but those would be our solutions. They wouldn't be their solutions, and therefore there wouldn't be a continuous sustainable behavior that would follow. So it takes to Terry's point. It's exhausting. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with leadership coaches Margaret Liptay and Terry Shannon in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is once again offering its popular certificate in business management program in late October. It's a five-day program designed for working professionals who want a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with leadership coaches Margaret Liptay and Terry Shannon. Ken WhiteIt sounds like teaching you go in for an hour and a half and give it everything you have, and you're ready to take a nap right after that. I'm spent. It takes time. Margaret LiptayAnd sometimes, in all fairness, you get to a roadblock. Ken WhiteI'm sure, yeah. Margaret LiptayIt's not moving, and you have to reframe and rethink and come up with another route to go down because something's not happening, and you have to again keep at it, keep digging so that you can get to the root of what it is that we're trying to accomplish and then come up with those actionable items. Ken WhiteAnd is that the process? As you're talking about going through that. Terry ShannonThere's a lot of tell me more kind of framed questions in one form or another to try and dive deeper to help them understand what caused them to get to this point, this issue, this opportunity, and then because you've got to kind of maybe sometimes dismantle it to be able to rebuild it. Margaret LiptayAnd there are assignments, and I'm sure Terry does the same thing I do in his practice where between our sessions, there are assignments. Will you try this and you co-create these assignments so that they again own what they need to do? But you encourage them. Would you be willing to try x, y, z that you just talked about? We just came up with a potential solution to the problem. Now how are you going to implement that when you get back to your office and get back to your staff? What are you going to do? Because if you don't do anything, there is no point to the coaching. There has to be action and results. Terry ShannonIn some of those practices, sometimes maybe an article, a video, watch a movie kind of thing from an activity standpoint and use that as a means to have a further conversation on a topic or subject and deep dive the next time. There's tremendous amount of tools that we pull on from our virtual toolbox to put in the client's hands that can support some of those kinds of practices going forward. Ken WhiteIs there a particular time in someone's career that forming a relationship with a coach is right, or is it individual? Margaret LiptayWell, my opinion is even though it's a challenge and I understand it totally. Starting when you have emerging leaders coming along. Starting at their earliest stages is the best time to start because I'm sort of in the school of really old dogs, and new tricks don't always work. So start the foundation really early. However, what's practical in many firms, as I mentioned earlier, is starting at least at that vice president, director level, that middle manager level so that you can start to influence and you know the more responsibility you get no matter how many people you're around and how many clients you're with and how busy your day is you're actually very lonely. Leaders are lonely, and you become a source of getting rid of some of that loneliness for them. And then there are other tools. They have a coach. They have a journal which I'm a big advocate of journaling. They have, you know, the articles that Terry mentioned. They have the homework assignments. If you don't like conflict, approach someone between now and next time we speak that you're having a conflict with and see how you can manage through that. See how it works, then tell me. Report back. How did it work? What did you do well? What didn't do so well? And what would you do differently next time? Those are three powerful questions that can serve for a whole session. Ken WhiteI would think from the client's standpoint, don't even think about this unless you're willing to make a major investment in time and effort as well. Margaret LiptayAbsolutely. Terry ShannonYup, that's initial conversation. Margaret LiptayExactly. Terry ShannonYou have to have with folks along the way. One of the other misunderstandings about coaching and what time of the career is appropriate. Coaching isn't about dealing with people with performance issues in an organization. And Margaret, I think, agrees with this that I will not take on a situation where a client has come to me and said I need you to deal with Joe. You know he's on his way out the door if he doesn't change. That's not where coaching can be. Can coaching work there? Sure. But that's not where I like to work my end of the client. Margaret LiptayNo, that's why on the early discovery meetings that you have with either your client or your sponsoring firm, you want to find out are they really invested in growing where they are, not as an exit strategy. I will not take an engagement that's about an exit strategy. That's for someone else to do. There are people who do that. Career counseling. Career coaching. And that's perfectly fine. But that's not as a leadership coach what I would be engaged in. Terry ShannonThe other major opportunity is very similar to my story that I described right up front. Is if somebody is changing job. Has just change jobs, just changed careers, industries, and you know, they're taken on a fresh new look at things. Coaching can be a very effective way for them to be able to organize that and think about it and be successful at it on a move-forward basis. Ken WhiteHow much do you use technology to interact? How much is face-to-face? How much is phone and so forth? Margaret LiptayWell, practically speaking, the way that most executives work today, they're never in one place at one time. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptaySo you have to accommodate their schedules, and we travel too as coaches. So the beauty is there is, you know, go-to-meeting, there is Skype, there's telephone, and then there's those in-person meetings when you can grab them. And all three seem to work, at least in my practice, very effectively. And what I kind of like about the phone is that you become a coach, very tuned in to a sigh, an inflection, a pause. You do get very tuned in. So I think, in a way, sometimes a phone conversation is really great because you might pick up something that you wouldn't necessarily pick up if you were sitting right next to them when you get one of these sighs. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayTell me about that. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. Margaret LiptayWhat's going on? Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayWhere sometimes, people don't do that when you have the energy of each other together because they're going to not have your energy all the time. They're going to be on their own energy. Ken WhiteYears ago, when I had the opportunity to work with a coach, the first thing was they asked me to give them names of people with whom I interacted with on a regular basis. They went out and interviewed those people. Is it does it still? Do you still do that? Terry ShannonI use that as a very common practice. I'm interviewing a set of stakeholders that they interface with, hopefully, a blend of both from a business and a personal side. And I've got a series of 10 questions that I picked up from some of the Georgetown networking and so forth that is just a tremendous set of stuff to be able to begin the process with, and those conversations are confidential as well, and I don't share the specific information from one one of those stakeholders back with the client. But I am able to compile that into a framing to be able to use as part of the conversation with the client. Margaret LiptayTo Terry's point, what's fabulous about coaching and maybe people misunderstand sometimes even though you're coaching to certain outcomes that might be applicable within a firm. You're coaching the whole person, and the person doesn't stop showing up when they leave the office. So the idea is that we want these skills and the behavior changes and the listening skills that we inculcate in our clients to generate not just within the workplace but at home and in their other relationships as well. It's about relationship building holistically, not just about within the firm. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptaySo I think if you kind of look at coaching in that context, it's important to kind of know what's going on in the person's world and have discussions with people that impact that person and vice versa. Ken WhiteYeah, makes sense. Margaret LiptayWe'd like them to see that the person that they become after coaching. Ken WhiteRight. Now you've both coached students. MBAs is in their 20s all the way up. What's the difference? Or are there differences between someone that early in their career versus someone who's leading hundreds and thousands of people? Is there anything that comes to mind? Terry ShannonI found the student to be much more approachable and a sponge and willing to try and experiment with new stuff along the way. The executive is a little more sensitive and a little more tenuous in making change big change along the way, but the students are having both the student and the season client. It's a refreshing change from a coaching standpoint. Ken WhiteYeah, I bet. Terry ShannonYou come at it from two different directions. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayI agree. I think the students are very eager. Most of them to learn just like you know more senior people. Some of them get stuck and don't want to do the work and aren't interested and think they're great and perfect, and everyone is looking at them with, you know, pennies in their eyes. But you know there are the students that I've dealt with. I usually continue on for many years with them because they when they go on to their full-time jobs, they're still touching base back, and we're still talking. Now, in that case, we're mentoring, and I would like to make a distinction around that, Ken. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayThere is a big distinction between coaching, mentoring, advising, counseling, consulting. Coaching when it's really rigorous regardless of who the person is a student or a CEO. It's very intentional. There's rigor. There is breakthroughs, and then there's hopefully successful outcomes and a change in either behavior or a way of looking at something. A way of presenting themselves. A way of using their body language, their voice, etc. That's coaching. Mentoring is sharing experiences and a bit of talk therapy. Counseling is again. It's counseling. It's telling, most times. There's a big component of telling in counseling. Ken WhiteInteresting. Margaret LiptayMaybe you should try this. Maybe you should do this. This might be better for you. Is that you should do that. There's a lot of there's a lot of that. There's a lot of powerful questions as well, but there's some of the telling that goes on. So as you go up the spectrum, there's more and more telling and less than less it's all about you. You're going to own it. This is what we expect. This is the rigor. This is the outcome. Ken WhiteIf you meet someone or if you meet someone who says I think I want to do this, you know I've had a nice career. I think I'd like I'd like to pay it forward. As you say, what kind of advice do you give them? What do you tell them about this profession and what it means? Margaret LiptayWell, I think it's fabulous. But I also spend more time talking about the heart of the coach. You know what it's what it means to be selfless. This is one time it will never be about you. We have to go through the whole conversation about are you capable of listening and not telling because maybe they really want to be a mentor and not a coach. Will you have the rigor? Are you willing to get certified? I think no cooperation or individual out there would hire a coach who has not gone through some formal training and gotten some level of certification. Some level of experience because you're dealing with human beings here. So it's a huge responsibility. Terry may have some other. Terry ShannonYeah, you know the challenge that we experience with the executive partners. Every one of those one hundred and twenty-plus came from senior-level positions. Ken WhiteSure. Terry ShannonAnd they were in that tell-world kind of scenario. And now we're trying to get them to be coaches for first-year MBA students and put them through training. Imagine putting volunteers through eight hours of training on coaching skills, on listening, and powerful questions. To try and get them out of the, you know, the key theme that we use is the ask, don't tell. You know, whenever you find yourself about to tell somebody something. Bring out your war stories and your experiences and cross them into that mentor role. Stop yourself reframe it into a question. Now how effective they are without a significant amount of training. Like the Georgetown program, which was six months worth of time and effort. I think they're good, but they're not as good as they could be if they went through that kind of formal training. Absolutely. Ken WhiteWhat about a professional executive who's seeking a coach? What should they do? Which steps should they take to make sure they land with the right person? Margaret LiptayWell, that's part of the discovery meeting, so they should certainly see three or four or have a conversation with three or four different individuals who are certified coaches, and then then then there's a two-way discovery going on. The coach should be discovering how coachable are you and the person who thinks they've want a coach should be interviewing the person to say you know can I build a rapport with that person? Do I trust that person? Are they certainly qualified and certified? You know it's like you wouldn't go. You wouldn't go to a doctor without you know some level of interviewing them or getting recommendations and referrals and testimonials. So that's what I would do if I were looking for a coach. Ken WhiteAnd then, if all works out, both parties experience success and have a great time. Margaret LiptayExactly. Terry ShannonExactly. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Margaret Liptay and Terry Shannon. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals. With business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guests this week, Margaret Liptay and Terry Shannon. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Till next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Jon Doyle](images/jon-doyle-92-thumb.jpg)
![Remembering September 11](images/jon-doyle-92-thumb.jpg)
Jon Doyle
Episode 92: September 14, 2017
Remembering September 11
Sixteen years ago this week, terrorists attacked the United States. Four airlines were hijacked—two of the planes crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Almost three thousand people were killed, six thousand injured. In 2001, Jon Doyle worked at the investment banking firm Sandler O'Neill, whose offices were located on the 104th floor of Tower 2. Sixty-six of Sandler O'Neill's 171 employees died as a result of the attacks. But the people in the organization, while honoring their lost colleagues, kept on going. They went back to work the very next day. With the memory of their friends front and center, Sandler O'Neill found a way to not only move forward but to grow and succeed. Today, Jon Doyle is Senior Managing Principle of Sandler O'Neill & Partners and joins us to discuss the events of sixteen years ago, how he and his colleagues honor their lost friends, and how the organization embraced resilience.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategy, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Sixteen years ago this week, terrorists attacked the United States. Four airliners were hijacked, and two of the planes crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Almost 3,000 people were killed, 6,000 injured. In 2001 Jon Doyle worked at the investment banking firm Sandler O'Neill whose offices were located on the 104th floor of Tower Two. Sixty-six of Sandler O'Neill's 171 employees died as a result of the attacks. But the people in the organization, while honoring their lost colleagues, kept on going. They went back to work the very next day with the memory of their friends front and center. Sandler O'Neill found a way to not only move forward but to grow and succeed. Today Jon Doyle is Senior Managing Principal of Sandler O'Neill and Partners. He joins us on the podcast to discuss the events of 16 years ago, how he and his colleagues honor their lost friends, and how the organization embraced resilience. Here's our conversation with Jon Doyle. Ken WhiteJon, thanks for first of all for coming to William & Mary for meeting with the students and taking some time with us. Jon DoyleIt's my pleasure. I'm delighted to be here. Ken WhiteAnd you had the opportunity just a minute ago to meet with some MBA students. What was your reaction to meeting with them? Jon DoyleThey clearly get a better class, a student than 30 years ago when I was here is my reaction. They were wonderful, and it was great. I was about ten of them, and we had a nice two-way discussion. It was wonderful. Ken WhiteWe are recording on September 11th. And so we think about that day. We've also had some incredible catastrophes in the Houston area and in Florida over the weekend. You and your organization really went through it on 9/11. Can you share that story with us? What you experienced that day? Jon DoyleSure. Looking back on it, you've probably heard different people speak of it. Sometimes it feels like it was yesterday, and sometimes it feels like it was 50 years ago, and you almost weren't involved. But we were as involved as you could be. We were on the hundred and fourth floor of Two World Trade. The second one hit the first one down. I was in the sales and trading side of things at that point my career and was a senior person with responsibility for the fixed-income side of things at Sandler O'Neill. And oddly enough, I show up at work about seven-fifteen or seven o'clock every morning is my way. I leave my house at six. I would drive down and be there at seven. We have morning meetings, and so it's important to be there. Interestingly enough, I was asked a day or two before to go to a lunch meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a client with one of my now partners who would like me to join him. I said yes, as is my way. Always wanted to see clients because it's our lifeblood. And back then, with no security at the airports, you could catch any shuttle in any moment every half an hour. There was a shuttle going up with no real security. Ken WhiteRight. Jon DoyleAnd so, my plan was to go into the office, do the meetings, catch a ten thirty shuttle be there at eleven thirty. Lunch at twelve - twelve-thirty, but because I always fear being late and I'm an early person, I like to be early for things. I woke up that morning, and when I got downstairs, I decided to say listen, I'll go right to Boston, and I can actually get to Boston in time to do the Monday meeting or Tuesday meeting, and I'll do it from there and that way there's no chance I'll be late for anything because I'll just run it out of my Boston office. So I did not tell my wife, and I went straight to Boston and because when I got up, I thought I was going to go into New York, and then I changed at the last minute, and so up to Boston I went, and you know the horror unfolded on our world. And so, from there, we became the focal point because we were the working office and from a communications standpoint. And so I finally got word to my wife that I was fine. I'd forgotten to call her quite frankly and tell her I just said tell Missy I called. I didn't think it through and say tell her I am okay and in Boston because I had a lot going on. Ken WhiteSure. Jon DoyleBut we got that cleared up, and no harm, no foul there. And we worked through the day. So many people were out of contact, and we were a firm that often travels and so, fortunately, thank God a reasonable amount of the people in the office were traveling. And thank God, some of them. It was the first day of school for one of my partners youngest daughters. And he took her to school that day and didn't come in. You know, other people had things that came up, and so they were spared. But we spent the day trying to figure out what we were going to do, and we decided that day that we were going to open for business the next morning, and we had a bank client give us some bank branches to work out of in New York City. And I'm very proud to say that everybody who was alive showed up for work the next day in New York. Ken WhiteWere you able to think clearly? Jon DoyleI would say yes. Looking back on it and it's I'm very pleased. I don't. You never know how you're going to think. You always wonder, under real duress and pressure, how will you really respond. And I had always often gone through as a generation that my generation had never been in a war conflict. You know, never been drafted, never served things like that, you know, at 52. Back then, I was one of the generations that had no real conflict. And you always wonder what it would have been like. Romantically I guess. And there's nothing romantic about this. It's horrible. But I would say luckily. I was thinking clearly, and luckily my partners a lot of my partners were thinking clearly, and we really focused on the task at hand, and the task at hand was to find our friends because, honest to goodness, at that point, you could not conceive that everybody was gone. I was certain 10, 20, 30 percent would be alive. Ken WhiteRight. Jon DoyleAnd so the next day, there were two things we wanted to accomplish. We were not going to let evil win. We were going to do business with our clients and show the evil in the world that it did not work that it did not hit the plan that they wanted. And the other half of us we split up into two. The other half of us were going to comb the hospitals and emergency centers in Manhattan and find our friends and contact their family and let them know where they are because we were certain people were alive. Ken WhiteRight. Jon DoyleAnd so we literally split up into two the next morning at 8:00 in the morning, and we did business that day, and we went out to find our friends that day. Unfortunately, we did not find any that survived, but we did locate a few, at least to give informational assistance. Ken WhiteAnd you lost many. Jon Doyle66. Ken WhiteYeah, out of? Jon DoyleOut of 171. Ken WhiteRight. Jon DoylePlus, a visitor. Ken WhiteRight. So talk about resilience. I mean to start over. What were some of the themes? What was going through your mind? Let's get. Let's win. Jon DoyleWell. Ken WhiteBasically, right. Jon DoyleYeah, you know it's funny you say to start over. Never thought about starting over. We were just we were resuming, but there was no starting over. We were in business the day before. We were partners in business and colleagues in business the day after. There was no starting over. Ken WhiteWell, what a great mindset. Jon DoyleWell, it sounds great. I just I don't know if I don't have another mindset, but that was the mindset we just resuming and immediately because we were pissed off. Ken WhiteYeah. Jon DoyleFrankly. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Jon DoyleAnd it was cathartic for us, certainly for me, to be able to do something. I oftentimes think about hard it was for people in Nebraska and Ohio, and California who wanted to help and didn't know how it's like when you watch Houston and you watch Florida. You want to help, and you don't really know how. We knew how. Ken WhiteYeah. Jon DoyleAnd so it was very clear to us what we were going to try and do. Ken WhiteDid the culture change at all, or like you said, was it still resuming business? Jon DoyleOh no, no, the culture didn't. I think I think the culture continued, which was the key, and I probably, looking back on it, I think that was the key. Because of our culture, there was no starting over. There's no what are we going to do it, you know, because of the Jimmy Dunne's and the Herman Sandler's and the Chris Quackenbush's and the Ken McBrayer's and the Jimmy Connors. We were going to push straight through. We were going to push straight whatever players we had. We're going to get on the field that we were going to go forward, and that was a very satisfying feeling. And you know, I'm sure people had doubts. It's just there was not a lot of time to have them. It was in or out, and everybody chose in. And I love that. Ken WhiteYeah. Jon DoyleI think that was great. And so I'd say it intensified the culture for a period of time. But the culture was there before, which is what allowed it to happen. Ken WhiteSo to keep winning, keep pushing but honoring your friends at the same time. Jon DoyleKeep fighting, you know, we lose too. You know we, you know, when we're in business, and we lose all the time, it's, you know, the losses hurt more than the wins feel good these days, but fortunately, we've done very well, and we've had a lot of help, and we have great people. But the mindset never wavered. So I was really happy to have the strength of the people like that to work with. It was wonderful. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Jon Doyle of Sandler O'Neill in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is once again offering its popular certificate in business management program in late October. It's a five-day program designed for the working professional who wants a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Jon Doyle, Senior Managing Principal Sandler O'Neill, and Partners. Ken WhiteSome people, I think, would probably say if I was in your shoes, I'd be reluctant to talk about it. Not at all. You're fine with that. Jon DoyleI love talking about my friends, and you know, whose lives were stolen and you know, and it kind of fires me up to do more business and to prove that the other guys didn't win and didn't beat us and their families who obviously we keep in touch with and they keep in touch with us which is wonderful of them have gone on to also succeed and have fulfilling lives. But you can't. You can't put back what was stolen. And that bothers me. Ken WhiteWhat good came from it? Jon DoyleWhat good came from it? I don't know of what good came from it other than maybe, for some, an example that what good I see after it. I don't know if it's come from it. What good I see happening after it is I did get to see the best of people. I did get to see everybody put down their gloves. Everybody put down their defensive mechanisms and help each other. It was a very simple premise good evil, and there is so much more good out there, and people want to help each other. People, regardless of what language, what culture, where they come from, their ideological background. Everybody wanted to help everybody and move forward and with good, and I love that. And so, you know, we complain a lot in the United States. We have the best country in the world. It is not perfect. There are things that upset people in our country. But when you get an overarching real good versus evil I can, I can say firsthand now that good far outweighs it. And people do come together when it's time, and there's no quibbling about anything. There was no quibbling for months and months and months about, you know, people helping people. It was just it was wonderful to see. That is a good thing that I got to see, unfortunately, because of it. But it is a wonderful thing I got to experience. Ken WhiteRight, so this is such a great lesson in resilience, I think. Is that is that right? Am I categorizing it the right way? Jon DoyleYeah, I think so. You know, I think resilience is a great word to use, and determination and focus and pleasure of doing what you do with people in achieving a goal. So yeah, I do think it's a great resilience story. Ken WhiteWhen you see what's happening in Houston and over the weekend in Florida, anything come to mind? If you were to go down there and lead, for example, if you were in charge, what would you do? Jon DoyleWell, I, you know, I have a brother who lives in Houston, and I will tell you the thing about Houston that has struck me watching it is they're not suffering anybody's pity. They are going to get themselves out there was not. I look at Houston, and it shows why Texas has the reputation it has. And there is not one moment that I feel badly for families and peoples loss, but I don't feel that they need any help on the leadership front. They may need resources, and they need some people to come help get things out, but they're in good hands. Those people are going to dig their way out of this. And with an incredibly good attitude, and there's just no sympathy on that front. Empathy, yes but sympathy, no. And I love that about that state, you know the Texas, they have great attitude about it. And you never really heard any complaining. You just heard what their plans were to go forward. Ken WhiteYeah. Jon DoyleAnd it's a big difference, and it shows. So it's my hat's off to them. That's an incredibly hard thing to do. And they are not wasting any time. Ken WhiteYou know there's leadership when things are going well. Everything is sort of quote-unquote normal. And then there's leadership in a crisis. Do you have any examples? Can you tell who? How did you rise up? Who took the lead? How did that happen in terms of getting it all together? Because it could be incredibly chaotic. Jon DoyleYes it could be incredibly chaotic and I saw a lot of chaos and I saw chaos within the firm. Ken WhiteI'm sure. Jon DoyleNot everybody responds the same way to things. You find that out for sure. Luckily I'm very. You know I probably am more chaotic in normal times than I am under great duress, and I what I found was under great duress, I was relatively calm versus the normal me who's always on the move, and so, fortunately, I was in a position which just happened to be the center of it where I could do something and help. And fortunately, I was comfortable thinking it through and kind of dictating what I thought might be some good ideas to do, and everybody agreed. And off we went. There wasn't a lot of time. And so I think it's time and place. I think it's coincidental, but it is interesting that you know Jimmy Dunne survived, who is our undisputed leader and has done a fabulous job and that someone like me got to survive and two other people that were incredible leaders didn't. It's a tough one. But at the time, you're not thinking that way. You're kind of thinking we've got to get somewhere, and someone's got to do it. And so we did. Ken WhiteIt seems to me who, at the time, we lived in the Midwest. You were saying people who felt helpless there we were. It seems to me that you took charge. Like you said, I got some things together, and we went with it. Not everyone can do that. Are there any lessons from that to share? Jon DoyleYeah, my view of it would be they're the same decisions you would make anyway. You just try and think a little slower. They're the decisions. Looking back, anybody. I always say when people say I can't believe what you did, it was so unique. And I'd say no, I think anybody would have done the same thing. I really believe that. Anybody thinking clearly and anybody thinking slowly enough and then acting on those well-thought-out moves. They're not complex at that point. It's just some people. It's a harder process. Fortunately, there were a few of us, or more than a few, that it was not that difficult to process. It was clear and directional, and tangible. We got to do something about it. I think part of the thing. If had I been in Nebraska or California, it probably would have been a lot more difficult for us and for me because it's hard to box from outside the ring. But being in the middle of it was very easy because I knew everything, I had all the information, I had all the resources or could get the resources, and I could do it. So we did it. You know, if I wasn't there, it probably would have been somebody else. But you know, fortunately, I was one of the people there, and off we went. Ken WhiteAny advice to those in Texas and Florida who were looking at it right now saying oh man, I don't even know where to begin. Jon DoyleYeah, you begin with tomorrow. You begin with, you know, cleaning up the floor. You begin with what's more important get the water out of the building or move the furniture. And I think if you can take a second and be able to go through that checklist, that's what you do. But no, the advice is keep that wonderful attitude and work ethic and know that we're all thinking about you. You know that we're all rooting for you, and the same in Florida, which will be next. You know, the sad part about it is the people in Texas, you know, they're digging out, and then you've got Florida as well, and so we're going to have to split resources as a country. And hopefully, they'll do a good job of that, which it really feels like they will. It really feels like we've gotten a lot better at moving the people out of harm's way, and I think both administrations in both of those regions did a fabulous job at preserving life, and so I think they did a great job. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jon Doyle of Sandler O'Neill and Partners. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Jon Doyle, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Faculty & Staff](images/faculty-staff-91-thumb.jpg)
![Summer Reads](images/faculty-staff-91-thumb.jpg)
Faculty & Staff
Episode 91: July 25, 2017
Summer Reads
Summer is flying by, but there is still time to get to the beach, escape to the mountains, or take a road trip. Whatever you plan to do in the remaining weeks of the summer of 2017, you might want to take a book along to listen to or read during your travels. This week on the podcast we asked some of the faculty and staff here at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business what books they recommend to professionals.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, summer is flying by, but there's still time to get to the beach, escape to the mountains, or take a road trip. Whatever you plan to do in the remaining weeks of the summer of 2017, you might want to take a book along to listen to or read during your travels. So this week on the podcast, we asked some of the faculty and staff here at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business what books they recommend to professionals. Ken WhiteOur first recommendation comes from Professor Graham Henshaw, the Executive Director of the school's Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center. Henshaw recommends a book he uses in his renaissance manager class in our online MBA program. Little Bets by Peter Sims. Graham HenshawWhat I like most is actually that it dispels the myth about breakthrough ideas. I think that there is this myth that breakthrough ideas or performances or businesses are the result of these masterfully executed linear plans, and what the book shows is that that's rarely the case. That more often than not, those great outcomes are the result of a series of methodical little bets per the name of the book. These little experiments where the founders or the people involved learn from the failures along the way and the small wins along the way. So this idea of little bets and small wins go hand in hand. It also positions failure in a different light. It positions failure as something that is actually essential to get to that breakthrough idea. So rather than try to do everything you can to avoid failure, get started and expect that your first iteration may not win. Ken WhiteThat's Professor Graham Henshaw, who recommends Little Bets by Peter Sims. Next up, Kim Mallory, Director of MBA programs for Working Professionals, recommends a book that helps you become a better leader. Kim MalloryMy book is A Leader's Legacy, and it's Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, and they're best known for writing the leadership challenge, which is not a new book. It's old, but it's kind of a classic definitely classic in business schools, and even a lot of businesses use their leadership practices inventory, so in 2006 they wrote a book called A Leader's Legacy, and it's focused on critical questions that leaders should ask themselves in order to make a lasting impact. And so the way I look at it is they get you to think about and decide what kind of leader you want to be remembered as at the end of your career. And then once you lock in what that leader is, then they ask you, okay, what he can do now to make sure that you get there, and it's very powerful. It's not a very long book. It's a good read, and it's one of my favorites. Ken WhiteKim Mallory's recommendation is a Leader's Legacy by Kouzes and Posner. Phil Heavilin is Executive Director of the Graduate Career Management Center here at William & Mary. It's no surprise he suggests a book about you and your career. Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well Lived Joyful Life by Burnett and Evans takes a unique look at career design. Phil HeavilinSo what Bill and Dave have done is they've applied design thinking concepts to designing life to your career search. And so, you know, for example, they've taken the concept of prototyping, and rather than jumping into a big idea without trying it on first, they suggest, why don't you prototype it, and they give this great example of an executive who just loves Tuscan culture, and so she decided to quit her job and open up a Tuscan café just full on, and she loved it. But then, after a while, she realized that running a restaurant was not as glamorous as she thought. And so they said, well, perhaps you could have prototyped it by maybe catering a friend's wedding Tuscan style or open up a small catering company or maybe just job shadowing someone who's doing it maybe not the Tuscan theme but runs a restaurant, so you can try it on first before diving in headlong. Ken WhitePhil Heavilin's recommendation is Designing Your Life. So far, we have Little Bets, A Leader's Legacy, and Designing Your Life. We'll have more books for your summer reading list in just a minute. Ken WhiteOur podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is once again offering its popular certificate in business management program in October. The five-day program is designed for the working professional who wants a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our recommendations for your summer book list. Ken WhiteRhonda Barton is Executive Director of Business Development for our Center for Corporate Education. She recommends a book that contains good advice for individuals and organizations. It's Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and co-author Adam Grant. Rhonda BartonWell, when I first picked up the book, I picked it up with a very dear friend in mind who had just lost a spouse, and I had heard Sheryl's story about losing a spouse at a very early age and quite unexpectedly so I picked it up based on that knowledge and thinking that it may help the friend but quickly reading into the book. It became something that I looked at more from the perspective of an organization on a company perspective versus just a personal how do I move through grief and those sorts of things. Cause at the same time, another friend had lost a job, and it was a job that she had had for a number of years. It was a job that was her life, and due to an acquisition, she went through something different, and she found herself 12 years later in, a mid-level age, looking for a job and trying to figure out what next. What is next for her? And so that's the reason that I look at it for more of an organizational perspective then I think just dealing with grief, and when I think about it from a company perspective, if you can take the lessons of the book and think about the building resilience in hard times, that's very true for organizations as well. And we don't always know what's going to be coming down the next pike. Ken WhiteSure. Rhonda BartonIt could be another financial crisis. And if companies and organizations are not prepared for that in many different ways, then I think that can provide some very hard roads that they will have to go down from that. Ken WhiteOption B is Rhonda Barton's recommendation. A book written by a William & Mary alumnus is at the top of the list for Dean Larry Pulley. The Dean recommends Flight Capital. The alarming exodus of America's best and brightest. It's one of several books written by David Heenan, who has twice been a guest on our podcast and who also teaches in our MBA program. Dean Pulley says the book written in 2005 is more relevant than ever in 2017. Larry PulleyThe theme of this book is fairly straightforward and simple. For decades the best and the brightest have been coming to the United States from around the world to study in our great universities, and they stayed here, and they contributed. They've built new companies. They contributed to the prosperity and the culture of this company. But recently, and this is Dave's focus in this book. Recently the best and the brightest have continued to come here and study, but they've gone back home, and they've gone back home for two reasons. One is the burgeoning growth of economies in India and China. The opportunities for entrepreneurs there and other parts of Asia, Latin America, Europe, the Eastern Europe and but the other reason is tightening of restrictions of VISA policies. VISAs in the United States, which I think started coming out of the dot com bubble around 2000 and then went through another tightening after the Great Recession and around 2008, and Dave has testified about this on Capitol Hill. I like also that another prominent William & Mary alumnus and our current Chancellor, Bob Gates, Former Secretary of Defense. While he was President of Texas A&M was a tireless advocate for relaxing some of the VISA policies and being more inviting. And as you know, we have a large group of wonderful international students in our MBA and other programs, and whenever I talk to them or hear about their stories or why they are here, what they want to do, this book comes to mind. Ken WhiteDean Larry Pulley recommends Flight Capital. Finally, Professor Rex Holmlin shares two books with us worth putting on your summer list. The first is Fighting Talk 40 Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy. Rex HolmlinFighting Talk is a short book. It's less than 200 pages, but literally, it's a bunch of mini-essays built around some of the fallacies that always surrounds the discussion of war, peace, and strategy, and I think that all of us. I'm a retired army officer as well as a faculty member here. Need to have better background in that area. And so, you know, quite frankly, strategy is much too important to be left to elected officials and the military. And this is the sort of book that will help all of us enter into the conversation more broadly. Ken WhiteInteresting. And you have a second book. Rex HolmlinI do. Once you finished Fighting Talk, you probably still have some time for a little bit of fun at the beach. Ken WhiteThere you go. Rex HolmlinAnd the book I want to suggest is actually one of a series. They're the Bruno Chief of Police mysteries. They're set in France in the Perigord. Bruno is the Chief of Police of a very small town, St. Denise. The mysteries themself for good. But what I think people will particularly enjoy about the Bruno mysteries, and there 10 of them, is the fact that Bruno is also a gourmet cook and integrated into the stories he has always having his friends over for dinners and there's actually a menu or a cookbook that's been published about some of the things that he talks about the books and tells you how to make. And as you read the mysteries, you're almost always hungry and say, gee, I want to try those myself. As I mentioned, there are actually 10 of those mysteries. The first one is Bruno, chief of police, and I encourage you to start with that. And enjoy them all. I guess I could also say bon appetit. Ken WhiteProfessor Rex Holmlin recommends Fighting Talk and the Bruno Chief of Police mysteries. Ken WhiteWell, there you have it. Our recommendations for books to read while summer is still with us. The list includes Little Bets by Peter Sims, A Leader's Legacy by Kouzes and Posner, Designing Your Life by Burnett and Evans, Option B by Sandberg and Grant, David Heenan's Flight Capital, Colin Gray's Fighting Talk, and for a little lighter reading Bruno Chief of Police by Martin Walker. We hope you find our recommendations helpful. Well, that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our colleagues here who shared their recommendations. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Alice Davison](images/alice-davison-90-thumb.jpg)
![The Job Interview](images/alice-davison-90-thumb.jpg)
Alice Davison
Episode 90: July 18, 2017
The Job Interview
The summer. For many, the summer months are dedicated to a job search—especially those who have recently graduated from college. But for both rookies and experienced professionals, the job interview is a challenging and stressful part of the equation. Seems as though each interview is a challenging and stressful part of the equation. Seems as though each interview is somewhat different from the one before. So what's the best way to prepare, and what do employers expect from candidates before and during the interview? Alice Davison has some great insight and experience when it comes to interviewing. She's Vice President, Global Business Services at the Capital Group in New York City, where she manages global recruiting for investment roles in equity and fixed income groups. She's had several roles in human resources throughout her career and joins us today to share interesting and helpful advice—especially for the young professional—on the qualities employers seek and their expectations for the job interview.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. The summer, for many the summer months are dedicated to a job search, especially those who recently graduated from college. But for both rookies and experienced professionals, the job interview is a challenging and stressful part of the equation. Seems as though each interview is somewhat different from the one before. So what's the best way to prepare, and what do employers expect from candidates before and during the interview? Alice Davison has some great insight and experience when it comes to interviewing. She's Vice President, Global Business Services at the Capital Group in New York City. Where she manages global recruiting for investment roles in equity and fixed-income groups. She's had several roles in human resources throughout her career. Davison visited William & Mary for the Women's Leadership Summit and Stock Pitch Competition. During the break in the day, she joined us to share interesting and helpful advice, especially for the young professional, on the qualities employers seek and their expectations for the job interview. Here's our conversation with the Capital Group's Alice Davison. Ken WhiteAlice, thank you for being here. So you're at the Capital Group, and you have been on the HR side most of your career, really, and so the young women you're going to be seeing today will be out there seeking jobs. So in terms of what you do from an HR standpoint. What's your role? What do you do? Alice DavisonSo I do a narrow. I hope I do it deeply and well. I do a really narrow role on our talent acquisition side where I manage global recruiting for our investment groups and a focus specifically on our investment analysts and the occasional portfolio manager. Most of our recruiting, and it's a small number of folks every year, is focused at the analyst level. Our analysts are really the primary folks who do the investment research and develop and communicate the conviction and the model at Capital that all analysts manage money. So they are both analysts and investors, and that's the group that I focus on. Ken WhiteWhat type of qualities, abilities, and talents are you looking for in the role of an analyst? For a young person who wants to do that or someone early in their career. What should they be focusing on? Alice DavisonCool thing about Capital is I think we all sort of have the things that we focus on, and there's a fair amount of overlap. Different people will look at some different things. You have to be passionate about wanting to do this. I don't do it. Ken WhiteRight, right. Alice DavisonMy colleagues do it. It's really fun and really exciting. It's a ton of hard work. You're wrong a lot. You're wrong in ways that are public, and that can be costly. And so if you're going to do something that's interesting and hard and challenging and you're going to do it well over a long period of time, it's really important to like what you do. So I think early on, we look for folks who can demonstrate passion. It doesn't have to be because, again, there are a lot of people who've never done this. And there are a lot of women who've never done this. And so you look for passion, and it might be that somebody has done this or been exposed to it, and he or she can demonstrate and articulate passion around investing and looking at companies and stocks or bonds specifically, but it might very well be the case for somebody just starting out that they haven't done that yet. And so you'd look for passion in other areas. Are there examples where somebody has been excellent? Feel like our best candidates come out of an interview with somebody. These are high-bar people our folks are great. The interviewers are fabulous, and they'll say wow, I learned something from Susie or Fred or whomever so. So be passionate, be deep, and have some excellence, and sometimes that's around investing, and sometimes it's in other areas. Ken WhiteYeah. Alice DavisonI think we look for folks who are analytical, and sometimes that's shorthand for, you know, sort of being quantitative. But I think broadly speaking, being an analytical not just being numerate and quantitative, but this element of can you develop insights. Can you think about things in ways that other people might not? And based on that, can you develop insights and conclusions that might be different or nonconsensus related to that? It is interesting, and I think sometimes tougher for people who've been sort of on the path, so to speak, to be pushed to have sort of outlier ideas. Sometimes we ask folks sort of what in the world they see that sort of a consensus that they disagree with. And it's hard, you know, especially early on where so much is around, you know, are you sort of are you fitting in or are you part of the crowd just sort of say you know without judging what the example is where is something where you have an outlier view. So that ability or on the analytical piece, and I don't want to underestimate the importance of being able to do the numbers, the models, Ken WhiteSure. Alice Davisonthe quantitative piece, but the sort of more well-roundedness on the analytical piece differentiated insight is important. Our folks have to be commercial, so you this is not an academic exercise. It's not a research project. The end has to be an investment conclusion. So ideally, and people, especially early folks, you come in, you do an internship, you see how to bridge that gap, but ultimately you want to say, what does this how can I make money with this insight? What do I that ability, I think, and maybe that's a little more refined or nuanced down the road, but that's really important. You have to be able to communicate in a variety of different settings in a way that is straightforward and understandable, and succinct. And so I think, you know, at the end of the day, it's about developing and articulating an insightful conclusion helping people understand how this will help make money for clients and shareholders. Communicating that conviction in a relatively straightforward way across a variety of audiences. And you have to be self-aware because the job doesn't end there. You need to live with your recommendations. You need to understand what you've done well or less well and learn from that and do things differently. You need to communicate with people when things are going well. So it's a strong passion, well-rounded analytical skills, a commercial instinct, a straightforward way of developing and communicating conviction, and a level of self-awareness to sort of understand, react both on the upside and when things don't work well. Ken WhiteYeah. Alice DavisonAnd for us, you have to be nice. Ken WhiteThat's always good. Alice DavisonThis is a place where you work with a lot of people. If you're good and you stay here, and that's our hope. Boy, it's a long life if people aren't open, respectful, nice to each other. A ton of disagreement. You want to see people who can take different sides of an argument. But at the end of the day, you want to work with people who are going to be supportive and open. Ken WhiteYeah, and respectful. Alice DavisonAnd respectful. Ken WhiteYou mentioned something early on you know you're going to fail a lot. You can be wrong a lot, and it might be public. That takes some kind of resilience to be able to do that. How do you learn that? Because coming out of a grad program or out of school, you may not. People may not have that quality. Alice DavisonYeah, and I think some of it is we'd like to see the quality, and we'd like you know you get a lot when you talk to people. Interestingly I think you're right. I think some people, remarkably, nothing has ever wrong. In other cases people you will push people, and you'll hear about something that wasn't a first choice, or I think some of it is that people are very reluctant to talk about. You know, you sort of cast this lens in the rearview mirror, and everything seems perfectly scripted, perfectly as planned. Ken WhiteYeah. Alice DavisonYou can create this whole narrative. When you really push people, it's actually really interesting to learn about why you stopped playing piano or why you thought you were going to. You know, you were obviously pre-med when you came to school, and something changed, and then you can have a whole cool narrative around how you found something different, but sometimes you pull on that, and you hear that actually, it wasn't what the person wanted to do. We give people opportunities we hope to be honest and authentic, and in talking about that, to hear them talk through times where they've, you know, as they say, sort of skin their knees and gotten up and bounce back, but I think you're on to something there's a lot of talk you hear in the schools about grit and resilience and there's an element of that that can be very important and positive. Ken WhiteYeah. Alice DavisonWe hope that people will be authentic as they talk about that. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Alice Davison of the Capital Group in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is once again offering its popular certificate in business management program in October. It's a five-day program designed for the working professional who wants a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Alice Davison, Vice President, Global Business Services at the Capital Group. Ken WhiteI remember earlier my career, I was interviewing for a job, and one of the leaders said to me have you ever been fired. I said no, I haven't. And he said oh, that's disappointing. And that just took me by such a surprise at that stage in my career. I just looked at him, and he smiled. Hey, I want to see how you bounce back. And I thought, well, that makes all the sense in the world, but when you're younger, you don't necessarily quite, you know, quite get that. Alice DavisonYes. And we again the notion is look, if you've never failed, you're up, and chances are when it's your turn. It would be really nice if you had done that before you know before you join us. So there is so much about learning from mistakes. That's helpful. And so to the extent that we can cast that is what we're after as opposed to sort of dinging people in an interview process for mistakes, I think that can be helpful. Yeah, I'm sure you've heard them yourselves. Most places are now onto this, but we don't let people off the hook when they tell us that their biggest mistake is being too much of a perfectionist. We really say, you know what? We know you can do better here. What's another example, so you do get the thing in the middle where people sort of turn the positive inclination into sort of an overused. Ken WhiteYeah. Alice DavisonAnd we try to pull them back from that a bit. Ken WhiteWell, that's a tough question. I think a lot of a lot of students and people looking for jobs wrestle with. They're going to ask me when did I fail or what's my weakness and they try to turn it into a positive. And your advice is let them have it right. Alice DavisonAnd spend your time thinking about what you took away from that. What the lessons were and to the extent that you can. Ideally, you'll be asked, and if not, you'll volunteer to the extent that you can identify what you did differently. That's where to have the positive is to say oh my gosh, this was like so ugly and messy. And as a result, this, this, and this, and then the next time or in a similar situation, here's how I thought about it. Ken WhiteYeah. Alice DavisonI feel like that's a better recovery than trying to say you don't delegate enough, or sometimes you. Ken WhiteMy problem is I just love my job too much. Right. One of those answers. Alice DavisonI just can't get out of the classroom on the weekends. Ken WhiteYeah, one of the things right before we started recording, you mentioned, you know, a thing to think about is when you're interviewing, it's not going to be just one person. So how do you prep for that when there might be a room of six or seven people asking you questions and bringing in new viewpoints to the room? Alice DavisonYeah, in our context is, at least on the investment group side what, we don't do panel interviews. We might do them elsewhere at Capital. I'm not I'm honestly not aware, but in our context, it's typically we like to have two interviewers partly because you get. We like working with each other, Ken WhiteYeah. Alice DavisonAnd you do get a bit of a how do people at Capital interact. But it's also important because you'll get if we do it well. You can get multiple perspectives too on similar answers and insights offered by a candidate, and then we do have a we have a people-intensive interview process on our investment group side. So you'll see multiple versions generally of one or two people, so anyways, that little bit of a lead in there, so it's not that we do the panel interview as much as you will meet many interviewers over the course of your interview process with us. And so I think some of it is actually thinking about why that might be. You know, so what does it tell me about a place and again, different firms will do things differently, but what does it tell me about a place as I observe their interview process? What insights can I gain because most candidates will say people will make the difference and the cultural will make the difference and when you actually say, well, what does that look like in some cases, it shows up in the interview process. Did I meet you know were my interviewers smart and on time, and engaged? Did they set a high bar? How did they work with each other? What is the process feel like? I think those from a candidate perspective, I'd say pay attention to the interview process, and actually, you can use that as a way to gain some insight into is it important who's involved in it. So that would be one piece. This is not going to be new news, but super easy to find out about your interviewers. Know a little something about them and not just the chit-chat, but people have interesting backgrounds. And it also helps you gauge the questions. None of this is tricky, but I think it would be tough to be in an interviewer with an investment analyst here or at another place and have a stock discussion without knowing that maybe that analyst covered the company. So something like that does sort of one-to-one if you're going to come in really excited about something sort of know whether you're talking to an expert or not just in terms of how the Q and A is going to go. I think, just stylistically, it's sort of be prepared for different kinds of interviews, at least with us, not necessarily interview formats but don't kind of say, yeah, I got this. My first interview was great. You know, expect to be on, which is part of it. Have questions and have questions for the last interviewer of the day. If you want a, I don't think we do it as a test necessarily, but this is a job that requires a lot of stamina. If it's 430 in LA, and you're wrapping up an interview, and you say to your interviewer, it's been a really long day. I don't think I have any questions. Thank you so much. That's the most people are not having long days. So some of it is think of, you know, think of questions, and they don't have to be different for every interviewer. Sometimes you get really interesting perspective by asking the same question of multiple people. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Alice DavisonSo know a little something about the interviewers. Think about the process and what that's telling you about the firm and possibly the culture and the people. Be prepared with questions and curiosity. Draw on different things that you've heard in your interviewers. That's a cool way to just let people know that you're paying attention. You know, I heard this earlier, or you know Ken said this. So how does that reconcile with what you just said those examples? Ken WhiteGreat advice. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Alice Davison of the Capital Group, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. And finally, if you have a suggestion or comment pertaining to our podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Please connect with us via email. Our address is podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Alice Davison and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Mike Petters](images/mike-petters-89-thumb.jpg)
![Summer Look Back: Leading the Large Organization](images/mike-petters-89-thumb.jpg)
Mike Petters
Episode 89: July 11, 2017
Summer Look Back: Leading the Large Organization
This week we wrap up our Summer Look Back series where we've been replaying our four most popular episodes from the past twelve months. Today's episode was originally posted in November and features a conversation with Mike Petters, CEO of Huntington Ingalls, America's largest military shipbuilding company. For more than a century, the organization has built more ships in more classes than any other U.S. Naval shipbuilder. Huntington Ingalls is headquartered in Newport News, Virginia. Petters has been CEO since 2011. On the podcast, he discusses leadership: How he approaches his role and what it's like to lead 35,000 employees.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. This week we wrap up our summer look back series, where we've been replaying our four most popular episodes from the past 12 months. Today's episode was originally posted in November. It features a conversation with Mike Petters, CEO of Huntington Ingalls, America's largest military shipbuilding company. For more than a century, the organization has built more ships and more classes than any other US naval shipbuilder. Huntington Ingalls is headquartered in Newport News, Virginia. Petters has been CEO since 2011. On the podcast, he discusses leadership, how he approaches his role, and what it's like to lead 35,000 employees. Here's our conversation from November 2016 with Mike Petters. Ken WhiteMike, thanks for taking time to spend with us and talk with us. We're actually recording on Election Day. We're between you and the polls, right? Mike PettersThat's right. Yeah, I to put it on my calendar so that I have time to get there. Ken WhiteYou and everybody else, right? Yeah. Well, let's get to it, then. Well, tell us about your job your role as you see it. Mike PettersWell, my, you know, as a CEO of the company, there are a lot of people tag a lot of lot of different job descriptions on that. But I think of it pretty simply as my job is to give everybody in this company an opportunity to do their best work. And so that means knocking things out of the way for them or creating situations where they can do work, or getting them the resources they need to succeed. But that's the way I think about it, and that's the way I like our all of our leaders to think about their jobs. Ken WhiteHow did you get to this role? What steps did you take? Mike PettersI've been in this business for 30 years, and so I had a lot of different moves. I came from the Navy to be in shipbuilding business and had a lot of different jobs in the company. Different kind of diverse opportunities but most of them were in operations. And so, from that standpoint, that's kind of the brunt of my background. But you know I, I'm not sure I ever sat up and said this is, you know, I want to be the CEO someday. I think all I ever did was I want to make sure that the job that I was in I tried I did everything I could to make that job the best job I was ever going to be in. And I tried to be that kind of person in the organization that helped people around me be better and gave my people a chance to do good work. Ken WhiteSometimes when we talk to CEOs, they'll say there was a day I remember it all came to me, and I said, yes, I want to go for that. You sound maybe a little different. Mike PettersNot well, I don't know. I don't know about that. I don't think there was a day where I said I'm going to pursue being the CEO. I do know that about a year before I became the president of Newport News, I had the kind of the realization that that could happen, and if that could happen, then I probably need to start getting myself ready for that opportunity. It was never a case of I'm going to go be the CEO. I actually think that I've watched a lot of people get very frustrated in their careers because they want to be fill in the blank. They want to be the manager, or they want to be the director. And you know, I think what happens is that you start pursuing that, and your ambition gets in the way of doing good work. And at least for me, that's been my observation. So I never really wanted that to happen. I believe in what this company does and what it's done throughout my career. I believe in what the Navy does. And I've felt that it's a it's our job to do the best we can here. Ken WhiteYou mentioned the Navy. You're a naval academy grad. What did that experience do for you? That's a huge question to answer. But in terms of your role. Mike PettersWell, first of all, being from the Navy and moving into the shipbuilding piece of HII, I sort of knew the language, you know, the day that I showed up at work here in the shipyard. I mean, nobody comes into this business with a degree in shipbuilding, but the day that I showed up here, I had an advantage over a whole lot of folks because I knew how the product was used early on in my career. I had some very interesting discussion with shipbuilders about how they thought the product was being used and how it, in fact, was being used. What that did for me was really created a different kind of credibility with the shipbuilders as I went and earned my steel toes and hard hat and became a shipbuilder. You know, I came at that from a different place than if I had just come in right out of college or come in off the street with no experience. It's the kind of business where experience matters. And I had a different set of experience, and so that helped me. Ken WhiteHaving it in your DNA. Can you imagine being a leader or a CEO in an area where it's not quite in your blood and in your genes the way it seems to be? Mike PettersI can, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I think leadership is a craft all its own. And you know, I go back to my fundamental tenet of leadership is to give your people every opportunity they can to succeed. Well, that's true whether you're running Joe's Diner or you're running a Fortune 500 company. And so, and the techniques that you use, maybe the technology is different, and you might be looking at different reports and that sort of thing but having your people be successful is, I mean, that's kind of universal. And so I mean certainly there's a lot of advantages of having been in the business for 30 years. I think it's pretty transportable. Ken WhiteWhat do you like best about your role? Mike PettersWell, first of all, the folks that do this are the, I mean, just the greatest folks in the world to work with. They come to work every day, putting their heart and soul into what they do. And it's just a privilege for me to be around those folks, and anytime I start to feel like the world is moving in a little bit, I just go for a little walk. You know, it just fires me right back up to go do what I do. And I feel a great sense of responsibility. I mean these, these folks are great folks, and they deserve great leadership. And so, you know, that's a bar that I try to live up to every day. And that means I have to learn. I have to grow. I have to. I have to do new things. I have to have a vision to a horizon that's further away than anybody else's. And all of that's really challenging. And I love the challenge. Ken WhiteDo you feel you have enough time? Mike PettersYeah, I mean, I think, you know, time is probably the only currency that we have. I think when you when you start from the premise of having good people and giving them a chance to succeed, you can use that to create time for you for the things that you need to do. Now how you allocate time is your way of telling everybody what's important, but quickly, if you spend a whole lot of time on stuff that doesn't matter, everybody's going to see that. On the other hand, by being clear about here's how I'm spending my time and here's how I'm allocating my time. You communicate what's important to you, and actually, the organization, from top to bottom, will care about what the boss cares about. I mean, my staff cares about what I care about. Their staffs care about what they care about, and so that I mean that's just human nature, and so time allocation is really important. I am pretty good at saying that's not important enough for me to put a lot of time into that. I'm pretty good at that. Ken WhiteYou may have answered it by just saying what's important to you is important to your team, and so on. How do you communicate? There's a ton of people who work for you. How do you communicate? Mike PettersWell, this is something I learned here. I think that you can fall into a trap of trying to be the leader you read about in the textbook, and you try to be this person. You live up to some mental model of what that person is. What the leader is. And I think that's a big mistake. I think the moment my career shifted into another gear was the day that I opened up my coat, and I just let people see who I was and just became very transparent and things that I was emotional about I let people know I was emotional about that. Things that I didn't want that I didn't think were worth my time. I let people know that I don't think that's worth our time to go waste on that, and instantly the feedback was okay now we get it. And I tell young leaders this all the time don't be afraid to be transparent. People want to believe in you. Your credibility is directly related to we preach this a lot. There's who you say you are, and there's who people see you to be. And the closer you make that. The more credibility you have. If you create a big gap between who you say you are and who the people see you to be, they're not going to believe in you, but if you close that and you close that with transparency and honesty, you know you don't take yourself seriously enough so that everything I mean you admit your mistakes. You want people to come and tell you when you've made mistakes, but if you can close that gap between who you say you are and who you actually are. You close that gap, you will have great credibility, and you will have people who will believe in you and follow you. Ken WhiteWe'll return to our discussion with Mike Petters in just a minute. Today's episode is the final part of our summer look back series, where we're reposting and replaying the top four episodes of the past year from our Leadership & Business podcast series. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is once again offering its popular certificate in business management program in October. The five-day program is designed for the working professional who wants a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Mike Petters, CEO of Huntington Ingalls. Ken WhitePeople, followers, colleagues seek that transparency that credibility for an aspiring leader. What else should they be aware of? Mike PettersIt is about your people, and this giving your people a chance to do their best work. That's a full-contact sport. I mean, that means you have to know your people well enough to know what their strengths and their weaknesses are. You have to know them personally well enough to know that they've just had a tragedy in their family, and so they may need some space. They just had a great big celebration in their family and so let's all celebrate with them. You got to know that stuff. You've got to know their strengths and weaknesses well enough to know that if you assign them to a particular opportunity that they have the capacity to exceed or meet that opportunity. You know you don't. A football coach doesn't assign his quarterback to play defensive line right. And so that's what the great leaders do is they understand where the strengths and weaknesses are in there, and one of the things that I really believe that. And I don't remember the exact quote, but I think it was Winston Churchill said if you treat a man the way he is, he'll be the way he is. But if you treat a man the way he could be, then he will become the person he could be. And I believe in that greatly. I mean, I believe if you start out by having great people, not picking great people, have great people, the people that you are working with are great. Now your chance is how do you harness that and get everybody pull and all those great people to pull on the rope in the same direction. It's not easy, it's hard, it's full contact, but it's a lot of fun. Ken WhiteWhere do you spend most of your time? Mike PettersPhysically? Geographically? Ken WhiteMentally. Mike PettersMentally. Ken WhiteYeah. Where's the thought? Where's the effort? Mike PettersI don't spend a lot of my energy inside the gate of the business in the sense of the operate. I mean, I review the operations that I do all that kind of stuff. But I've got really good people running operations, and they're doing that pretty well. I spend a lot of my thinking in the future, and some of the thinking in the future is around what's the culture of the future going to look like. The culture of our business what does it need to be successful in the future. Where is our customer going to go in the future? Where is our nation going in the future? So I kind of mentally spend a lot of my time in the future. Culture is something that I spend probably as much time on as anything in the organization because I think that we fall into a trap by thinking that the culture. This is one hundred and thirty-year-old company. So we kind of can a leaders can fall into the trap of believing that the culture is something they inherit. But in fact, the culture of your work team is something you create. And for me, I feel responsibility as the chief culture officer of this company, and trying to make that move, you know, does take some effort. Ken WhiteSo there's a culture within the organization, and there's another culture that your external stakeholders see. How do you communicate with the external? How is it differently? Mike PettersWe spend a lot of wealth. External stakeholders take many forms, right? I mean, there's shareholders, there's customers, there are community stakeholders. I mean, we're the largest employer in Mississippi and in Virginia, and so so the communities that we're in are large stakeholders in our business. And so spending time with those stakeholders, to me, is something that you have to do on a pretty routine basis which you can't do is. You can't show up with any one of those folks and say, I've got a problem, unless you've been with them all along. So we go, and we visit with our shareholders once a quarter. I'm out on the road talking to folks who are interested in the company, who are own shares in the company, participate in conferences about the company. I walk through the ships inside the shipyards once a quarter. Getting around and seeing as many people as you can, as many of the stakeholders as you can when you're talking to those folks, whatever stakeholders, whatever position you're in. If you're talking to them when everything's going okay, then they'll take your call when things don't go okay. And that's pretty routine. And so we worked really hard at that. Ken WhiteYeah, that's great advice. Almost every swell every CEO we've had on the podcast is looking at disruption, innovation, talking about that how the business has changed in the last ten years, how it'll change moving forward in terms of innovation and disruption. What do you see for your field? Mike PettersWe're kind of in a interesting place on that. I mean, we have a horizon that's probably further out than anybody's. We're working on a ship right now that we know will come back to be inactivated in 2066, and we're actually on the other end of the shipyard. We're working on a ship that will come back in 2072, and not too many folks can actually talk about their work in 2060s or 2070s, but between here and there. There's going to be a lot of technological change we're working through. What does that mean to us? How does our workday change? How does the workday for our employees change? And so I'm not too hung up on the technology because I think I think the technologies are going to change, and they're going to continue to change, and actually, the pace of that change is going to accelerate. What I'm really interested in is the agility of the leadership team to take full advantage of that as quickly as possible. And so that's what we're working on. Ken WhiteFinal question advice for the aspiring leader. Where should they be spending energy and time? Mike PettersI'll go back to what I said, to begin with, you know, make the job that you're in the best job you will ever have. Always look out and try to find the best opportunity for your people to succeed and be that person in your group that makes everybody else in the group better. If you do those things, you will have a great career. Who knows, you might get to be a CEO. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation that was originally posted on November 6th, 2016, with the CEO of Huntington Ingalls, Mike Petters, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest Mike Petters and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Robert Gates](images/robert-gates-88-thumb.jpg)
![Summer Look Back: A Passion for Leadership](images/robert-gates-88-thumb.jpg)
Robert Gates
Episode 88: July 5, 2017
Summer Look Back: A Passion for Leadership
This week we continue with part three of our four-part Summer Look Back Series, where we replay one of our more popular episodes from the past twelve months. Today's episode was originally posted in February, featuring a conversation with Robert Gates, author of "A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from 50 Years of Public Service." In the book, Gates shares his experiences from his many leadership roles, including Director of the CIA, President of Texas A&M, and U.S. Secretary of Defense. Currently, he's partner in the consulting firm RiceHadleyGates, and he serves as chancellor here at William & Mary. On the podcast, he shared advice on successful leadership—especially in large organizations. Please enjoy our conversation from February 2017 with Dr. Robert Gates.
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Robert Gates: Summer Look Back: A Passion for Leadership TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, this week, we continue with part three of our four-part summer look back series, where we replay one of our more popular episodes from the past 12 months. Today's episode was originally posted in February. It features a conversation with Robert Gates, author of A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from 50 years of public service. In the book, Gates shares his experiences from his many leadership roles, including director of the CIA, president of Texas A&M, and US Secretary of Defense. Currently, he is partner in the consulting firm RiceHadleyGates, and he serves as chancellor here at the College of William & Mary. On the podcast, he shared his advice on successful leadership, especially in large organizations. Here's our conversation from February 2017 with Dr. Robert Gates. Ken WhiteWell, thank you for being here. We greatly appreciate your time. I know there's a roomful of MBA is waiting to hear from you as you're going to interact with them as soon as we have completed with our conversation. Robert GatesI'm happy to do it. Ken WhiteSo the book. What encouraged you to write it? What got you to write the book? Robert GatesActually, it was midway through my experiences as Secretary of Defense and especially after I'd been asked to stay on by President Obama, and that had never happened before. I look back on my career and realize that I had led several different very different organizations. All of them were huge and had made some pretty significant changes in each of those institutions, and the light dawned, and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe my core competency was actually leading change and figuring out how to do that in institutions that are not generally perceived as being amenable to much change. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. In one of the chapters is my favorite chapter in the book. You call it agent of change mirror mirror on the wall, and it's a chapter where it where you're encouraging the reader if they want to be a leader, to look at themselves and really say do you have these qualities? One of the qualities you talk about you say the best leaders have their egos in check. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Robert GatesWell, I think that I think that leadership is a team sport. Most people think of it as somebody riding in on a white horse and sort of taking command and so on and so forth. But in fact, in most big institutions, leadership leading change is about how you, first of all, developing in league with others. The career professionals, outsiders, and others, a vision of where an organization ought to go. What's wrong with it? How can we make it better or simply a vision of a different future? And the only way you get people to be honest with you and get their best ideas is if you're not always talking. And so it requires a lot of listening. It requires respecting other people's points of view, and then at the end of the day, when it comes time to make decisions, it's a matter of integrating what you've learned from all these different sources into your own decision-making process as the person responsible. But an egotist is the antithesis of the kind of leadership that is needed for transformative change because I believe for that kind of change to last and to work, it has to have the support of people inside the institution, and that means they have to have buy-in and that means they must feel that the change was as much theirs as it was the leaders. Ken WhiteYou talk about listening one of my favorite pieces in the book. It says never miss a good chance to shut up, and you know when you're talking, you're not learning. One of the pieces you share as a leader must maintain his or her dignity and some distance. On the distance, how do you negotiate that? Because you don't know if it's too distant. Robert GatesI think you don't want to be aloof. You want to be approachable, but by the same token, you have to maintain a certain mystique a certain distance. And that means you can't be just one of the boys or one of the girls. You can't be the student's best friend. You have to realize in dealing with staff and the people who work for you that the time may well come when you have to fire that person. And if you've developed a very close personal relationship, that's going to be very difficult and even more difficult for the person who has to be let go or demote them or move them someplace else. But you will have to take an action that they will regard as negative. I also think that the leader has to be a role model. And I think if you're in a leadership position. I'll give you an example of avoiding too much familiarity. And in this day and age, this will sound very anachronistic, but I used to chide the combatant commanders. Now, these are four-star generals. Okay. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesFor their tweeting and Facebook. I said you know the truth is people really aren't interested in your travel schedule. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesOr what you did on your summer vacation. Ken WhiteGood point. Robert GatesBut the more, the more you are familiar with your troops, the less awesome they see you. The more that you're sharing bits and pieces of your private life or what you're doing in the office the less, the less mystique there is around you. You're a four-star general, and you're going to order people into battle. It's hard for me to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or George Patton on Facebook. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesI just think that you have to remember that once you're in charge, you're no longer one of the gang. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesIt's very interesting. I have a friend where I live who was a fireman, and he was promoted to a deputy fire inspector. So now he wears a tie and a white shirt, and the guys in the firehouse hardly talk to him anymore because he's management. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesThey work together, they sacrifice together, they did everything together for years, and now he's in a different place in their eyes. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesAnd it was a shock to him the first time he went back to the firehouse, and you know, I will say I think the guy who's got this formula down just right is the president of William & Mary Taylor Reveley. I think everybody every student on this campus loves Taylor. Ken WhiteThey do. Robert GatesThinks Taylor is a great guy really enjoys him. But you don't see Taylor out in his t-shirt playing touch football. Ken WhiteNo, you don't. Robert GatesAnd so there's a there is a way to do this that makes you accessible and friendly. I've been told the military the guys in the military in, particularly those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, really admired me and thought I had their back and was their supporter and their friend, but they were never familiar with me. Ken WhiteRight. You talk in the book about having Lieutenants who you can really count on that they're willing to do the work and buy into the agenda. My point what I'm getting at is who can you be familiar with in the organization. Can you be close to them, or is that friendship you have where you confide in someone else? Is that someone outside the organization? Robert GatesI think that, you know, in an organization, there's generally one or two people where you can really let your hair down and share, and generally, that's somebody who is very close to you in your office or in your immediate staff. Somebody like that, somebody you can trust so that when you do rant against something or somebody, you know it never goes beyond the four walls, so you can at least let off steam. But by and large, you have to be very disciplined. Ken WhiteWe'll return to our discussion with Robert Gates in just a minute. Today's episode is part three of our four-part summer look back series where we're reposting and replaying the top four episodes of the past year from our Leadership & Business podcast series. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is once again offering its popular certificate in business management program coming up in October. The five-day program is designed for the working professional who wants a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Dr. Robert Gates and a passion for leadership. Ken WhiteYou say a good leader must compromise and adjust plans because you don't always get what you want. That's difficult for some leaders. They think what they say goes. Robert GatesWell, one of my role models in this is Ronald Reagan, and it used to drive some of the ideological purists in the White House and in the conservative movement because Ronald Reagan was himself a dealmaker and a Ronald Reagan could cut a deal on a proposal that he made and get 65 percent of what he wanted. He would grab it, take it, and then immediately turn around and start the effort to get the other 35. So I cut thirty-six major military programs in the spring of 2009. If they had been built to completion, it would have cost the taxpayers 330 billion dollars. Most of my predecessors were lucky if they got one or two programs cut. I got 33 of the 36 approved or sustained by Congress in the summer of 2009. And I came back the next year and got the other three. Ken WhiteThere it is. Robert GatesSo you know, sometimes you don't eat the whole pizza at one bite. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesYou take a piece at a time. Ken WhiteDon't overstay your welcome. When do you know that time's up? Robert GatesOh, I think this is the hardest. This is the hardest question for every leader and particularly if you've had a pretty good run. As I like to put it, the key question is, when do you dance off the stage? And ideally, the sweet spot is to leave where people are saying I wish he weren't leaving so soon instead of how the hell do we get rid of this guy? Finding the place right in between those two is key. And I think a part of it is understanding that you're not indispensable, as many people in history have said the cemeteries are full of indispensable men. And I think the key is it goes back to keeping your ego in check that the institution will survive without you. And a key part of this also that I write about is when are you out of gas. When are you out of energy? When are you out of ideas? Part of the theme in the book is you got to be continually changing an organization. No organization can be static, and so you know when you go on vacation or on a trip, and you've got your yellow pad, and you're putting down the kind of the to-do list of things that I want to continue to do. As long as your yellow pad is filling up, you probably ought to stay in the job. But once you come back and your yellow pad is empty, then it's time to go. The other key for me is can you be as critical in evaluating the success of programs you've put in place and people you've put in place as you were in evaluating the programs and people your predecessor put in place. And if you can't evaluate and see if these people have grown, if you're ideas no longer work, or need to be changed. If you can't do that, if you're defending rather than moving forward, it's time to go. Ken WhiteYou talk about how leaders are custodians of the organization. They should believe they can and should make it better. Is that front and center first and foremost? Is that what leaders should remind themselves of beyond, above, and beyond all others? Robert GatesWell, I think that I think it's the leaders responsibility. I believe that every organization can be better. I believe I've worked for some amazing places, and I've always felt they could still be better. And I think that leadership is the central purpose of leadership or aim should be. How do I preserve those traditional elements of the culture and the traditions of this institution that give it life that give it meaning for the people who work here, and yet change the way we do things to make us relevant five years from now, ten years from now, 15 years from now? The core challenge is identifying the critical parts. Every every organization has a culture and has lots of traditions. Some of them are foolish and don't make any sense anymore and can be put to the side. But what's core? What makes it different? And I would say that I discovered this at the agency at CIA, at Texas A&M, and at the Defense Department, and subsequently at the Boy Scouts. The one thing that is common that is critical in the culture of each of those institutions is that they consider themselves part of a family and that they will take care of each other and look out for each other, and a leader has to figure out okay that's fundamental. How do I strengthen that because that's the foundation? Ken WhiteYou mentioned Ronald Reagan. You quote Winston Churchill, who are some other leaders you think are just fantastic. Robert GatesWell, I think one of my favorites has to be first President Bush, George H.W. Bush. He was wonderful the work for a wonderful sense of humor. You know, I worked with some amazing people in the military, and you know, in each of the institutions I've, I've made friends and have learned from people. The two chairman of the Joint Chiefs when I was secretary Pete Pace and Admiral Mike Mullen. My provost and executive vice president at Texas A&M, David Pryor, my chief of staff at the Pentagon, Robert Rangel, there just every job, there's been a handful of people who played a huge role in whatever success I had. Ken WhiteWhat would you like people to take away from the book A Passion for Leadership? Robert GatesI think two things. The first is that people are unhappy with government and government institutions and a lot of private sector institutions, and for good reason and. That all of these institutions can be changed, can be reformed, and should be, and that we owe it to our citizens and our customers to do that. And you know, a lot of times, I think particularly these public institutions, people just throw up their hands and say there is nothing you can do about it quote unquote, you can't fight city hall. Well, the truth is one of the main themes of the book is you can change these institutions. I know because I did it. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesAnd here are the tools to do that. The other message is really kind of at the end of the book, and it is the distinction between leadership and management. Management can be taught in school, and God knows we need good managers. In HR, and marketing, and manufacturing, and everything else. But in my view, leadership is more about the heart than the head. Dwight Eisenhower once wrote his son in 1943 that you can learn leadership and man and that the key is to try and get them to want to do things for you, and the way to do that is through devotion to duty, sincerity, fairness, and good cheer. And I tell people devotion to duty, sincerity, fairness, good cheer. You don't learn these in school. These are personal qualities. And it boils down to do you have a vision on how to make a place better and do you love people well enough to work closely with them to help bring about that change. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation that was originally posted on February 14th with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and that's our podcast for this week. Installment number four, our final installment of our summer look back series, will be posted next week. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest Robert Gates and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Robbie Bach](images/robbie-bach-87-thumb.jpg)
![Summer Look Back: Xbox Revisited](images/robbie-bach-87-thumb.jpg)
Robbie Bach
Episode 87: June 27, 2017
Summer Look Back: Xbox Revisited
This week in installment number two in our Summer Look Back Series, we share an episode that was originally posted in March with Robbie Bach. A 22-year Microsoft employee, Bach became Chief Xbox officer in 1999, leading the team that forever changed the gaming industry. He retired from Microsoft in 2010 and later wrote his book "Xbox Revisited." He joined us to discuss his experience with Xbox, the lessons learned there, and his strategic framework that organizations and individuals can adopt to succeed.
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Robbie Bach: Summer Look Back - Xbox Revisited TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. We launched our podcast series in September of 2015. Since then, we've posted over 80 episodes and featured guests who shared their expertise pertaining to leadership, communication, marketing, innovation, and many other topics. Well, now that summer is upon us, we thought we would look back at our series and repost and replay the top four episodes of the past year based on number of downloads and feedback we've received from you and other listeners. Well, this week in installment number two of our summer look back series. We share an episode that was originally posted in March with Robbie Bach. A 22-year Microsoft employee, Bach became Chief Xbox Officer in 1999. Leading the team that forever change the gaming industry. He retired from Microsoft in 2010 and later wrote his book Xbox Revisited. He joined us to discuss his experience with Xbox, the lessons learned there, and his strategic framework that organizations and individuals can adopt to succeed. Here's our podcast from March 7 with former Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach. Ken WhiteGreat to have you with us today, so thanks for joining us. And you've recently, like I guess a year ago, wrote a book Xbox Revisited: A Game Plan for Corporate and Civic Renewal. What caused you to, first of all, thank you for your time. Robbie BachHappy to be here. It's good to be here. Ken WhiteWhat caused you to write the book? Robbie BachWell, when I left Microsoft, I left with the idea that I wanted to get more involved in civics, and so I started to think, okay, well, how do I do that? I've got some nonprofit things I've been engaged with. So I dedicated some more time. And then, I started paying attention to what was going on in the government space, and in our community start to get a little frustrated. And when I get frustrated, I write. So I wrote a, you know, king for a day what would I do type document which was about supposed to be you know three pages ended up twelve, and I looked at it said you know I really love that twelve pages and there's not a single person in the world who's ever going to read it. And so I said if I really want people to hear this story, I have to go out and talk about it. And I have to write about it. Ken WhiteRight. Robbie BachSo I chose to write a book which is sort of the story of Xbox but not the tell-all story of Xbox. It's Xbox from a strategy perspective and then takes those lessons to apply them in our civic and community lives. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachSo it's really kind of a cross between a business book and a civics book. Ken WhiteRight. Robbie BachI mean, it was a blast to write. I learned a lot in the process, and I get the opportunity to talk about it now. Ken WhiteYeah. And thank you for coming here you'll be. You've already met with some students here on our campus and in the business school. But you'll be meeting with several hundred waiting to hear from you shortly after we're done with this, actually. Robbie BachRight. Ken WhiteThe civic piece. Can you tell us more about that what interests you? What do you what are you looking at? Robbie BachWell, I've always been sort of a person who thought, you know, how do I have impact beyond what I do for in my professional life? How do I think about how I can make the community a little bit of a better place? And so I started, you know, toying around with that idea and the boards I work on and things like that. And I was having coffee with somebody, and they said, well, what is it you're actually doing? I said well, it's sort of civic engineering. And that became a phrase that meant something to me. And so I started thinking about ways I could do civic engineering and really help organizations and people and leaders think about the things going on the community in a different way. And I took a lot of those lessons from Xbox and started to apply them in my speaking, in my writing, my blog work, and my board work. Ken WhiteYeah. Civically speaking, what activities are you doing? Robbie BachWell, the things I'm involved with I'm very involved in Boys and Girls Clubs of America. I've been on that national board now for 11 years. I've been on the local board for almost 20 years. I've been involved in their strategy work. I'm involved in their national governance work and their technology work, and that's passion to me because it's about the audience I care about the most, which is kids. Ken WhiteYeah, great. Robbie BachWhich is a really great audience and an audience in great need in the country. I'm involved in another organization called Year Up, which is an organization started by Gerald Chertavian in Boston. They're in about 15 cities cross country. They do vocational training in a very special way for kids who have graduated from high school but who aren't probably going to go to William & Mary. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachProbably aren't going to go to a four-year college, and then the third thing, I'm very involved in sports. I love sports, so I'm on the board of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachWhich is a different type of civic activity. It's more of a patriotism angle on civics, but sport is life for me, and life is sport, and I can learn lessons from that and hopefully apply those lessons. Ken WhiteTennis that's your sport, right? Robbie BachI grew up playing tennis. I grew up playing tennis. I loved it. Actually, basketball's my fort of passion for long reasons. I didn't play basketball mostly because I wasn't good enough. But I was a good tennis player in college, and my son was a basketball player played professionally overseas for three years. My daughters played soccer. My brothers were both Division 1 athletes, so there's a long line of Bach Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie Bachathletics that runs through what we do. Ken WhiteThere's probably a football game on Thanksgiving, isn't there? Robbie BachThere well yeah, it's probably there's some kind of competition, and now it's golf. We're all old enough where now it's golf. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachBut there's always a Bach family competition. Ken WhiteWhen you think back on the days in Xbox, and I know our students, that's what they want to hear about. They talk so much about it. What was special about that time as you because you've had time enough to reflect on that. Robbie BachYeah, I think, ultimately, what I took away from it was so many lessons I learned. You know I started there. I'd been at Microsoft what 12 years. I'd gone to business school. I did well before business school. I thought you know, hey, I'm a pretty good leader. I know what to do and how to do it. And then the first three or four years of Xbox was the most humbling experience of my entire life. And you just realize that things are way more complicated than you think, and to deal with that complexity. You actually have to think in a very simple way. And it took me a long time to understand that dealing with complexity requires simplicity. And I learned so much about managing people, working with others, thinking about innovation. All these things happen through what was a three dark years and then, let's say, seven light years of exciting work. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachSo Xbox, for me, was a journey. Ken WhiteI'll bet most leaders probably will describe their experience quite similar. There were some dark years and some great years. On that not-so-great time. What keeps you going? How do you stay positive? Robbie BachWell, I think there's a couple of things one. I am a this comes from the sports world. I'm a very competitive person. I really I tell people I hate losing. It's to me. It's just I, you know, I want to win, and I don't mean that in an evil competitive sort of way, but I thrive on doing things well. And so part of it is just a competitive spirit and a competitive drive. The other thing is for reasons in my life, you go through experiences where you have to persevere, and you learn the power of perseverance. And it's something, you know, I've tried to teach with my kids. You know they've had a fortunate upbringing and certainly in the grand scheme of kids across the country. And you try to teach about perseverance and what it means to overcome obstacles, and the Xbox experience to me was just another example in my life of lots of obstacles. We're going to get past it to the green pasture on the other side. And the team, in fact, really came together in a way that demonstrated that perseverance can carry the day. Ken WhiteThe competition theme and leadership is just amazing. We just did a podcast recorded one yesterday with John Hewitt, who is the CEO of Liberty Tax. Before that, it was Jackson Hewitt Tax. A huge forty-seven years in the tax world. His book is called I Compete. It's all about competition, right? And he said that's it. That's what makes my heart beat and the blood flow. It's all about winning and competing, and that's important. It seems like it's a pretty important ingredient for a leader. Robbie BachWell, it is, and I think that the challenge for a leader is how do you compete and do it right. And there is a subtle balance I know lots of people who are hyper-competitive, who ultimately, I respect them for what they accomplished, and I don't always respect how they did it. And so, for me, the constant challenge is how do you harness your competitive nature but drive it in a way that is what I think of as doing the right thing. How do you treat people the right way? People may not like you as a leader, they may not love you as a leader, but do they respect you as a leader? And that, to me, has been the hard balance of trying to find that ability for people to respect what I do, even when they disagree with the decision itself. Ken WhiteRight. And I assume some of that is on-the-job training. Robbie BachIt's almost all on-the-job training, and you know you have to when I tell people who are early in their career everything you're doing right now is learning. And if you stop learning in your job, it's time to be in a different job, and you're going to look back 15 years from now and not realize the important lessons you learned along the way, and suddenly you'll for whatever reason you'll pause to reflect, and you'll go wow I learned that eight years ago and I'm applying it now without even thinking about it. In many respects, Xbox was that for me. I had ten years learning. I got down, and I went to write this book, and I said, wow, I actually I could actually fill 200 pages. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachRight. I probably had more, and the editor cut some of it. Right, I can do this. Ken WhiteYeah, you had a real story to share. Robbie BachAnd the story is compelling, too, because Xbox is sort of a rags to riches type thing, at least in the context of Microsoft. But there's a lot to share. Ken WhiteXbox was such a great brand, and I mean culturally important in the history of our culture. Did you know it would get to that point? Robbie BachNo. Ken WhiteYou couldn't imagine. Robbie BachNo, you know, when we started Xbox, it started, you know not, not to our topic on competition. It started because Microsoft saw Sony moving into the living room with what they called a computer. And for Microsoft, you know our mantra, our purpose statement computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software. The living room was a place we should be. And so it started in the spirit of competition. It didn't start in the spirit of cultural icon, living entertainment experience, all those things that it created, but it started in that spirit of competition, and then from that, you have to develop a purpose. You have to say, okay, well, the purpose can't just be to compete with Sony. There has to be a broader mission, a broader vision for what we want to do. Ken WhiteWhen you look at technology today and the culture today. What do you think? Is this where you thought we would be? Are there some surprises for you? Robbie BachI think the thing that I reflect on is not so much did I know we were going to be here versus there. I'm not that good. And frankly, I don't think very many people are that good. What I more find is that the one constant you find is technology, and advancement evolves our culture with it. And our culture has to evolve over time as well. I get a lot of questions about is video games bad for you. I get a lot of questions about, you know, texting and screen time and those things, and all of those things are the 80 percent good and the 20 percent bad. And the question is how do you meld them into your life in a way where you maximize the benefit we get from it which is hugely powerful and transformative without having the impact of the negative, and it's the same thing in culture. Unfortunately, culture isn't something a specific individual can contain. It's how our social world contains, and if you look at what goes on in social media now, that's a cultural revolution. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Robbie BachAnd we are struggling as a country and as a world dealing with that cultural revolution. The technology is not bad. Ken WhiteRight. Robbie BachDon't blame Facebook, right? This is a human cultural phenomenon, and we have to figure out how to deal with it. Ken WhiteYeah, no. And I teach in and study communication, and it's just fascinating. Robbie BachOh yeah. It's a discipline. It's amazing. Ken WhiteHow it's affected right. Robbie BachYeah. Ken WhiteHow it's affected communication. Yeah, I remember reading a piece in the 20s written about radio and how radio was going to ruin our interpersonal skills. We're going to talk to each other anymore because we're sitting on the living room floor staring at that box that where that sound comes out. Robbie BachWell, there's a political science professor at University Washington who does this cycles of great transition and change in our country. And one of the pieces of his framework is technology, major technology shifts, and innovation. Radio is one, T.V. is another, the Internet is the third. Ken WhiteThere it is, yeah. Robbie BachAnd we're dealing with that in real time. Ken WhiteYeah, we sure are and fast. Robbie BachWell yeah, and the pace of change has accelerated. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Ken WhiteWe'll return to our conversation with Robbie Bach, former Chief Xbox Officer, in just a minute. Today's episode is part two of our four-part summer look back series, where we're reposting and replaying the top four episodes of the past year from our Leadership & Business podcast series. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level by designing and delivering a leadership development program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. To learn more, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to Robbie Bach and Xbox Revisited. Ken WhiteYou talked briefly about your friend in Washington about framework. You, too, shared your strategic framework in the book the three-piece strategic framework. Robbie BachYeah. Ken WhiteAnd that could be used in business and in civic endeavors. Can you talk about that? Robbie BachYeah, and it's a business framework. It's a civic framework. It's also turns out to be a really powerful personal framework. I have my own 3P framework for what I do. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachAnd how I think about myself in my life and the basic idea of the 3P framework is if you have something complicated, something you're trying to figure out, something you're trying to pursue, can you in three pages tell me a one-sentence purpose no ands no ors no commas no dash lines a one crisp sense purpose. Can you give me five principles for how you're going to operate to make that happen? This is about culture and decision-making, and working with others. And can you give me five priorities that you're actually going to do and only five and write that in three pages? Now it turns out you think three pages one sentence purpose that's basically three pages for principles and priorities that should be easy. It's really hard. Ken WhiteI can imagine. Robbie BachIt's really difficult. The one-sentence purpose statement is brutal. Principles are hard to nail down and be precise with, and priorities go on endlessly because people struggle to make choices. Ken WhiteHow dynamic is it? Robbie BachWell, so the interesting thing that's what's interesting about it when I do a 3P framework purpose needs to last. I mean, purpose, if it's ephemeral, isn't really a purpose. Right. Ken WhiteThat's true. Robbie BachI mean, purpose seems to be a direction. It's a north star, and it can move a little bit, but you really want that. And principles are somewhat the same way, right? If you're a principled person or you're going to operate a business with principles, you can't be changing them all the time. Now priorities, on the other hand, are the connection between the framework and the operating plan because priorities you should be reviewing every year or even every six months in a fast-moving business, and you'll have five priorities. And after a period of time, you'll say how did we do on the metrics? How did we do in achieving those priorities? What's changed in the market? What do we need to do differently? And then, you'll set up the next set of five priorities, and that leads to an operating plan which is budget, resources, tactics, all the things it does to run a business or pursue an objective. And so you've end up with this cycle where every year you double check the purpose, you make sure you live by your principles, you adjust your priorities, you produce an operating plan. And I've done this with nonprofits. I've done it with governments. I've done it in business. I do it my personal life. It's not complicated. It's not rocket science. There's no its sad say this at an institution. There's no educational research that's been done on the principle on the idea, but I can tell you from experience it works. Ken WhiteIt works, yeah, in all those various settings. Robbie BachYeah, and in part, because it's simple in part because, in some ways, it's common sense decide where you're going to go, decide how you're gonna get there, and decide what you're going to do to make it happen. Ken WhiteSo when you work with an organization, how long does it take them to do that? Robbie BachDepends on the organization. It really does depend on the organization, you know. So I've done this as an example with a family-run business. Ken WhiteOh yeah. Robbie BachSo that took a little longer. You've got five individual family members who were owners of the business. They haven't been on the same strategic page for a little while. There's a lot of discussion that has to go on in the future and what happens. You're thinking multigenerational people have different ideas about where things would go. That was three off sites of a day each. I can do work in a different business setting. I'm a co-owner of a small gluten-free pasta company called Manini's, and you know my partner, and I wrote that in two or three exchanges. I put a draft he sent it back to me. We went back and forth. So it really depends on the context. It also depends on where the organization has been historically. Ken WhiteSure. Robbie BachSo I'm doing work with the boys and girls clubs of America. There's been Boys and Girls Clubs around for 150 years, and the federation is over 100 years old, and it's eleven hundred independently owned and operated clubs. So when you're driving strategic change, that's not a, you know, three-email process. It's not a three-meeting process. It's a 18-month process. And that's just the way it works. Ken WhiteBut the fact is it works regardless of how long it takes you to get there. Robbie BachExactly. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachAnd in part, because you know you're a communications guy and partly because I can tell you the 3P framework, you know, really crisply, really easily. It's three PowerPoint slides, and you can remember. There's only five bullet points on a slide, and they're short they're crisp. Ken WhiteFantastic. You're going to talk to our MBAs in a little bit. What kind of information advice what do you share with them? Robbie BachThe thing I'm going to talk about tonight, which is my current theme for when I go out and talk I'm talking about change. I and my personal feeling is that historians are going to look back on the year 2016, and they're going to see it like we see 1865, like we see 1932 white goosey 1954, like you see 1968. Ken WhiteBig years. Robbie BachBig years. And I think this was a big year. You know you have a populist movement that's exploding. And actually, on the left and on the right, which is very complicated, there is technology change that's going on underneath that. Culture in, not just in the United States but around the world, is evolving in a very complicated way. And so the question about change is, well, how do you not make it scary? Change scares people. People are fearful of it. And I understand that. And I think change is opportunity. In a way, 2016 tells us there's never been a better opportunity to do something amazing. Ken WhiteInteresting. Robbie BachAnd so today's discussion is about how you use strategy and a framework for innovation which I talk briefly about in the book but which I could probably write another book about. And then how leadership is the thing that drives that. And so we will go through strategy, innovation, and leadership, and then we'll do hopefully a big Q and A session. Ken WhiteYeah, great. What advice do you give to MBAs, younger people looking for a great career and a great life? Robbie BachWell, if you're thinking about an MBA career, I think a couple of things. First thing is I think about portfolio. Which I know it sounds like a funny thing to say, but you should think about your career as a set of assets that you're building and a portfolio of assets you're trying to build. And even if you're somebody who's laser-focused that says, I'm going to be this. I'm going to be an MNA specialist to pick something very precise. You still need a portfolio of assets to do that. So as you think about your career, how are you building your portfolio? What does that portfolio look like? How do you get those experiences? The second thing I tell people is you better make sure you're constantly learning. If you're in a job and you're sort of repetitive, and you've done it before I launched two versions of Office, we came to the third one. I told my boss I will finish this launch and then I will do something different. I wasn't going to learn anything new. It's great business. Huge business. Been successful. Time to do something completely different. And that led to Xbox. Ken WhiteWow, yeah. Robbie BachSo learning is important. The last thing I tell people is make sure you're working with people who you enjoy being with, even if the company is great and even if the job is a great job. Work is a social thing. You're around people every day. And if you're not enjoying those people. If you don't respect them. If you don't have people, you like. If you're not having interesting conversations. If it's not an environment where you're comfortable, then it's time to move on. And it's stunning how many people find themselves in a period in their career where in the job where they don't like people are working with, and they're not learning, and they keep doing the job. And by the way, that means their portfolio isn't expanding either. So if you can get those things right, serendipity will take care of the rest. All the good things that happened in my professional career happened by accident. I wasn't supposed to be the guy who ran Xbox, and it ended up on my plate. That's the way things work. But good preparation gets to you to good opportunity. Ken WhiteGreat advice. And I know there, as I mentioned earlier, the students are really excited to hear you tonight. Thank you, Robbie. Really appreciate it. Robbie BachEnjoyed it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation that was originally posted on March 7th with Robbie Bach, former Chief Xbox Officer, and that's our podcast for this week. Installment number three of our summer look back series will be posted next week. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest Robbie Bach and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Jennifer DiMotta](images/jennifer-dimotta-86-thumb.jpg)
![Summer Look Back: Creating the Customer Experience](images/jennifer-dimotta-86-thumb.jpg)
Jennifer DiMotta
Episode 86: June 20, 2017
Summer Look Back: Creating the Customer Experience
This week we start our Summer Look Back Series with an episode that was originally posted last fall with Jennifer DiMotta, who talked with us about the changing landscape of retail, and the way retailers are working to connect with their customers in a variety of ways. DiMotta is Vice President, Digital and Omni Channel for Blue Mercury, a leading luxury beauty retailer. She talked about creating the customer experience. Please enjoy our conversation from last November with Jennifer DiMotta.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. We launched our podcast series in September of 2015. And since then, we've posted over 80 episodes and featured guests who shared their expertise pertaining to leadership, communication, marketing, innovation, and many other topics. Well, now that summer is upon us, we thought we would look back at our series and repost and replay the top four episodes of the past year. Based on the number of downloads and feedback we received from you and other listeners. This week we start our summer look back series with an episode that was originally posted last fall with Jennifer DiMotta, who talked with us about the changing landscape of retail and the way retailers are working to connect with their customers in a variety of ways. DiMotta is Vice President Digital and Omni channel for Blue Mercury, a leading luxury beauty retailer. She talked about creating the customer experience. Here's our conversation from last November with Jennifer DiMotta of Blue Mercury. Ken WhiteJennifer, thanks for taking the time to be with us. This is your first trip to William & Mary. Welcome. Jennifer DiMottaThank you. I'm glad to be here very excited. Ken WhiteIt's a beautiful place, isn't it? Jennifer DiMottaOh, it's gorgeous. Ken WhiteYeah. Jennifer DiMottaYeah, it's gorgeous. Ken WhiteWe'll have to get you around a little bit more, but I know you're going to be talking to some students. Some MBA students and a group of students here as soon as we're done recording, and I know they're really looking forward to hearing from you. You live in especially interesting space. Would you call it marketing? What would you call it? Jennifer DiMottaThat's a very good question. I would call it. I guess business. My boys managed e-commerce businesses, and you've gotta understand all the aspects of business when you manage e-commerce for everything from marketing to supply chain to finance to operations. It all counts when it comes to running an e-commerce business. Ken WhiteYeah, no kidding. Yeah, and a big piece of that is Omni channel. Jennifer DiMottaA big piece of that is Omni channel. Yup. Ken WhiteI think people know what it is. They may not know the term. Jennifer DiMottaRight. Ken WhiteHow do you define that? Jennifer DiMottaWell, even get that in retail space as well. I think people have different definitions for it. My definition is pretty simplistic. It's looking at it from the customer's point of view, so how does the customer want to interact with retail? And more and more, I think you and I know, a long time ago, it used to be that the customer interacted one way with retail. They went to the store. That was their one real option, and now there's many channels, and they want to interact with them depending on what they're doing at that moment. They want to go on their mobile phone. They want to go on their desktop. They want to do research there and then go shop in the store. They want to go the store and do research, and shop online. And really, this is a very customer-focused way of looking at. What do I need to do to grow sales in the retail industry? It's coming out from an Omni channel perspective. Ken WhiteSo creating the relationship with the customer is what it's all about. Jennifer DiMottaThat's right, yes, yeah. Ken WhiteHow do you and people who work in the field like you? How do you balance all of those channels? There is a heck of a lot of it. Jennifer DiMottaIt's not easy. Definitely not easy. Some of it, you've got to be consistent because the customer is looking for those cues to be consistent, whether it's a marketing promotion, the products that they're trying to research, the prices that they're looking for when they're buying a product or service. Those are the kind of the consistent pieces. The inconsistent pieces are giving the flexibility the customer is demanding for. So if I'm online and I want to reserve that product go walk in the store have it ready for me right up at the front. Those are the things where you bring together the two channels, and they don't even look like channels anymore. They're just one continuous path of purchase for that customer. Research and data kind of shows you quite a bit. There's a lot of great avenues for data, and this anymore used to be very difficult to understand what is a customer doing online and then how are they also doing something of the same transaction in stores, but the data is pretty omnipresent at this point in time. Ken WhiteIn your experience, are customers using that many channels, or do they tend to have one or two channels that they go to? Jennifer DiMottaCustomer, I think it's very ubiquitous at this point in time. They are using a lot of channels. They're just using them for different paths in the purchase, and their purchases don't look the same. So my purchase today for something might look different than what my purchase looks like tomorrow, and it's because what I'm doing today versus what I'm doing tomorrow. I'm here at William & Mary today. I'm at work tomorrow. So all in, what I'm doing throughout the day will be very dependent on how I react and because I know I have that flexibility at my feet. I use that to my benefit, and that is knowing that customers are doing that is really how you think about the Omni channel world. Ken WhiteHow much is video? How much of a role is that playing? I mean, before, it was print and photo. Now video, right? Jennifer DiMottaSo important. People want to watch and visually see things. Shopping has always also been about visually shopping. And so the stores you're walking in, you're not reading as much content in the stores. You're looking at things. You're touching things. You're trying things on. It's your eyes that are either going toward something that's visually appealing or not. And in e-commerce, it's taken a little bit of a longer road to get to that point because we originally thought we needed tons and tons of content. The customer wanted to do a lot of research. And what we're finding more now is the customer actually doesn't want to do any more research than they used to do. They want to do a little bit more, but they need it to be very fast. Customers need convenience. They need insights just like retailers actually do. They don't need the data to be all in kind of a sprawled raw format. They need very quick insights, and video tends to connect all those dots very quickly. So if a customer can watch a 1-minute video and pull together as much information as what they can intake in that one minute, they're going to be much more satisfied than a picture or description or anything like that. Ken WhiteYeah, it wasn't that long ago content was king. Jennifer DiMottaIt was king. Ken WhiteNow video. Jennifer DiMottaAnd it's still content. It's funny. That's another definition that's kind of thrown out there quite a bit in a few different ways. The new content marketing is now becoming video, and it's not just video on your site anymore because customers are spreading their wings and where they actually make transactions. They're making transactions in Facebook. They're making transactions in Pinterest. They're making transactions really across the web wherever they are. I have a dash button for my smart water that I use, and I push the dash button, and Amazon delivers me smart water every couple days, and it's fantastic. Ken WhiteYeah. Jennifer DiMottaSo those types of things are content, including video that's creating interest enough for somebody to transact right where they are. Ken WhiteDoes this mean that people in your field are now video production professionals? How do you tackle the video? That's not easy. Jennifer DiMottaIt's not easy. Ken WhiteWriting a text is one thing. Jennifer DiMottaYup. Ken WhiteA really well-produced video because many of our customers, millennials, grew up seeing terrific production. Jennifer DiMottaThat's right. Ken WhiteThat's kind of what they expect. Jennifer DiMottaYes. Yeah. I think even the younger generations expect it on some level. But as long as the customer is getting the information that they really want. I think that's the king part of content to me. If the aesthetics are not always there that's not going to be the priority. Every analysis we've done asking our consumers what is your priority when we're serving up marketing materials to you or when we're trying to develop the next beautiful website. What's priority to you? And often, their content requests are. I want the right price. I want to know the products in stock. They still have those very generic needs that you need to fulfill, even within some sort of content like video. So the aesthetics of it isn't as important as we think it is. The other parts of it, the meat of the content, becomes really important. Ken WhiteSo some things change some things. Jennifer DiMottaSome things stay the same, yeah. Ken WhiteYeah. What's next in terms of reaching out to customers? It seems like the tools we have at our disposal are really so many. Jennifer DiMottaYeah. Ken WhiteAnd with social media and the very audio, video, and somewhat. What do you think is next? Jennifer DiMottaWell, one of the things that I think is next is social. It's going to play a much bigger role in the transaction and service of retail. So if you think about the Internet of Things is important because customers you know how customers used to go to stores, and they still do. But they now have other avenues. Well, now that's going to also change for our dot coms. They don't have to necessarily go to your dot com. You need to be where they are. They don't need to be where you are. So if they're in Facebook or they're in Pinterest or they're in Instagram or they're on Twitter. If you're where they are, and they can touch base with you, they're highly likely. So we talk about things like chatbots things that are coming up in the picture and all these new words and opportunities, even beacons or apps for mobile. One of the best things about apps for mobile is you can push a communication to your customer, and the value of that to the consumer is only if the information that you're providing the customer is right time, right place, and so the more you think about right time right place. Transactions can easily happen in social because people are always in the social environment these days. They practically live there, right? We all do, and it's becoming a multigenerational activity, and that's how we're all connecting. We're going to connect the consumer to the retail more and more and more inside of those areas as well. Ken WhiteWe'll return to our conversation with Jennifer DiMotta of Blue Mercury in just a minute. Today's episode is part one of our four-part summer look back series, where we're reposting and replaying the top four episodes of the past year from our Leadership & Business podcast series. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level by designing and delivering a leadership development program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. To learn more, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to Jennifer DiMotta on creating the customer experience. Ken WhiteNow you're with Blue Mercury now, which is beauty, cosmetics. You were with Sports Authority very different. Jennifer DiMottaOffice Depot before that. Ken WhiteThose are three different. Jennifer DiMottaReally really different, right? Ken WhiteSo what was that like moving from one to another? Some similarities and some differences, I guess. Jennifer DiMottaSuper similarities retail is fairly similar regardless of the product you're selling. Same functions. Lot of the same leadership styles I would say. Retail is a very flexible environment because it's private most often. And that brings on, you know, the energy to change or the energy to grow. And there's a lot of sense of urgency in retail. We're always moving very, very quickly. Yes, there's some nuances when you're selling the different products that you're selling, and especially it kind of lands at a little bit higher level, so in Office Depot, those are consumable products. You're buying paper every so often. The consumer is different because it's most often businesses. So you think about that in a different way. The Sports Authority world is very fashion. So it's changing every 90 days. Nike's always coming in with something, or Under Armour, whoever the brand is, but it's always changing its constant fashion. And then the interesting thing about beauty is there's two different sides of it. Skin care is very consumable, so it's very similar to the Office Depot. It's the same people they're coming back, and reordering and reordering, and then the makeup is the fashion side. And that's changing every 90 days. So I'm glad I've had both experiences because those can you really have to think about those types of marketing vehicles and how they work for both of those types of products very differently. Ken WhiteBut the common thread seems to be it's all customer-centric. Jennifer DiMottaIt's all customer-centric. Ken WhiteIt's all about them. Jennifer DiMottaIt really is. Yes. Yeah. Ken WhiteAnd it sounds like retail is in your blood. You love it. Jennifer DiMottaLove retail. I've been in retail for 20 years. I've been in digital about the same period of time, so really sort of growing up in digital and seeing the huge differences. I mean, we didn't have mobile phones when I started in digital. We didn't even think dot com was going to be that much of a driver for store sales. And it's now a huge influencer of store sales, and we just thought it kind of sit over there, and it's own little island and do its own little thing, and it's really come a long way. It's really very interesting. I love it. Ken WhiteYou know, we actually have a lot of alumni and corporate partners in retail here, and a question they tell me they're asked often is what's going to happen to the brick and mortar. Jennifer DiMottaYeah. Ken WhiteWhat do you what do you think? I mean, moving forward. Jennifer DiMottaWell, it's still about 89 percent of sales. It's not going anywhere. There's really holistic reasons why customer shops in a store and shops online. We are no longer an online buyer or a store buyer. We are that's where we are an Omni channel buyer. So sometimes you want to go the store because you want the tangibility you want it right now. You want to talk to somebody. It's a social experience. It's kind of like reading a magazine and pulling up your Kindle or your iPad. You kind of want that blend because, you know, in the end, there's a social side of stores, and there's a really non-social side of e-commerce. But there's a really great convenience in e-commerce. It's super fast. It's easy; I don't have to get off the couch. So it's all how do I feel today. What do I want to do? What am I buying, and do I feel comfortable doing it online, or would I rather do it in-store? And it's very contextual. It's one shopping experience at a time. Ken WhiteYou mentioned leadership in the retail space and in, the marketing space and all of these areas of business. How do you approach leadership? Jennifer DiMottaThis is my favorite part of the last 20 years. So I've always been on the digital space, and most often, I'm building the e-commerce team from the ground up. It's been really fun, and I've had to bring it in a different way. So we're in a space right now where we have a lot of wonderful, amazing, intelligent digital folks. But 15 years ago or 20 years ago, there was no one. And even myself, I had limited experience. So I looked for potential. I looked for those things that I think we all look for now in leaders. You know you look for good analytical skills. You look for someone who's trusting, influential. Those are the things I was looking for when I was hiring 20-person teams or 40-person teams. And then you have a whole fun path after that because once you hire a bunch of new people, you watch them start interacting with each other, you start developing plans together, you start developing processes, you build team building. On top of that, you are the group that's making quite a bit of change. You're shaking things up in a store business. You're shaking things up in a catalog business. So leadership skills are incredibly important when you're the one kind of shaking things up, and it may not be well-liked across the board, and in other areas, they love it. So you have to be super influential. You have to be very persuasive. You also have to be very patient, listening, trusting, transparent. It's really one of the most important parts of being in a digital land, especially when you're in a company where the store sales are a good 90 percent of the business right now. Yeah. Ken WhiteYou've worked in three different industries, so to speak. How much, and I asked this of a lot of leaders. How much does passion about the industry? How important is that in terms of the way you lead? Jennifer DiMottaYou mean for like the beauty industry or the sports industry? Ken WhiteYeah, those are two different industries. Jennifer DiMottaYeah. Ken WhiteSo do you approach leadership differently, and I guess more importantly do you have to love the industry in order to be an effective leader? Jennifer DiMottaYou know, that's a good question. I would say that you don't necessarily need to love the products, but you need to love what you're doing for the customer and for the industry, so if you're really bought in and so passionate about what you're doing for this industry that's how I've always approached it. And I love learning while I'm at a beauty industry or while I'm at a sports industry. But I think what people read in me is seeing that passion for digital or just passion for helping the customer, or I'm a digital person that has a lot of passion for helping move customers into our stores because a Blue Mercury one of the big differentiators is we have true experts in our stores. And you know you're not going to get that on e-commerce. You're not going to get that feeling in e-commerce. You'll get that fact, but you won't get that feeling. And so that passion in me leads me, I guess, to the right decisions and the right strategies. Ken WhiteNice to have a job you love. Jennifer DiMottaI love it. Yeah. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation that was originally posted in November with Jennifer DiMotta of Blue Mercury, and that's our podcast for this week. Installment number two of our summer look back series will be posted next week. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest Jennifer DiMotta and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Margaret Liptay](images/margaret-liptay-85-thumb.jpg)
![Managing Up Redefined - Part 2](images/margaret-liptay-85-thumb.jpg)
Margaret Liptay
Episode 85: May 30, 2017
Managing Up, Redefined - Part 2
Last week we shared the first half of our conversation with leadership coach Margaret Liptay on "managing up." Liptay explained how your relationship with your boss can be more meaningful than the usual supervisor/subordinate relationship. She said when you position the boss as the organizational "parent" you place unnecessary limits on the partnership. This week in the second half of our discussion, Liptay explains how you can reframe the relationship so it becomes more complementary, which leads to better results for you, your boss, and the organization. In addition, she says the concepts of synergistic relationships can be applied in all of your interactions. Here's the second half of our conversation with Margaret Liptay on how properly managing your relationships can create results and growth for everyone involved.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, last week on the podcast, we shared the first half of our conversation with leadership coach Margaret Liptay on managing up. Liptay explained how your relationship with your boss can be more meaningful than the usual supervisor-subordinate relationship. She said when you position the boss as the organizational parent, you place unnecessary limits on the partnership. Well, this week, in the second half of our discussion, Liptay explains how you can reframe the relationship so it becomes more complementary, which leads to better results for you, your boss, and the organization. In addition, she says the concept of synergistic relationships can be applied in all of your interactions. Here's the second half of our conversation with leadership coach Margaret Liptay on how properly managing your relationships can create results and growth for everyone involved. Ken WhiteThe timing of you being here is very interesting. I've had recently. It seems conversations with folks toward the earlier parts of their career being frustrated with the boss. You know I want him to know more. He doesn't want to know it. I'm really frustrated, and okay, he doesn't want to know it. That's probably okay. Margaret LiptayIt might be okay. There might be a time when that's a conversation that you need to manage. What I would suggest in that case and we can talk about a few other scenarios that we both have been exposed to. But if you're not talking to your boss, they're never going to know what you're doing or what you're not doing. So you do have to find a way to have that conversation, even if it's a 10-minute conversation. Even to do a check-in, and we'll get to that in a second, but you can't expect your boss to be thinking about you all the time, either. So you have to manage your own career to some extent. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayAnd that's why you also reach out to other managers because the beauty is if other managers are people you can communicate with and are people that enjoy talking with you, they'll know your work. They'll tell your boss. So that's why this linear one-on-one isn't really the best approach for your own career development. Let people know gently, subtly what you've done. Let them see you. Let them see how you work. Let them see how you operate. Then they'll give praise to your boss, and you're off the hook. You don't go in there like you're patting yourself on the back. And he finds out about it anyway. Ken WhiteRight, or when they leave the organization due to a promotion, they're looking for people to take along with them. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteNo, we've heard that we have so many instances of that where somebody moves on, and wow, she went with him. I don't even know those two interacted that much. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteInteresting. Margaret LiptaySo there's lots of ways to approach this. And what I'm trying to also emphasize is that it's not a manipulative, it's not a calculating, cunning, you know my move and the next move I'm going to make, just do the work, be in the moment, enjoy what you're doing. Bring your full self to it, your best self, your whole self, and then influence as many people as you can along the way positively about your results. Because, at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. Ken WhiteAnd the goal is with the two of you working together, everybody wins. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteAnd all that ability is multiplied. Margaret LiptayExactly. And that's the beauty of the one plus one is three. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayAlso because if every relationship is one plus one is three, we're not just everybody working in their own little world anymore. But one of the things I did want to mention that I think has been very successful that the feedback I've gotten has been quite good. And this is this concept of engaging in what I call wellness check-ins. So if we look at the fact that your manager is not just a manager, he's a collaborator with you. He's a partner with you. You and he creates synergy together. I don't think it's inappropriate, possibly once a month. That would be ideal to say I would like 15 minutes to half an hour of your time. I'd like to do a wellness check-in. I'd like to see how well we are doing and if we are well together. And here are some of the questions that I would ask in that meeting if I were the person being managed. I would ask how am I doing how are we doing as a team. How do you think we are doing? You and me are we on track against our results? Are we clear on our goals? What do you think the next steps are? Here is what I need from you and why. This is what I missed this month. This is what maybe we could work on together next month. Ask your manager for a teaching moment. Ask him what challenge or something that he encountered during the course of that month that he would share with you so that you would have a learning opportunity and a teaching moment with him and then say well, I would like to share something with you. There was this issue. I handled it this way. You didn't need to get involved. Is this the way you would have done it, or would you have done? Would you have done it another way? That's another way to share learning. Everybody loves that. Every manager loves that. Ken WhiteThat's an interesting point. Here's what I need from you and why. Not many people say that to their boss. Margaret LiptayNo. And I think that's a challenge to say it, but I think if you articulate what you need. In other words, do you need resources because you're floundering and you're dying, and you're worried about the work product or the deadline that has to be fulfilled? Or I need a little bit more of your time on this one issue. Can I do it Tuesday morning? Can we do it together Tuesday morning, or I need for you to talk to Mary Lou? I'm worried about her. She's an at-risk employee. Would you mind doing that? Those are the kinds of things that you need. So that the you just to wrap it up. I think another important question that probably should come up in every relationship. Are we aligned? Are we marching together in the same direction? And I believe if you do this wellness check-in. A you'll know where you are. A he'll be reminded that he's got a responsibility or she for your career and that you are looking after your career. It's also an opportunity to share in a very subtle way again something that you've done that's been a success. And I think that has a lot of merit in that, again, you're not running in there like a child saying, look what I did. Look what I did. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayYou've set aside the time to talk and these wellness check-ins. Can you know being what, however, periodic nature you want them to be? But now everyone knows what's expected, and you can set them up, and you can explain this is what I'd like to do. This is what I call a wellness check-in to see how our partnership and our collaboration is going. Ken WhiteAnd I think that's critical to spring it on the boss in your weekly meeting. I don't think. That's just not going to fly. That doesn't give them time to reflect or to think. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteBut to build that in and say when we meet in two weeks. Margaret LiptayYes. Ken WhiteThis is what I'm going to ask. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteI think I know as a supervisor, I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to think. Margaret LiptayTo think. Ken WhiteA little bit. Margaret LiptayYeah, and to be helpful and to give you what you need. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayThis need thing. The boss sometimes needs things too from you. Sometimes they just want they want talk therapy. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptaySo if that's what they want. That's what you give them. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Margaret Liptay in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary. The Center for Corporate Education will once again offer its popular certificate in business management program this fall. The five-day program targets professionals who are poised for promotion, a move into a leadership role, or for those who simply want to be better prepared professionally. Each day is dedicated to one facet of business, including managerial accounting, strategy, operational effectiveness, leadership, and communication. If you are interested in learning more about the certificate of business management, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with leadership coach Margaret Liptay. Ken WhiteWhat does the manager owe the professional? Margaret LiptayWell, I think I mentioned that it has a reciprocal relationship. And what I mean by that is it can't be you giving and getting nothing. So in an ideal world, and Lord knows it's not ideal. The manager should be giving you what you need, should be listening to you, should be thinking about synergy. How is that manager going to help you? How is he going to help you help himself get to three? One plus one is three. So when in an ideal world, the manager embraces these wellness check-ins. The manager is interested in what you are doing all the time and checks in and says do you need anything. Do you need help? Sometimes the reverse can be true. You can say to your manager is there anything I can do to help you. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayBut the manager can say the same thing to you. And I think they forget. I think when you're very talented and your high performing, you just keep going. And as I mentioned earlier, I think that can be very, very dangerous. So there is an expectation on managers that they also do the reciprocal of what I'm suggesting that you do in service of your manager. Ken WhiteWhether you're the manager or someone who reports to the manager, hearing how can I help you. That sounds pretty good. Margaret LiptayYeah. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayIt's powerful. Ken WhiteIt is powerful and rare. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteI'm assuming, and yeah. Margaret LiptayThey respect that. That person actually wanted to help me. Is there something I can help you with that will lighten your burden, right, even if they say no? They know that you asked and you were sincerely asking not for any other reason but to help them get to one plus one is three. Ken WhiteWhich it seems then they are able to see this is not a supervisor-subordinate relationship or whoever says it. It's more about teamwork. Margaret LiptayCorrect. Ken WhiteWhat happens? It sounds great. It's it is an interesting way to, and managing up doesn't even sound fair. I don't know how what we call it other than one plus one equals three. I guess it's a good way to frame it. Margaret LiptaySynergy. Ken WhiteWhat if your manager just doesn't? It just doesn't. It's not working. This is not someone who communicates. This is just not someone who is buying in. Margaret LiptayWell, okay, there's several strategies around that. What I've always tried to do with my managers and in giving people advice is say to them if you had an external client that was difficult, what would you do. Almost treat your manager in that case like a client. Now my clients were precious to me, and I would move heaven and earth to try to retain them and keep them and make them happy. But I had to make a lot of adjustments in my own personality sometimes. Sometimes they were very analytical. Sometimes they were different type of person. Sometimes they wanted things in a way that was really difficult. But I had to do my very best to adjust to them. So I think one approach your first approach should not be to go screaming off to HR and say I can't get along with my boss it's awful. You know he's terrible, she's terrible, she doesn't listen, she doesn't talk to me first try to look at them objectively look at them as if this was a tough client what would you be doing. Then you try certain strategies. It might work it might not work. I don't think you should avoid it. I don't think you should disparage he or she. I don't think you should throw them under the bus to all the other people that you communicate with, and I don't think that you should go hide it in your office. I think the best thing to do is put it out there on the table. There is an elephant in the room and put it out on the table, and that person may think you have a great relationship. It's just your perspective on the relationship. So if you could at least get that person to say we're doing fine. I have my style. You have yours. Let's coexist. And then you go happily along to all these other managers and people that you can build relationships with, and that will speak for themselves. It's impossible and impractical to think that every single manager you have will be one that will be a perfect relationship. It will not be. Ken WhiteWell, I love the idea of if it's not working, make adjustments in your own personality. Consider that. I'm not so sure everybody thinks of that at all if, especially not one of the first things. One of the first alternatives. Margaret LiptayExactly. But if it were a client. If it was your biggest client in your office, would you be thinking that? Ken WhiteThat's great approach. Margaret LiptaySo that's the way I always looked at it, you know, and I think if you have a mindset that you actually enjoy difficult people. I think that you should embrace it. So my boss is difficult. Let me figure it out. It's a puzzle. I can figure this out. Ken WhiteYeah. So for someone who is listening and says I like this. This is good. I want to give it a try. Where do they start? Margaret LiptayWell, first, they have to start understanding what they are trying to accomplish. Do you have to look at the goals of the firm? There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. So that's where you start. You start understanding where you fit in in the goals and the results of the firm. And then from there, you really do have to go build those relationships across a broad array of people in a broad array of locations, and that is work. Don't get me wrong, and being a middle manager is exhausting, but it's exhausting and benefit of yourself. So this is an investment in yourself, and if you don't do it in a, you know, as I said, a very calculating and manipulative way and you do it in a subtle way, it becomes natural, and it becomes easier and easier. I think it's very important to establish that relationship with your manager because, at the end of the day, that manager probably does have a lot of influence on your career. And that's scary as it might seem. That's where you need to start. You need to do your wellness check-ins, and you've really got to come at it as one plus one is three. We are better together than we are two people individually. Ken WhiteAnd everybody can win. Margaret LiptayAnd everybody wins, and the results are there, and you get promoted. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Margaret Liptay, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. And finally, if you have a suggestion or comment pertaining to our podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Please connect with us via email. Our address is podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Margaret Liptay, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Margaret Liptay](images/margaret-liptay-84-thumb.jpg)
![Managing Up Redefined - Part 1](images/margaret-liptay-84-thumb.jpg)
Margaret Liptay
Episode 84: May 23, 2017
Managing Up, Redefined - Part 1
One of the top priorities for many professionals is cultivating a positive relationship with the boss or direct supervisor. Doing so is often referred to as managing up or communicating up. Managing up often entails learning about the boss's habits, such as which channel he prefers for communication or when she prefers to hold weekly meetings. Our guest on the podcast today has a different take on managing up. Rather than seeing the relationship as a supervisor-subordinate dynamic, leadership coach Margaret Liptay recommends a different approach—one that's more complementary and reciprocal—and one that leads to results thanks to a one plus one equals three model.
Podcast (audio)
Margaret Liptay: Managing Up, Redefined - Part 1 TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, one of the top priorities for many professionals is cultivating a positive relationship with the boss or direct supervisor. Doing so is often referred to as managing up or communicating up. Managing up often entails learning about the boss's habits, such as which channel he prefers for communication or when she prefers to hold weekly meetings. Our guest on the podcast today has a different take on managing up rather than seeing the relationship as a supervisor-subordinate dynamic. Leadership coach Margaret Liptay recommends a different approach, one that's more complementary and reciprocal and one that leads to results thanks to a one plus one equals three model. This week we share Part 1 of our conversation with leadership coach Margaret Liptay on how managing your relationships can create results and growth for everyone involved. Ken WhiteWell, Margaret, thanks for taking the time to join us. It's always great to see you. And as we were talking right before, we recorded your way up there in the favorite guest category. I think this is your third time on the podcast, so welcome back. Margaret LiptayThank you, Ken. I am so happy to be here. And this is my favorite place to be, without a doubt. Thank you. Ken WhiteWe're going to have to check your number of downloads to make sure because if it's up there, we'll keep bringing you back. But you have such an interesting job. You're constantly meeting with companies and leaders, and that's why we love to have you back because of what you hear, what you learn, and what you're teaching. So thanks for taking the time to be with us today. Margaret LiptayYou're very welcome. Ken WhiteSo you and I have been talking right before we started to record, and we're going to devote the podcast today to managing up. What does that mean to you in today's work environment? Margaret LiptayWell, Ken, managing up, I believe, in today's work environment has a slightly different connotation than it may have had in the past. In the past, I think people looked at it as some kind of a one on one communication or dialogue with one person within their organization. And I come out of 2017 from a very different perspective, and here's how I look at managing up. You've really got to look at a bigger picture than just a single one-on-one relationship. First of all, the way the world operates today in corporate America, everyone has a responsibility for results, goals, growth. So that's number one. Number two, you have to manage yourself in your own energy. You have to manage your clients internal and external. You have to manage your managers. And I use the plural, and I'll get back to that in a moment. And again, you also have to manage people that report directly to you, indirectly to you, on your team, on your project. There aren't all these direct lines as there used to be. It's a much more amorphous environment out there. And I also think that you have to manage every project, every request every commitment to perfection. We live in a global world now. So the communication has to be spot on. Rework is not acceptable. It also means that rather than being preoccupied with your image or you are seeking to go up the ladder. You've got to be in the moment. You've got to live in the present. So if you look at the goals of the firm, you look at all the constituencies that you have to appeal to. You look at your managers, and we'll talk about that. Then I think it's clear to me that this concept of this one linear relationship between you and your manager isn't exactly the new model. It's not the 2017 and going forward, model. You have to manage lots of relationships. And that's the bottom line. Now getting to the part about managing your manager in a plural. My experience, and it's coming up more and more lately that in most organizations now, while they have a hierarchy, the hierarchy is a blend. It's a matrix management and a direct line management philosophy. So at any given time, depending on what the project is or the expected outcome is, you could have a functional manager. You can have a geography manager. You could have a manager who's a product line manager. You could have an overarching manager. So in a matrix organization, sometimes you wonder who your manager is. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Margaret LiptayYou know it's a tricky situation, so you either wonder who it is or you know you have too many. So you've got to manage that. So you've got to manage the relationship with each and every one of those managers. So what I'd like to spend a little time on is understanding that goals, outcomes are essential. Understanding that everybody that you come in contact with, whether it's your direct report or not. Whether it's a person who's on your team. Whether it's another manager, they're all important. And so, what I'm going to suggest is some outlines as to how to manage your manager, but all of the tips I'm hoping to give today will be applicable to every relationship you have. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayAnd then the ideal would be that that would become natural. Ken WhiteAnd transferable. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteRight. So where does the managing my manager fit into it? How do you approach? Margaret LiptayWell, the managing my manager actually is a pretty big part of it because, let's face it, most people are ambitious and want to move up in the organization, and they do have to look for sponsors. They do have to look for people within the organization who will help them. It may be your direct manager. It may not be your direct manager, but it is someone that will get to know you either through a project through teamwork in some fashion. So let's face it you have to build relationship with those sponsors in service of your own career, and in doing so, the more managers you get to know, and maybe we call it networking. I call it, you know, finding and mining sponsors. You go, and you find people who will get to know you, see your work, help you with your work, help you grow, and be a person who, at the end of the day, will speak up for you and in having some conversations with some firm and one, in particular, came up. At Google, the engineering department has a philosophy around promotions which is when they get together all the information and packets on all the people that are being considered for promotion. They bring in all the managers of those people, and a presentation is made about each and every one of the individuals who are being considered for promotion. However, the person's manager does not get a vote. So what's interesting about that, and I think more the new model is they want to know how you have really influenced through your relationships other people, and it kind of eliminates that age-old, you know, teacher's pet or a manager's pet. It takes that right out of it. Now I thought that was very fascinating. What an interesting way to do it but also myself coming out of the professional services industry. What happens now is most promotions are considered by committee. There isn't just one manager making the decision about where your career is going. It's a panel of people. It could be your internal coach. It could be your manager. It could be someone you have a dotted line to. It could be someone in another department that you did some work for. So I think what we're seeing is this concept of my manager, and I it's not a reality anymore. But yet those relationships. And that's why I say managing your managers is so important. But you can't also avoid or ignore is a, better way to put it, the people that support you because actually, they have a lot of power too because many times they're asked how are you doing. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayHow do you behave? What's your work product? What does it look like? Do they steal your thunder, or do they give you praise? So those are the kind of things. Ken WhiteAnd then, if you're only trying to please your direct boss, you're not making much of an impact on the organization. Right. So you've got to reach out. You've got to branch out. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteEverybody wins in that sort of way. Margaret LiptayExactly. And let's face it, bosses come and go. Managers come and go. They get transferred. They don't take you with them. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayThey leave the firm. They go somewhere else. They maybe get fired. And if you have an affiliation with just one person in a firm, sometimes their bad news is your bad news. They disappear, you disappear. So the more that you and I don't mean to suggest this in a manipulative way at all. This is not calculating. This is not manipulative. This is not, you know, kissing up to anyone. This has to become a natural behavior where you realize it's a reciprocal relationship. You need each other, and your manager need you. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Margaret Liptay in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization reach your goals with a leadership development program specifically designed for your organization and delivered by our world-class business school faculty. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with leadership coach Margaret Liptay. Margaret LiptaySo I'd like to go through the little pence if you want to say or what I think is the process. But I'd like to do is kind of to reframe the definition of the manager-to-manager or manager's relationship. Your manager is not your organizational parent. Your manager is not your college professor. Your manager is not your buddy. Your manager is not an all-being, all-knowing, all-perfect person. Your manager is a human being. You, on the other hand, are not a child, are not a student, are not a subordinate. You might defer, but you don't have to in every sense be subordinate, and you are not a person who is powerless, and there will be times when you will be the teacher, you will be the matter expert, you'll be the one with the most knowledge in the room, and you'll have an obligation to present that information and that knowledge to your manager. So I'm trying to reframe it so that we have a relationship between a manager and the person managed. That is what I would call synergistic, and I love this concept because, to me, synergy is one plus one is three. What that means is neither one of you could be successful or achieve what you achieve unless you join up together. The power of the two of you is much better than each of you as individuals. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayOne plus one is three. So if you approach a relationship with your manager with the people that are direct lines dotted lines, whatever way you are interrelating with them. If you look at it from the point of view of synergy, What do you bring to them? What are they bringing to you so that you get to the overarching results of the firm? And in any relationship, it's fluid. Sometimes your managers the student or the nonexpert, and you're providing information to him or her. And I'm sure that's appreciated. And so it's a very fluid relationship building and complementary synergistic energetic there's so much that can be gained by going approaching it, in my opinion, in that in that fashion. Ken WhiteWith just with that, the mindset of this I'm not the subordinate, and that's not my boss. That's tough for a lot of people. A lot of people like that. I think I meet professionals who prefer that. But you've got to change it if you're going to make an impact on the organization. Margaret LiptayExactly. And quite frankly, a lot of managers like to be superior. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayThey think they are. But if you could really adapt that mindset to your thinking, then you exceed and certainly reach the goals of the firm. You increase your ability to learn. You accelerate your career because you are in a position of being more powerful than you were by yourself. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptaySo it's really creating power within two people so that your manager fulfills his dreams and aspirations at the same time, your career gets accelerated without you having to be calculating and manipulative and mindful every moment about where you're going and how you're getting there. You'll just get there. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayBe in the present moment. Think about the synergy that you're you're providing, and it'll take care of itself. Ken WhiteAnd remember that one plus one equals three if it's done right. Margaret LiptayYeah, exactly. Exactly. Ken WhiteInteresting. Margaret LiptaySo here are just some tips, you know, because the questions I usually get from the people I coach and the individuals I speak to is also how do I do it. You know it sounds great. I love the idea, but how do I do it? And again, these are applicable to almost any relationship, but it's worth mentioning. So, for example, you need to understand your manager's goals, motivations, aspirations. You need to know your manager both professionally and personally. You need to know what their triggers are. You need to know what their energy is when they're low and when they're high. You do need to know a lot about how they like to work. Do they want data? Do they not want data? Do they want all the information in an encyclopedia or do they just want give me the top line? Do they want to communicate? And you mentioned it earlier. It is important to know do they want email. Do they want text? Do they want you know a written communique of some kind? Do they want a phone call? Do they want a face-to-face meeting? And that could change. But you know how you're going to find out what they want. You ask them. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Margaret LiptayAnd that's where you begin. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Margaret LiptayYou begin by asking questions, and you ask permission to ask questions. You know, I know some people get intimidated by going to their boss and asking a question. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayWell, bosses are not, you know, psychics. They don't know what's on your mind. They want to get to know you because that's actually an obligation they have as well. So if you garner a small amount of your manager's time and say, can we just discuss how you work and I'd like to share with you how I work so that we can create synergy together so that we don't overlap we don't duplicate we use our energy correctly. I would love that if someone came to me with that premise. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Margaret LiptayWouldn't you? Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Yeah. And I hear, and I hear it from leaders, you know that sometimes they burn out towards the end of the day. They burn out towards the end of the week, or they're getting emails filled with information. They don't want any of that. So obviously, yes, know your manager and start out by asking. Margaret LiptayYeah, and it's subtle. You don't go and talk to your manager about what your goals are and how quickly you want to be promoted, and how quickly you want to become a vice president. And how quickly you want to get rich. That's really not the best approach. You want to hear about him or her what their style is, and then you need to adjust your style accordingly while keeping your own authenticity as well. But you need to be a good leader. You need to solve problems then inform. What I hear what is, and I'm sure you've read the HBR article about managing the monkey. I hear a lot of people say well, I go to my boss, and I tell him what's going on, and I don't know what happens after that. You know he doesn't seem to respond to me. Well, I say don't go to your boss unless you have to for advice. Go to your boss, tell him what you did and ask him if he agrees with what you did. If he doesn't, okay, or she doesn't. Fine. You can go and do something else. But I think where we lose a lot of time, and a lot of momentum in our relationships with managers is that we go there expecting to be a little bit of that child, a little bit of that student rather than saying, you know what, I'm the expert. I'm going to help you this time. And tell me where I went wrong. So it's also a teaching moment for the manager. So you know, don't put the monkey on your manager's back. You own the monkey. Ken WhiteBut also for the manager, the manager in your framework has to understand I'm not the end all be all either. Margaret LiptayExactly. Ken WhiteThey've got to both parties have to play into this. Margaret LiptayExactly and you have to be sensitive to the fact that the manager has other responsibilities beside you. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayYou were hired for a reason. You were hired because you have talent. So but another suggestion speaking of talent that I would make is don't let your talent hijack you. And by that, I mean sometimes people feel that they are so good and so passionate about what they're doing. They kind of run everybody over, including their boss, and they want to make sure that their boss knows you know how talented they are and how much they did and what they achieved. I think a more subtle approach is better. Just do the work, live in the moment, and the future will take care of itself. Don't run to your boss every time you've done something that you just you think you deserve a pat on the back for. Their time will come when you can have that discussion. So keep the monkey, do the work, live in the moment, enjoy the present and enjoy being in the present. You know, that's another thing we get very hung up on. We have to move up. We have to move up. There are times when being in the present and having a position in the present is the most critical job in the business. So there's nothing wrong with just being and enjoying who you are in the present and doing a fabulous job and getting lots of attention and lots of kudos for that. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayI mean, there's just nothing wrong with that at all. But I think high potentials and very talented people feel that there's an expectation on them of their managers, and they go full steam ahead, and while they're doing that, they're actually burning out. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayAnd then they crash and burn. Ken WhiteWell, that's part one of our conversation with Margaret Liptay on managing up. We'll share the second half of our discussion next week on the podcast. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website wmleadership.com. Finally, if you have a suggestion or comment pertaining to our podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Please connect with us via email. Our address is podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Margaret Liptay, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Skye Morét](images/skye-moret-82-thumb.jpg)
![Data Visualization](images/skye-moret-82-thumb.jpg)
Skye Morét
Episode 82: May 9, 2017
Data Visualization
One of the hottest topics in business today is finding effective ways to connect with others by sharing compelling stories. Whether it's building the brand, closing the sale, or presenting to the board, many professionals and organizations are spending time and effort improving their storytelling abilities. Often, stories in business include data, and that presents a hurdle for many: How to present complex data in a way that helps the audience easily understand. That's where data visualization comes in. Skye Morét is a data visualizer at Periscope in Portland, Oregon, and joins us today to discuss the many ways data visualization helps professionals tell compelling stories.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. One of the hottest topics in business today is storytelling. Finding effective ways to connect with others by sharing compelling stories. Whether it's building the brand, closing the sale, or presenting to the board, many professionals and organizations are spending time and effort improving their storytelling abilities. Often stories in business include data, and that presents a hurdle for many. How to present complex data in a way that helps the audience easily understand. That's where data visualization comes in. Skye Morét is a data visualizer at Periscopic in Portland, Oregon. Her work combines data-driven design and storytelling, which helps make complex issues easier to understand. She recently visited William & Mary for the online MBA programs residency weekend. Afterward, she joined us to discuss the many ways data visualization helps professionals tell compelling stories. Here's our conversation with Skye Morét. Ken WhiteSkye, thanks for joining us. You just came back from talking to a large group of online MBA students. So thank you for taking the time to sit down with us. Skye MorétMy pleasure, and what a great group. Ken WhiteYeah, they are. They had some fantastic questions and really about data visualization, which is just everybody in business seems to be talking about this. How do you define that when somebody asks you what do you do for a living how do you define what you do. Skye MorétI guess the best way I define it is creating a visual narrative that people can engage with. It allows them to hopefully to ask their own questions, answer their own questions, has kind of falls along the spectrum from a presentation of information to allowing them to explore the exploration factor. Ken WhiteAnd in business, it's hot, but it seems to be hot in everywhere. So some of the projects you're working on they're not necessarily bottom-line business problems. They're all over the map, aren't they? Skye MorétOh, it's exciting. I mean, even if you look at NSA programs in this country, more and more information design programs, data science programs are popping up all over the country. Work that we do clients range from nonprofits, foundations to Google, Microsoft. Kind of at Periscopic, which is where I work as a data visualizer. We really focus on do good with data is our tagline, and data ranges from education data groups looking at how much you know, really analyzing how many people in the United States have degrees have credentials. How can we increase that to a certain amount by a certain year? We're looking at redesigning the FDA medication guide for, you know, for ibuprofen, for example. All these things we get every day literally people go to get their little sheet in the prescription bag and throw it away cause it's six-point type. It's very difficult to read. How can we visualize that in a way that has a quick read that really can make an impact on the trajectory of someone's medical health? Ken WhiteYeah, no question. Skye MorétAnd even some projects are helping companies. One of my favorite projects that was a bit more artistic was just simply visualizing 15 years of work that had been put into a nonprofit in California that empowers youth, democracy. They give a lot of money out per year, and they wanted to show that impact. And we just essentially they're in California, right, so this the poppy is their state flower. So we essentially visualized the amount of money they gave out each year and the amount of grants they gave in the form of these kind of dynamic beautiful little poppies, but they signify data, and there was an axis and labels and such. Ken WhiteIs most of the visualization print based it's on a piece of paper or on a flat screen that we're watching? Skye MorétSo I was trained in print and have done a lot of that. The piece I just told you about was print-based. I've made quite a few posters for community groups, especially stakeholder groups for marine policy and such. I have a big marine science background. But what we do at Periscopic is or often designing interactive websites that really have offer the audience a lot of drill down and allow you to explore data in different ways. You know, there's a lot of data involved, kind of piecing that together. Ken WhiteAnd with the visualization, the user can really get into it. Skye MorétRight, and they can hover over, they can arrange things the way they want, they can sort something in a different way, they can perhaps export that then as a PDF it is printed that allows them to take that home in the way that they wanted to see something which is pretty new concept. Ken WhiteYeah. Now you had talked about when you were talking to the MBAs about starting off with the audience first before you do anything, and you talked about the why, the who, the what, and how can you explain that. Skye MorétRight. So I think about information as kind of a two parts to inform and formation and inform part of information. You have to think about who your audience is and why do they care. And if you haven't don't know can't answer those two questions, you should not be making creating this graphic. So you know who this is for your audience can really you generally have some idea right. But then you kind of think about what is that audience like. Is it more specialized, should it more scientific? Should this piece that I'm creating can it still have jargon in it that maybe only my managers know or my team can understand? Or is this for the public or our clients, where it needs to have a bit more of a journalistic quality? It needs to have a quick access and certain levels of bias within each of these kind of data types, visualization types in terms of scientific specialized information it's very clean and clear unbiased. We're looking we're using as a tool for discovery as opposed to, you know, stuff we see in journalism that it tries to be unbiased. But you know they talk to certain people and maybe not others. Ken WhiteSure. Skye MorétAnd then we have an artistic side artistic audience which often gets a lot of press. Usually, these are visualization types that are trying to do something different, kind of disrupt the status quo, maybe visualize something a different way, or make us see something we haven't seen that way before, which always exciting, and so you have to think of is my audience am I framing this visualization in a scientific way, specialized, journalistic, or artistic. Ken WhiteWow. And then, if it's off, you're not going to connect with the audience. So you've really got to go through these steps before you do anything. Skye MorétAnd why do they care? Yup. Ken WhiteThat's the bottom line, right? Why do they care? You talked about three types of data when you were discussing with the student nominal, ordinal, and quantitative. How do you use those, and how do you differentiate them? Skye MorétUnderstanding these three data types is useful in thinking about how do we want to frame this visualization and how are we nesting categories how we organizing our information to allow drill down or allow some level of exploration in our data. And so if you give them all the details at once, nobody wants to see that nobody wants to look at that read that right. So if you can nest it and in the three categories you talk about, the first one is nominal data or categorical data. I am saying this is different than this. Brazil is different than Japan. If we're looking at nominal data we're not, we're not comparing anything necessarily in terms of numbers or value or ranking it in any way. We're saying this is different than this. This kind of data this type of product is different in this type of product. Then we have ordinal data. We're ranking something. We can say, you know, Brazil has more people than Japan, but Japan has more CO2 than perhaps I don't know if that's true. And then, we have quantitative data. So then we start to have hard numbers. And so we ask different questions when we're showing data in an ordinal fashion versus giving them all the numbers, and you really have to think about what levels of information does my audience need to know or want to know at this point, or if I have my mouse over a ranked system you know that that's colored in that order then do I get the information. So just trying to think about these layers of information and really the information architecture of your data. It's a challenge unto itself before you even get into visualizing it. Ken WhiteOf course, so you are doing two things. You've got to understand the numbers, and you have to have the artistic or the visual side of things. Not everybody can do this. Skye MorétI think everybody can. Ken WhiteBecause of the tools or how. How can everybody do it? Skye MorétI mean, if you everybody can do the napkin test right at dinner where you're sitting down, and you have a white napkin, and I say, you know, explain to me this thing that you know about your data, you could probably find a way especially if I'm some you know revered aunt or something and you're like okay I got to show this information, and you know you draw maybe two circles where ones bigger and one smaller. Okay. That's a ranking system. You're saying one's bigger than the other. And you start to get into, okay, this one perhaps you know now I'm making a pie chart. This one these are my different sectors of what I'm talking about. Oh, you just created a data visualization. Ken WhiteHow about it, yeah. Skye MorétAnybody can do it. Ken WhiteInteresting. Now you talked about visual structures, and there were six of them can. You can you walk us through those and what they mean, and why you would adopt each one. Skye MorétYes. So why I talk about these six main types is I had a amazing teacher, information design historian Isabel Morales who wrote one of the first books about this called Design for information. Wonderful book, and her six chapters are these six visualization types. And so this is a book that I teach with. And the first chapter is hierarchical data. So we have a hierarchy. You can think of a family tree or a management structure. There's some kind of some of the top, then the next people lower. There's levels of data. They're not necessarily connected between layers, but they're connected. And so we can use tree maps, sunburst diagrams, different ways to explain what is that quantity of people at that level and how does that compare to perhaps the same size, same type of group in another, you know another company or another level or how do we compare this amount of people at this level to a higher level. It's really about understanding the organization of the system. Ken WhiteYeah, is that used often? Skye MorétI think so. Ken WhiteYeah, it seems like it would be. Skye MorétRight. I think relational structures are a little more common, and I can talk about that. Ken WhiteYeah, please. Skye MorétRelational structures are the next when you can think of networks. So hierarchical structures, the emphasis is on the node. How many people are here versus here? How many you know? How many degrees of separation are there from this person to that person? Relational data is completely about the links between those nodes, so how many tweets go back and forth between two people? But how you know, for example? We just at Periscopic we did a recent project looking at patent data and made a piece for Fast Company about the different innovation signatures between Google and Apple, and you can see all these little dots that are all the different patent holders, and the size of the dot is how many inventions they have and then the amount of links that goes from them it is determined by how many links they who how many people have they invented stuff with. And how many people were authors on that patent essentially, and so you start to see these very different structures between Apple and Google? It's kind of very. I don't know if it's top-down, but very centralized structure at Apple versus a very democratic kind of even steven dispersion of lots of tiny people with many people with not a lot of patents, including the CEOs at Google, and so the focus for relational is really on those links. And then you can also get into the volume of those links, so if you think of flow diagrams or sync diagrams or alluvial diagrams. Diagrams, where there's 100 percent of something, say, you know, all the people that came to a conference, how many of them came from different states. So we have we know there's so many states in the US, perhaps only 37 people came from. You can say this many people came to the conference. You can draw a quantity that shows the flow from those states. Perhaps they're only in these industries. Okay, we're kind of narrowing down. But again, they're only there's 100 percent of a certain amount of industries that were at that conference, so you kind of can make these beautiful flow diagrams and can simply very quickly explain to someone what the structure or volume of information as you often see this with energy diagrams. In terms of this, much energy went in here's where it was separated, or this many people came to this college, this many are in these different departments, then they ended up getting MFAs or MBAs or whatever. So it's a nice way of dividing information. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Skye Morét in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization reach your goals with a leadership development program specifically designed for your organization and delivered by our world-class business school faculty. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Skye Morét. Ken WhiteFrom a temporal. Skye MorétYeah, so temporal visualization structures our time timelines. So any timeline you can think of? Usually, time is on the x-axis. You can think of time flowing from left to right. You can think of having multiple like, especially the data's pretty simple, and you want to compare a bunch of different places. You can have small multiples, which means you have lots of tiny simple graphs on kind of a grid system, and you can quickly see, okay, Alabama had very different rates than California or whatever. So timelines, you know, we're pretty used to seeing those, but there are lots of new ways that people are exploring timelines which is pretty interesting in terms of interaction. Ken WhiteSpatial? Skye MorétSpatial maps. We're used to seeing maps, so the fourth type is maps. Ken WhiteWe are, aren't we? Yeah. Skye MorétAnd I mentioned to your students thematic maps means that it's not just a location on a map here overlaying some variable onto that map. So say homelessness or, you know, rates of CO2 emissions or something in an industry area. If you are showing that color with the size of a circle, that's a thematic map. And yeah, we're pretty used to seeing those, but there's so many online tools out there that we can make those now. Ken WhiteSpatial-temporal? Skye MorétSpatial, temporal maps or spatial means map, temporal means time, so time and space together these maps are slowly become proliferating and becoming more common. And if you're looking at, for example, how much traffic is flowing through a certain area at a particular hour or over the course of a day, you'll see hubs of activity where most people are commuting to work, et cetera. And so we can look at that in terms of shipping, and we can look at that in terms of anything that's moving through space. Obviously, this is really helpful for lots of transportation companies like Uber. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Skye MorétBut I don't do as much of that in my work. Ken WhiteAnd then you have textual as the sixth. Skye MorétSo the final visual structure is textual, and this is up and coming not a lot of tools right now for textual analysis, but it's exciting in that, right? We deal with text every day. That's what we're used to. We have surveys that we look at stuff online. There are tools out there now online for free where we can analyze them and take a whole book or take a bunch of survey data and say, you know, we can make word clouds out of it that's lexical that's thinking of each individual word as kind of an atomic unit pulling it out and saying how many times do we see the word explore or challenge or something. Those are a little less robust in terms of actually offering you helpful information. They're cool looking, and I generally think that you know, I told your students that anything that's cool kind of beware if it's decorative it's probably not a good idea, but certainly they're interesting as a first pass of what were the big themes that were in this text. Kind of the next textual analysis and visual structures, word trees. You can I think jasondavies.com has a has the word tree free software that I commonly use. I just cut and paste my text in there, and it allows you to kind of follow the following the grammar of a sentence, pick a word, say more, and then you can see all the survey data. They wanted more discussions more assignments more. You can see all the different repeated words and how people used maybe a couple words together, and allows you to kind of get that drill down. Ken WhiteNo kidding. Skye MorétAnd then there's the semantic level. So there are now some Periscoptic worked on one a tool that allows you to explore. I just wrote this big report. How's the reading level on this? Does it seem positive, doesn't seem negative? What is the general feeling of this? Which is pretty powerful. Ken WhiteYes, amazing. Skye MorétAnd I think it will be increasingly common in the future and used hopefully. Ken WhiteFor practitioners for professionals who wanted to do some visualization with their data. You had talked about a couple tools that are out there and available. Skye MorétRight, so Tableau is not certainly not free. It's free. I think it's free for students, but it is super useful. We use it every day in terms of data exploration. So it is not a final graphic tool for us. And I don't know that it should be, I think. I think you can do a bit more with it, like a couple more simple steps, you know, and simple programs on your laptop to make it a little flashier for your company a bit more contextual in terms of adding a title and subtitle. But for basic exploration, I mean when we get we get data right away, we probably make 50 plus Tableau. You can think of them as Excel worksheets. Little sheets that have that we're comparing data in different ways. And unlike excel, where you really need to know what you want your data to look like already, like, oh, I want this on axis X axis and this on the y. You can quickly in tableau kind of select variables and try should this be a bubble chart. Should this be a Gannt chart? Should this be a map? Should this, and you can do calculations. I want to see what is the difference from the median from the mean. And it's pretty flexible now. It's getting better and better, and then the other one I showed you guys that has a couple of different tools. It's pretty new. It's called RAWGraphs it's rawgraphs.io, and it was put out by a Density Design Lab in Milan. And it allows you to make things like the Sankey diagrams that I was telling you about, those flow maps you can make sunburst diagrams that allow you look at hierarchical structures. You can just kind of play with data quickly and then change colors and kind of export and a bit of a sexier way, and you can even make it. There's a way to export it interactively if you want and make it if you have. If you or an IT person that you work with know a bit of JavaScript, you can. You can make this online thing that lives on your website, which is exciting. Ken WhiteFor someone who knows it's important. They haven't experimented. Where do you recommend they start, or what do you recommend they do to kind of get their feet wet? Skye MorétI mean, I honestly think starting with Tableau or taking one of these any data set, there is so many freely available data sets out there on, you know, cheese production in the United States. Ken WhiteSure. Skye MorétI mean, honestly, if you go to data.gov, you can find a lot of random data sets or the census data in your area. I mean, you know, pick one subject, one word, and you can dive in so deep and so just looking at, you know, finding a data set that you're excited about. Ideally, one that doesn't have a lot of holes because that's always frustrating. You know, areas where you need a little more QC and finessing and quality check, but just make sure just work with, you know, what are my variables, what type of data is it, who would my audience. What is the compelling narrative here when I start to play with the data then think about who is my audience? How do I if I was to make a visualization, how would I want to frame this and actually, that's the point where I personally sketch tons of I mean, my notebook is full of sketches because I it's much takes a lot more time to make something digitally right than any of us you me all your students can sketch out you know what they want this idea to look like and what I've learned from that process is my first idea is never my best. My fifth idea is usually terrible also, and usually, you know, the 10th 12th sketch, I start seeing components that I like and start forming something that I think could actually be worthwhile. And I'm not. That's the best thing that you can do, and even if you just practice that before you want to get into kind of sexier design then, then you're well on your way. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with data visualizer Skye Morét, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, if you have a suggestion or comment pertaining to our podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Please connect with us via email. Our address is podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Skye Morét, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dave Heenan](images/dave-heenan-81-thumb.jpg)
![Leaving on Top](images/dave-heenan-81-thumb.jpg)
Dave Heenan
Episode 81: May 2, 2017
Leaving on Top
We've all seen it: The CEO, the leaders, the athlete, who continue in the role despite the fact their best days are clearly behind them. Clinging to a role in which you're no longer effective can tarnish an otherwise outstanding career and reputation. For many professionals, knowing when to leave or move on can be extremely difficult. Dave Heenan is a career executive, educator, and author of the book "Leaving On Top: Graceful Exits For Leaders," where he examines many ways leaders approach the end of their tenure. He joins us today to share what he learned about the psychological challenge of leaving a leadership position.
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Dave Heenan: Leaving on Top TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, we've all seen it the CEO, the leader, the athlete who continues in the role despite the fact their best days are clearly behind them. Clinging to a role in which you're no longer effective can tarnish an otherwise outstanding career and reputation. For many professionals knowing when to leave or move on can be extremely difficult. Some exit at the right time when they're on top. Many others wait too long. Dave Heenan is a career executive, educator, and author. In his book Leaving On Top: Graceful Exits for Leaders, he examines the many ways leaders approach the end of their tenure. He also shares strategies for planning a successful farewell. He joins us on the podcast today to share what he learned about the psychological challenge of leaving a leadership position. Here's our conversation with Dave Heenan. Ken WhiteDave, thank you for joining us. You've been teaching for us the last several weeks. It's great to have you here. How's your experience been? Dave HeenanTerrific. This is my alma baby. So to come back 40 years later and see brighter faces, and you know, I mean, one of the things one notices immediately is the diversity that absolutely wasn't there in the 50s and 60s. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanAnd that's encouraging. And, of course, it's a much bigger university. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave HeenanBut the kids are terrific. I mean, they're as good as any place that I've I've taught, and that's been Wharton, Columbia, and Georgetown, and so forth, so I'm impressed. Ken WhiteYeah, that's great. They are the students here are flat-out amazing. You've had a wonderful career, and throughout your career, you've found time to write several books actually. What is it about writing? Dave HeenanThere are. Actually, there are 10 of them. Some reviewers have suggested I've written more than I've read unkindly. Ken WhiteWell, what. How do you get into writing? I mean, you're a busy guy. Dave HeenanWell, it's a double life. You know, a while back, when I was a Marine in Vietnam, somebody flipped me a book called The Andromeda Strain by Michael Creighton. And so I read the thing, and I get into the forward. And lo and behold, he wrote that between his second and third year of Harvard Medical School. Ken WhiteWow. Dave HeenanWith those guys have like seven minutes discretionary time, and I said, you know, if he can do something like that, I ought to get off my butt Ken WhiteRight. Dave Heenanand try to emulate him a little bit so. Ken WhiteDo you enjoy writing? Dave HeenanI do, as you know, publishing of the three stages writing it, selling it to a publisher, and then selling the book. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanThree different skill sets. Ken WhiteVery much so. Dave HeenanAnd they can all be very difficult. But yeah, I mean, the fun is meeting these people and getting stuck into it. Ken WhiteAnd you definitely talked to a number of people about for your book Leaving On Top. What caused you what made you write something about leaving on top? How did you get on that subject? Dave HeenanWell, you know, I've just seen so many people we all have. Sports, entertainment, business, or what have you who just have a hellish time deciding how and when to make a graceful exit. I think men, especially who treat it, particularly retirement, as something halfway between castration and euthanasia and they, and they hang on too long, you know, way past their expiration date, and you remember the old Kenny Rogers you got to know when to hold em and know when to fold em. So it set me off on this track of looking at people, and I profiled 20 in the book. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanWho are dealing with the issue half? Of them, unfortunately, messed it up. The other half did, in fact, pull it off. Ken WhiteAnd it was a wide range of people from business to sports, athletes, entertainment. Do you have a favorite chapter or a favorite? Dave HeenanWell, an interesting chapter is on how to do it and how not to do it because you can leave head first or feet first and sort of a classic is Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, you know. I mean one of the great partnerships in show business ever. And Johnny was called the king of the night during his heyday, which was three and a half decades. His audiences ranged from 20 to 40 million people. Many people took a pop at him into night and couldn't touch him. But then, all of a sudden, at age 66, he made the announcement to the studio networks and the broader audience that he was packing it in. People were absolutely shocked, and you know, one guy said how the hell can you give up the best-paying gig? At the time, this is 92. He was making 20 million bucks a year. Ken WhiteWow. Dave HeenanFor just doing 3 60 minute appearances. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave HeenanAnd he said you know, I just felt in my gut the timing was right to get off stage, and I didn't want to do anything that would embarrass my reputation. And for the next 13 years, he was hounded with delicious opportunities to come back. Other than doing an occasional Academy Award show, he whiffed on all of them and said tonight will serve as my legacy. I don't need to stoke my ego by going back in front of the camera. Now you contrast that with Ed McMahon, and they basically left together left the show together. And Ed had a good six-seven-year run as an afternoon TV game show host. But as he started to push into his 60s and 70s, those gigs started to dry up, and for the life of McMahon could not deal with retirement. And as you may know, in his latter years, he had a litany of health, financial, legal problems, and the net of it is he died at 86, four years after Carson. But in very tragic circumstances. So Johnny went out head-first, big Ed, unfortunately, went out feet-first. Ken WhiteRight. But it's not necessarily an age thing. In the book, because you profile younger people, so it's not I'm reaching 75, do I get out, or what have you. Dave HeenanNo, and when I present the book it's, it's really about life transitions moving from A to B to C, and as we talked beforehand, there are Olympic athletes that you know reach their peak at age 20. And you know what do they do next. How do they make an exit? How do they transition? Sports figures, in particular, can have a tough time with that. Ken WhiteAbsolutely and that was one of my favorite chapters in the book was Eric Heiden, who I remember was it was a great Olympian speed skater. Dave HeenanAnd then he played pro hockey. He was a great in his day. He was a better bicyclist than Lance Armstrong. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave HeenanAnd of course, he then went to Med School Stanford and was and became a great orthopedic surgeon along with his wife. But he, you know, lily pad jumped from A to B to C and then Dara Torres, who's in that same chapter. You know she was Miss wonderful. She just missed doing six Olympic Games. And she, I mean she missed by three-quarters of one-second qualifying for the London Olympics. Ken WhiteAmazing. Dave HeenanYeah. Ken WhiteAmazing. Dave HeenanYeah. Ken WhiteHow much of it is psychological? When to get out, I mean, I'm assuming it's a great deal. But you know. Dave HeenanWell, it's tough because most of the people I talked to were leadership positions or at the top of their peak. And those people tend to be their own worst self-evaluators. They really are. And you know who do they turn to for some straight talk. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanBecause most people have been blowing smoke at them. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Dave HeenanFor years and years and, rather than these guys taking a chance and swimming in new waters, they tend to cling to the familiar, their work, their jobs. And if they aren't very, very careful, those jobs can become self-imposed prisons. You know, like Johnny Wooden's great quote, don't let making a living prevents you from having a life. And some of these people, you know they, do get stuck into it and just don't know when to cut the cord. Ken WhiteYou speak very specifically in the book about four exiting types that you found, and you categorize them. Let's talk about those. The first one you talk about is timeless wonders. Dave HeenanYeah, timeless wonders are great. These are people who treat leaving certainly treat with retirement like an early death, something to be avoided at absolutely all costs. And they're, you know, they range from Warren Buffett to Henry Kissinger to Andrew Day O'Connor to the actress Betty White. And these people in their 80s and 90s are able to perform at a very very they're national treasures. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave HeenanAnd we don't want them packing it in, but I would point out, Ken, that these people are in a very distinct minority. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Dave HeenanThere ain't many of them out there. Ken WhiteI was thinking the same thing. Every name you mentioned, there's only one of them in that field able to pull this. So they're very special. Dave HeenanThey're very special people. Ken WhiteAnd so, setting your goal to be a timeless wonder may not be the smartest. Dave HeenanThat's right. Yeah. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Dave Heenan in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization reach your goals with a leadership development program specifically designed for your organization and delivered by our world-class business school faculty. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Dave Heenan. Ken WhiteAnd you have aging despots as another. Dave HeenanYeah, aging despots want to act like timeless wonders. They stick around well after their expiration dates they lose their fastball. Some would argue they never had one in the first place on the global scene. Mao and Marcos, Stalin and Sukarno, Gadhafi and Mubarak would all be classic examples. Fidel Castro would be in that category, and he had the classic remark on his longevity of revolutionaries do not retire. So he wasn't going to make a graceful exit. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanYeah. Ken WhiteFought it all the way. Dave HeenanYeah. Ken WhiteThe comeback kids. Dave HeenanThat's the comeback kids are an interesting gang because they're people who, for a variety of reasons, left the world of work but have decided to boomerang back. On the business side, these so-called encore executives range from Howard Schultz to Charles Schwab to Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, and a bunch of other people who, in many cases, came back to prop up their sputtering companies. But I think even more importantly. They returned to prop up their potentially faltering reputations. Another group of them are just bored and are looking for another shot of adrenaline. Football coaches like Joe Gibbs, Dick Vermeil in the college ranks a guy named Bill Snyder at Kansas State. Ken WhiteSure. Dave HeenanAll came back really for another shot of adrenaline. And then you've got other comebackers who return for economic reasons for the bucks. I mean, among them, think of the heavyweights Joe Lewis and Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson men who blew multi-million dollar fortunes in the ring only to come back for give me one big payday. Ken WhiteOne payday, absolutely. Yeah. How successful is that group when they return? Dave HeenanIt's a real mixed bag. On the corporate side, the odds are two out of three that you're going to flop in large part because people tend to gravitate to the success factors that got them through the first phase. Ken WhiteOf course. Dave HeenanAnd things have changed. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanIn coaching, offenses have caught up with something, and so and they just can't make that sort of transformational changes that you need to be successful in your return. Ken WhiteAnd your final category is the graceful exiters. Dave HeenanYeah, these are like you and me. These are smart guys. Ken WhiteSpeak for yourself. Dave HeenanThese people who get the timing right who leave on their own accord. These are people who, by and large, believe that lifestyles careers can and should be elastic and that one of the great tests of personal development is the ability to change skins to molt and to move in new and exciting directions and when a classic example in the book and otherwise is Roger Staubach. The Great Hall of Fame Cowboy quarterback who translated his success on the gridiron into a very, very successful real estate empire, The Staubach company, which he sold several years ago for 618 million bucks. Ken WhiteNot bad. Dave HeenanBut yeah not bad but people again like Staubach are prepared. I mean, they smell the timing, they're realistic, and they also are adventuresome. They're able to put the familiar aside and jump into some very, very difficult and, in many cases, quite challenging directions. Ken WhiteWow, that's tough. Dave HeenanIt is tough. Ken WhiteI mean, when you feel you're on top to do that. Dave HeenanNo, it's really hard. Ken WhiteHow do you know when it's time? Like you said earlier, you know CEOs and leaders often don't have that confidant. Dave HeenanYeah, well, I mean, there's sort of a checklist, and it would start with the issue of do you really want to get off the horse or would you prefer to stay in the saddle. I mean, you've got to be honest with yourself. Secondly, you kind of a micromanager or somebody who's to get stuck and does get stuck into everything, or you're somebody who can give up the reins and delegate. Are you going to be comfortable identifying and working with your successor? And what role, if any, do you want to play in the transition? Another issue is how will your family and friends and the rest of the enterprise react to your exit. And, importantly day can you afford it? You don't want to run out of dough, right? Ken WhiteSure. Dave HeenanFor you know, for an individual contributors for doctors, for lawyers, for engineers, those kind of folks, athletes, you want to be honest with a question, can I. Do I still have the spunk and the spirit to retain my audience and fan base? And then, finally, I'd add is your plan to exit in sync with your spouses or partners. Have you put together a comprehensive exit strategy? If the answer to all of those questions, Ken, is yes, then God bless you. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave HeenanYou can cut out. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanIf it isn't my advice to stick with your day job, you know, give it your all remain passionate about it. Ken WhiteHow much does give someone else a shot come into play? I've been the leader for so long. For crying out loud, there are good people in this company who would like a shot at this. Is that the something that the leaders obligated to do or not? Dave HeenanIt really depends. I've been on eight public boards, and I've seen it go both ways, and I've seen actually a couple of guys not want to freeze things up at the top and, in many respects, left earlier than they probably should have. Ken WhiteSure. Dave HeenanThey still had more to offer, and their successors, in many cases, could have used some coaching. Most of them, however, particularly founders with their names on the door. Their identity is totally locked up in the company. They have a horrific time trying to cut the cord. In many cases, you know they've built a business all of their energies are devoted to it. They ain't playing golf and doing other things. I mean, they are stuck into it. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanAnd the exit dimension in passing the reins over to somebody else is just incredibly difficult. Ken WhiteAny differences that you notice between men and women facing the exit? Dave HeenanWell, I think, and the women are going to love it. I just think women typically tend to be more flexible on a variety of things, and this is one. Men just get in terms of their self-identity, self-awareness, are so linked to the job and the job description that busting away from that is a real psychological loss for them. It's almost like a death. Women, I think maybe it's childbearing activity or what have you. They tend to roll with the punches a lot better than men. Ken WhiteAnd you see men identify that their very being with the job. Dave HeenanAbsolutely yeah. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave HeenanI did another book that you're probably aware called Double Lives. It's about people who had another side to them, and part of my advice is develop a second or third avocation so that if you get blindsided like the ESPN announcers a couple of days ago. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanYou know you're not psychologically shot that you've got, you know you're painting, you've got a book, you've got a small business on the side, or something that you can land on that's going to prop you up. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave HeenanYeah. Ken WhiteSo any advice as we wrap up for someone who might be thinking, you know, maybe I need to start thinking about an exit at some point here? Dave HeenanWell, you know, I think do it early. I mean, there are no magic bullet despite the book. Ken WhiteRight. Dave HeenanI mean, moving into the next season of one's life is challenging. I liken it to being high up above the ground on a trapeze where you're trying to swing from one rope to the other. And on the one hand, as you look down, it's very, very frightening. But on the other hand, it's very, very invigorating. I like the closing line of Willy Loman from Arthur Miller's great play Death of a Salesman, where Willy looks at his protagonist Ben and says Ben, you know a man can't go out the same way he came in. He's got to add up to something. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dave Heenan, author of Leaving On Top: Graceful Exits for Leaders. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, if you have a suggestion or comment pertaining to our podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Please connect with us via email. The address is podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Dave Heenan, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dane Brooksher](images/dane-brooksher-80-thumb.jpg)
![Retiring Successfully](images/dane-brooksher-80-thumb.jpg)
Dane Brooksher
Episode 80: April 26, 2017
Retiring Successfully
Retirement. We all look forward to it and spend our entire career saving for it. How do we make it an enjoyable and meaningful transition once it happens? How can we use and re-purpose the talents that made us successful in our prior careers through volunteer efforts on boards and service organizations while still enjoying our retirement years? Today's guest has done just that. After a successful career spanning nearly 45 years, Dane Brooksher has established himself as an innovative leader and world-class manager. He's retired from not just one but two careers and joins us today to discuss how to retire successfully.
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TranscriptRosanna KoppelmanFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. A weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from around the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm Rosanna Koppelman filling in for host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Retirement we all look forward to it and spend our entire careers saving for it. But how do we make it an enjoyable and meaningful transition once it happens? How can we use and repurpose the talents that made us successful in our prior careers through volunteer efforts on boards and service organizations while still enjoying our retirement years? Today's guest has done just that. After a successful career spanning nearly forty-five years, Dane Brooksher has established himself as an innovative leader and world-class manager. He's retired from not just one but two careers, first with KPMG, a professional services firm providing audit, tax, and financial advisory services, and then as founder, chairman, and CEO of Prologis, a leading global provider of distribution facilities with more than four hundred seventy-five million square feet of industrial space in North America, Europe, and Asia. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss how to retire successfully. Here's our conversation with Dane Brooksher, retired manager, founder, and chairman, and volunteer board member of the Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Rosanna KoppelmanDane, thanks so much for joining us this morning. I appreciate you stopping in and giving me a little bit of your time while you're here. You know this the idea of career transitions as we think about this series that we've done and different interviews throughout our podcast with different accomplished professionals business professionals like yourself around career transitions. One of the aspects of career transitions that we haven't touched on yet is how to successfully transition into retirement. You've had a very accomplished career as a very successful business leader in the public accounting field and industry with KPMG. You've also successfully launched a business startup that is doing very well. Do we think about retirement? We generally think about, and we've seen and heard so much about, retirement as it pertains to our financial stability and security into retirement. But we don't typically think about some of the other aspects of retirement, such as passion and doing those things that you are passionate about following retirement. How do you take some of those talents and skills you developed along your career into retirement to make it a very meaningful experience for you? So I thought perhaps today we could start at the top, and you could share with us a little bit about what does successful retirement look like for you. Dane BrooksherOkay, as you mentioned, I've had two significant careers, one with KPMG and then one with Prologis, and I started Prologis along with others don't want to take absolute credit for this because without them Rosanna KoppelmanSure. Dane Brooksherwould not have happened, but I started that when I was 54, I believe. So I'd been with KPMG for 30-plus years, and then I decided that my career basically was over at KPMG. Could have stayed, but it would not have been as rewarding. I would have lost my passion for what I was doing, and that didn't seem right to me wasn't right for me personally, wasn't right for the people I was trying to lead. And, of course, it wasn't right for the firm in total. So I sought another career, and I always thought I wanted to run a business, and I had a friend and associate business associate who gave me the opportunity to start what is now Prologis. We did that in ninety-one ninety-two, and I'll have to be honest, it was a little frightening. I was going from a very secure position, secure income, secure in what the position was and what the position afforded me in the community and the respect that I had in that community, both civically and business-wise, to an unknown. A major reduction in compensation. Rosanna KoppelmanSure. Dane BrooksherBasically no compensation. Rosanna KoppelmanRight. Dane BrooksherSo that was a little frightening for me and my wife. My kids were already out of college, so that was not a big financial gamble, and we started Prologis. Now what led me there to your point about changing careers, and we'll get to retirement here in a second? It was again this passion to try myself out was I really as good as I thought I was really. Could I run a commercial business? I knew I could run a professional service business, but this was gonna be different. This was going to lead to, if it was successful, a public company, shareholders, the whole bit. And I love that opportunity to see and test myself. Anyway, that worked out, as you know. And so I did that, for I retired in 2006 as chairman of the board. I retired in 2004, two years earlier as the CEO and chairman, and then I made the transition into really getting at your question to retirement. But I'm not the kind of person that can sit in a chair or sit in the swing on the porch and do nothing. I was fortunate that years before, my wife and I had acquired some farm property, so in preparation for a full retirement, I started expanding that farm property and turning it into a business as opposed to just a place to go and relax and enjoy the country. And I'm still doing that today. We're still expanding. Farming is fraught with all the vagrancies of weather and crop failures, all sorts of things. Rosanna KoppelmanSure, sure. Dane BrooksherIt's never going to be routine, and as well we've built our employment base, so that's been a challenge because the type of people that I need to make that work are totally different to the type of people that needed to make KPMG or Prologis work. That's my passion today in retirement. Plus, the passion I have to serve, as you know, I'm on the foundation board here. And so William & Mary is a passion of mine, as well as other charities that I serve on and that my wife serves on. So I try to support her in her efforts as well. Rosanna KoppelmanWhen you think about those volunteer efforts, how do you make decisions about where to focus your volunteer efforts? Your time is precious. You talked about the farm and the passion that you have for doing and running that and clearly using some of the skills and talents, and gifts that you've learned along your career path to maintain and to make the farm successful. Do you take those same set of skills obviously into your volunteer space, but how do you make those choices about where to volunteer your time so that you're not sucked in by many people who want your time. Dane BrooksherYou're absolutely correct. First thing you have to do is make sure that when people ask you to do something that, you really want to do it and that you really believe in the cause or the institution. So first off, I do it for those things that are important to me. William & Mary is important to me, so that one was easy. I'm chair of a hospital foundation board in St. Luis. That's important to me, and I'm passionate about that as well. There are any number of other charities and causes that have come my way that I have passed on or that I have initially gotten involved with. And then, for one reason or the other, I didn't have the passion to continue. And that can take a lot of different forms. The staff wasn't quite what it should be. Rosanna KoppelmanSure. Dane BrooksherI couldn't make the personal contribution, and I'm not talking about financial to make the changes necessary. There was politics get in the way. So I don't bother with those because, as you say, you have a certain amount of time, and over the years, I'm trying to remember all of them, but there was a lot of them. For instance, one time, I was chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I didn't know a thing about cystic fibrosis, but a very good friend of mine asked me to get involved. Once I got involved, I really got passionate about it, and I think we made a real difference. I was at one-time chairman of the Midwest Olympic Association for the Olympics. Totally different kind of thing. Rosanna KoppelmanSure, sure. Dane BrooksherBut that was fun. Rosanna KoppelmanSure. Dane BrooksherThat was really fun. And I got to do a lot of neat things. Rosanna KoppelmanSure. Dane BrooksherSo again, it's about what makes you happy in doing, passionate about the cause, and making sure that you've got the time to devote once you commit. Rosanna KoppelmanWe'll continue our discussion with Dane Brooksher in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Dane Brooksher. Rosanna KoppelmanWe oftentimes see images of retirees enjoying themselves, whether it's on the golf course or taking a cruise somewhere. There is an aspect of retirement that involves an expanded life of leisure, but it also involves staying active. Tell us a little bit about how you find a balance between the two of those. I know you have grandchildren, and you're much, very much a family guy. How does that also factor into how you balance your volunteer efforts with staying active and finding the leisure? Dane BrooksherInteresting. I guess my wife and I have our bucket list, so to speak, so we probably take, on average, three trips a year major type trips and they're somewhat different than what other people might do. For instance, we have an upcoming trip this fall to Iceland to see the northern lights in their splendid glory. Rosanna KoppelmanYes. Dane BrooksherWe better see them. Last fall, we went to the Panama Canal. I wanted to see the new locks at the Panama Canal. Things of that nature. Also, my wife and I fish. So we take some interesting fishing trips to Alaska, to South America, Brazil, Argentina, you name it, we go fishing there, and as well I also hunt. I'm a bird hunter, okay? So I can go do that for about three days. Can't do it much longer. Rosanna KoppelmanRight. Dane BrooksherSo I'll drop you know I'll take a long weekend or a few days during the week and go off with a bunch of my buddies, and we'll go bird hunting. So when you put all that together, there's not a lot of time left frankly for the golf which I try to play, which I'm not very good. But I play golf, and we walk the beach a little bit. So there is not much time left for saying what am I going to do today. Rosanna KoppelmanIt sounds like it balances out quite well for you. Dane BrooksherWell yeah, it does. It does, and that's important. Rosanna KoppelmanDane, in the last few minutes that we have left, there are a variety of, you know, we have lots of people working professionals, folks that are transitioning themselves in their careers, lots of different listeners out there. What advice would you have to give our listeners for those who are thinking about retirement now? Those who are about to retire. Those who aren't sure what to do once they retire. What advice would you give them as they think about that transition in their lives? Dane BrooksherIt's probably a variety of answers depending on what the particular person likes to do. Rosanna KoppelmanSure. Dane BrooksherBut I would say underlying it all is stay busy. Any number of people that are associates of mine getting ready for retirement say gee. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do. My consistent comment back to them if you keep your eyes open, you'll be busier than you ever dreamed. But you've got to put yourself out there and say you're willing to do whatever it might be. But bring also balance. Hopefully, I've made my comments demonstrated a balance between my farm passion, my travel, my sports, and my giving to organizations and charities my time and in total, there's not many hours and days left to just do think what am I going to do today. Rosanna KoppelmanVery, very, very good advice. Thank you very much for joining us today. Dane BrooksherYou're very welcome. Rosanna KoppelmanI've appreciated your time, your comments, and your thoughts are around having a rewarding and passion-driven transition into retirement is certainly very important as you think about not just transition into retirement but transitions of all time. So thank you again, Dane, for joining us. Dane BrooksherYou're very welcome. Rosanna KoppelmanThat's our conversation with Dane Brooksher, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically meet your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com that's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Dane Brooksher, and thanks for joining us. I'm Rosanna Koppelman. Until the next time, have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Olympia Trumbower](images/olympia-trumbower-79-thumb.jpg)
![The Nonprofit World](images/olympia-trumbower-79-thumb.jpg)
Olympia Trumbower
Episode 79: April 19, 2017
The Nonprofit World
Nonprofit organizations play a significant role in the lives of Americans. In fact, 1 in 4 U.S. citizens volunteered with a nonprofit in 2014. One of the best-known and most successful non-profits is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, helping all people in the U.S. and developing countries lead healthy, productive lives. Olympia Trumbower is Program Manager in the Global Policy and Advocacy Division at the Gates Foundation, and joins us today to discuss the Foundation, and what it's like to have a career in the nonprofit space.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Nonprofit organizations they play a significant role in the lives of Americans. In fact, one in four U.S. citizens volunteered with a nonprofit in 2014, contributing almost 9 billion hours and donating over 350 billion dollars. Well, one of the best-known and most successful nonprofits is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Gates Foundation works to help all people in the United States and developing countries lead healthy, productive lives. Olympia Trumbower is Program Manager in the Global Policy and Advocacy Division at the Gates Foundation. She visited William & Mary recently for the Women's Leadership Summit and Stock Pitch Competition. During a break in the day's events, she sat down with us to discuss nonprofits, the Gates Foundation, and what it's like to have a career in the nonprofit space. Here's our conversation with Olympia Trumbower of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ken WhiteOlympia, thank you for being here, and welcome back to your alma mater. I'm sure it's fun to be back. Olympia TrumbowerIt's always a pleasure. I love William & Mary bleed green and gold, so it's nice to be back home. Ken WhiteAnd these you're going to be interacting with some incredible, incredible students throughout the day. It's going to be very exciting. Olympia TrumbowerAbsolutely I was honored to be asked to come to the Women's Summit. In fact, they're quite impressive. I was joking around with someone. I don't know if I could get into William & Mary anymore, to be honest. They're all so impressive. Ken WhiteYeah, we hear that a lot. Well, it's great to have you with us. You know, we were talking right before we hit the record button. We haven't really done an episode on nonprofit and on the whole area of nonprofit. To start off, what is it you do? What's your job? Olympia TrumbowerAbsolutely. So I just celebrated my fifth year at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington. And for me, you know, I graduated from William & Mary undergrad in 2008, have always been in the nonprofit sector, and started a think tank in New York City called the Council on Foreign Relations, and I knew from then on I want to be immersed in development and health and how we really bring together policymakers and big thinkers. And so the foundation has provided that for me within the past five years. I've had quite an interesting track. I started in our global development division working on water sanitation and hygiene working, spending a lot of time in India in fact and then worked on the Ebola crisis when the epidemic was at its height around 2014-2015. And now, I have the pleasure of taking those experiences with our program teams, teams that work in certain topics, and I work in our Global Policy and Advocacy Division. So a lot of my job, I spend time every day working on strategy and thinking about how do we best use the investments, the money that we have, the resources. How do we work with the right partners? How can we think about evaluation, and how do we think how to use the resources we have in the best and most stewardly way? Ken WhiteSo it's global. Olympia TrumbowerIt's global. Ken WhiteYou are working with all kinds of cultures, different languages, different everything. Olympia TrumbowerAbsolutely and even within Seattle, we have in total about 14 hundred people who work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, mostly in Seattle but all throughout our global offices, and the culture itself of the workplace is fantastic. Very diverse, people from all backgrounds, not just nonprofit. We have a lot of private-sector folks. People from the field. And for me interacting with everyone is just it's a learning experience every day. Ken WhiteSure. Olympia TrumbowerAnd bringing that to the workplace those perspectives is, I think, just enriching the work that the foundation does. Ken WhiteWhat is it about nonprofit that gets you so fired up? Olympia TrumbowerI've always thought of myself as someone driven to mission organizations, mission-oriented ones. Organizations that really value, particularly with the foundation lives of every person we, have a fundamental belief that all lives have equal value and that everyone has the right to a healthy and productive life. So that really resonates with me. Growing up, I'm the second-generation Filipino American my mother and father immigrated to the United States from the Philippines before I was born. And I've always been interested in just the services that are provided to people from everywhere and giving everyone an equal opportunity. Ken WhiteWell talking about a mission-driven organization, I mean the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. What an incredible brand, first of all. I'm sure when you say, what do you do? Where do you work? They just I'm sure you get a pretty interesting reaction from most people. Olympia TrumbowerWe do, you know. I think one of the questions I get most is what are they like. What are Bill and Melinda like? Absolutely I give tours at the visitor center at the Gates Foundation, and that's probably the most popular question. They're lovely people. They're very analytical. Bill is true to, I think, the persona that you see. I've. Actually, we have worked closely with them and our leadership team, and they hold us accountable. I think that's the big thing with the foundation. We are a family foundation. Bill, Melinda, and also Warren Buffett are our three trustees. You know they have trusted us as staff with their money, their resources to make these decisions on their behalf. But they're very involved, and I think that's one thing that people don't actually realize they're in the office quite often, Bill and Melinda. But they're also on the road. They do a lot of listening, a lot of learning, it helps influence the decisions that we as staff make. And for me, it's been quite a journey to see how the foundation has evolved. We originally became the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. So we just celebrated not too long ago, 15 years in 2015. And now we're thinking ahead to 2020. You know what do we want to look like. What's the legacy we want to leave further down the line, and where do we want to make the most impact? So having the two of them at the helm and our really powerful and very strong CEO Sue Desmond-Hellman, that's been a really fantastic opportunity for staff like myself. Ken WhiteYeah. Olympia TrumbowerTo just become more involved. Ken WhiteFifteen years in the foundation world is that young? Olympia TrumbowerIt's young, adolescent. Absolutely you know exponentially we've grown to where we are today, including the expansion of our global offices. And so for us, too, it's how do we make the most of the work in different regions and how do we leverage the talent that we have, particularly the regional talent, to reach those governments or other partners in areas where we don't necessarily have the best vantage point from Seattle. You know, of course, we believe very strongly in using the folks that are there on the ground and that that have those connections. Ken WhiteYeah, just a side question are you bilingual? Do you speak any? How do you communicate with all these people? Olympia TrumbowerSure. I wish I were. I actually I studied Spanish at William & Mary have not used it as much, unfortunately, but for us, a lot of it. Well, luckily, many of our conversations and communications are in English. Ken WhiteOf course, sure. Olympia TrumbowerMany of our people in the regional offices, of course, are fluent in English, but they are also fluent in their native tongue, so that helps us. Ken WhiteYeah. Olympia TrumbowerWhen we travel, we frequently pair people from Seattle with the regional office team members, so when they meet with government partners, translation should not be a problem there and having someone interpret. But yes, it is a barrier, to be honest. In some cases, I know for us in Seattle, there's a lot of an effort right now to have more training provided where necessary and to make sure that staff not only with the language but the cultural barriers. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Olympia TrumbowerYes. I used to travel quite frequently. So for me, it was very important to understand customs in the various countries I was traveling to especially working with government leaders. Any other political or high-ranking people to follow the customs of that culture. Ken WhiteI don't know if I can't think of a guest on the podcast who is not immersed in globalization anymore. Doesn't matter what you do, does it? Olympia TrumbowerAbsolutely. Ken WhiteIt's the world's flat, I mean. Olympia TrumbowerExactly and everything is so interconnected and for us as well. I mean one of my favorite parts about working at the foundation is the fact that I am surrounded by people with such different areas of expertise all over the world and people who can come together you know they might have a private sector hat on but they can sure contribute to the conversation with how we deliver a vaccine to the most remote area of the world from their own perspective. So that's it's really enriching to have that. Ken WhiteHow is the Gates Foundation organized? What's it look like? Olympia TrumbowerAbsolutely. So we essentially are split up into several divisions, so the way we think about our work is whether it's global or U.S. So within our global work, we have a global development division within this division, there's a lot of a focus on poverty alleviation, and so some of the what we call program strategies, or teams include teams like water sanitation and hygiene, agriculture, nutrition, maternal newborn and child health. Another global division is global health. So we think of these teams as more around diseases, or we actually have a focus now on neglected tropical diseases or teams like malaria, HIV, and then the other global is global policy and advocacy. So that's division I'm in, which is a cross-cutting division that serves both health and development, and then the U.S. division is focused mostly on education. So we think a lot about early education K12 post-secondary, and because we're in Washington state and it's very special to Bill and Melinda, that's their home. We do have a Washington state strategy as well. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Olympia Trumbower of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization reach your goals with a leadership development program specifically designed for your organization and delivered by our world-class business school faculty. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Olympia Trumbower of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ken WhiteWhat about numbers? How many people, how much money, and so forth. Olympia TrumbowerSo there's about fourteen hundred employees at the moment. As of 2015, we invested four point two billion dollars with a B. So that's a lot of resources that we are able to have, and approximately of that four point two billion, about half of that was toward our global development program. So again, a lot of the teams working poverty alleviation, and about 30 percent of that was health, with the remaining in U.S. Ken WhiteSo what's a typical day like for you? Do you have one? Olympia TrumbowerNot so much, to be honest, and I say that because we are very responsive as an organization to what's happening around us in the world. We, of course, have a strategy that each of the teams work on, and we think a lot about how we have influence in certain areas in the right ways with advocacy and policy work and how we think about our actions. But the day differs because we like to think, you know, really work with our regional colleagues in the various time zones. What's relevant? What's happening? The division I work in is policy advocacy also communications, so we're responsive to whatever is happening in the news cycle. We also think a lot about as the governments evolve as their elections happen globally. How do we work with the new partners or new people in office? How do we think about future partnerships future ways of collaborating so there's consistency in the strategies that we have and particularly the way that we want to measure a lot of the work we do? Data and measurement is very big for us as well as evaluation. We want to learn about what's working what's not working, and so for me, I spend a lot of time in meetings. We're pretty meeting and email-heavy organization like many, but it is, for us, the most efficient way to communicate, particularly globally. But meetings are a precious time because it's really where we come together, and it's a thinking session which we try as much as we can in our meetings to solve problems and not just discuss them but think about what how we can move forward. So for me, luckily, it's a pretty standard workday. I don't find myself working on weekends. That's something I deliberately chose to do with my work-life balance. But there is some travel involved, and the nice thing is with the travel, you get to visit colleagues across the world or work with partners. Ken WhiteSure. Olympia TrumbowerSo developing those relationships is a big part of my job. Ken WhiteCan you give us an example of where the data in a project might come in? What kind of numbers would you be looking at, for example? Olympia TrumbowerSure. So as a family foundation, we primarily give grants. We also issue contracts, but through our grant work, part of the grant agreement that we have with these grantees are really how do we measure and evaluate whatever the project outcomes or the deliverables are. And so it's an agreed thing that we have with the organization of position that we have at the foundation or it's program officer and several levels of a program officer and that person actually owns a portfolio of investments of grants and they have responsibility to continually communicate with their partners and grantees and go through cycles of evaluation and by having the partners present data or other ways of showing how the progress is going on these different projects were then able to see okay where do we need to course correct or what's really working where can we actually provide more funding or scale back if necessary. So for us, it's a continual conversation. There's a lot of feedback loops that we try and create into the process, and then we also encourage our grantees to be very transparent. If there's something that we're doing that isn't working right. Ken WhiteYou need to know. Olympia TrumbowerExactly we need to know, and we need to be able to adjust to that, particularly as teams might change or we might have staff turnover. So for us making sure that the grantee relationship is very strong is a priority at the moment. Ken WhiteSo of the over four billion dollars that is granted to help others, how much of that is from the general public and how much of that is from Buffett and Gates? Olympia TrumbowerWonderful question. Great question. None of that is from the general public. So this is all coming from the trustees the, Bill, Melinda, and Warren. That's exactly right. It's quite amazing though many people don't know that the general public they do try and donate. Ken WhiteI'm sure. Olympia TrumbowerTo the foundation exactly, we have a visitor center, and we have many people who just want to give money. Rather what we encourage is that they donate to the partners. So for us, it's very important to educate people on who are some of the grantees that either we're working with or others that we think are very trusted, reputable organizations where we encourage people. What are you passionate about? What would you like to learn more about? And we encourage you to actually give to those organizations since we ourselves are working with others. You know, these partners to do this great work, we're actually not the ones out into the field, you know, digging the well. It's rather we work with other people to do that. Ken WhiteSure, interesting. Nonprofit it's interesting in the education space. We know that many undergraduates across the country are interested in nonprofit. But when we start to talk about putting an academic program together, the first thing you hear is well. I don't know because the jobs don't pay much. Absolutely accepted. That's not the case, is it? Olympia TrumbowerNo, not at all. I think it particularly for a family foundation, you know, it's a big initiative right now and one I'm very proud of that we are working very hard on one diversity, equity, and inclusion and also with just compensation making sure women and men everyone is treated equally that everyone is compensated according to their skills and talents. Our H.R. has done a wonderful job or human resources of making sure that there's comparable wages across the market, not just in nonprofit. And we acknowledge that we are trying to attract talent and bringing people who are from other fields that make a heck of a lot more money. And I will say, as an employee, I am continually just astounded and feel so grateful for the benefits we have. We have incredibly generous benefits. In fact, I believe it was last, or two years ago, we had a new chief human resources officer Steven Rice come on board, and one of the first things he did that was incredible. They started a one-year parental leave policy full pay. Ken WhiteWow. Olympia TrumbowerMen and women. Ken WhiteWow. Olympia TrumbowerWe've had men and women both take that time off one full year because we truly believe that maternal and child health, particularly that mother bond with the child, is so important, and we need to walk the talk, and so for us, that's been quite a win. Ken WhiteYeah. Well, if you're going to attract talent, obviously, you have to pay for it. Olympia TrumbowerAbsolutely. Ken WhiteI don't really know where that whole myth or is it a myth. I don't know where it came from. Go nonprofit. You're not gonna get. You're not going to really make a great living. But there is certainly, and your foundation is one that that's just simply not the case. Olympia TrumbowerAbsolutely. And I think too, you know, just in the sheer opportunity and exposure to the travel alone. I mean, not many organizations or companies can give you that opportunity to go out and see these things and to be able to interact with people. I think that's a lot of where that currency is in terms of just the exposure that you get. Ken WhiteSo for those listening, whether they're working in nonprofit or whether they're in another field but who, who say, I like what you're doing. How do I get started? What do they do? What kind of advice do you have? Olympia TrumbowerYeah, so I'll say the first thing is this, you know, many people equate a nonprofit like ours, particularly one in health and development, to just people who work in health and development or education for that matter. We, in fact, have a very large team of finance people and lawyers and people that work in grants management. So again, I think I encourage people who work in the more operational fields to think about the foundation. If you're someone who's driven by a mission organization, we're a place that we love people to come in with those skills. And if you're interested in more of the program work as I have done myself. For us, it's really just trying to see where can you contribute. And by that, I mean, are there particular issue areas where you're an expert? If so, fantastic, we're interested in that. Or do you are you more of a generalist, and I would count myself as that just someone who has these skills? I'm a program manager, project manager. But I have an idea of everything that's happening in terms of these issues enough to be conversant in them and to interact with people. So if you have, you know, that desire to just expose yourself to this world, we love those people with that passion. And I think everything from looking at the website it's always up to date. The job site, we have a lot of networking events throughout the region. We have a wonderful Alumni Program now where we actually encourage Gates Foundation alumni who have since left the foundation to recruit on our behalf as well. Give us some new talent and people that you trust and then we are trying to work now with many universities. In fact, we have an internship program, graduate internship program with several universities across the country, and it's bringing in great talent as well. Ken WhiteYeah. What about education? Is there anything specific that someone should pursue? Olympia TrumbowerThat's a great question, so, by and large, the folks that recently are who are recent graduates with their bachelors they, you know, we certainly hire folks like that. We usually start around the administrative positions. Many of the roles that require more expertise generally come with a master's degree. Whether it's an MBA or otherwise particularly if you are more of an issue expert, you'll see a lot of Ph.D.s among our staff. And so it really depends on the issue area and also what level of position you're looking at. But I would say, you know, for us having both the degree in terms of that certification but also the track record of experience whether it's employed or volunteer, that's something we certainly look at. And of course, you know we have a series of interviews or we try and ask different questions to understand how your working style is. And if it's going to be a good fit for you. Ken WhiteWhat's ahead for you in the next six months or year? Olympia TrumbowerOh, my goodness. Good question. So you know my team right now we're going through some change in a good way. I think you know now that our policy advocacy division is thinking also about communications. For me, a lot of the thinking is how can I personally challenge myself and take some risks in my role. I'm mid-career; I'm almost ten years out of undergrad. I just received my Masters this year earlier this year. So for me, it's thinking, okay, I love what I do. I really value this organization, but I know that I can do more. And I know that I want to do more. So what does that next step look like and it's a wonderful place to grow. I'd like to continue growing within the organization. There's so many issues to work on. So for me, it's well, I've worked on toilets, I've worked on Ebola and communication, so now what. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Olympia Trumbower, program manager at the Gates Foundation, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, if you have a suggestion or comment pertaining to our podcast we'd love to hear from you. Please connect with us via email. Our address is podcast@wm.edu. Well, thanks to our guest this week, Olympia Trumbower, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Tim Murray](images/tim-murray-78-thumb.jpg)
![Leading in a Foreign Country](images/tim-murray-78-thumb.jpg)
Tim Murray
Episode 78: April 11, 2017
Leading in a Foreign Country
Communication is a critically important element of leadership. Even in small tightly-knit companies where everyone seems to be on the same page, it can be difficult to create a positive culture where quality communication is expected and practiced. Imagine being a CEO in a country and culture other than your own. Tim Murray knows all about that: Born, raised, and educated in the United States, he is CEO of Aluminium Bahrain—also known as Alba—and is one of the top aluminum producers in the world. Murray joins us today to discuss his leadership experience at Alba, and what it's like to lead in a country and culture other than your own.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Communication it's a critically important element of leadership. It's also one of the most challenging for CEOs, even in small, tightly-knit companies where everyone seems to be on the same page. It can be difficult to create a positive culture where quality communication is expected and practiced, and if communication wasn't tough enough. Imagine being a CEO in a country and in a culture other than your own. Tim Murray knows all about that. Born, raised, and educated in the United States, Murray is CEO of Aluminium Bahrain, also known as Alba. It's one of the top aluminum producers in the world. Well, great things have happened at Alba since Murray became CEO. The financial picture is good, the company's safety record is now excellent, and communication is consistent and a part of the culture. Murray joins us on the podcast today to discuss his leadership experience at Alba and what it's like to lead in a country and culture other than your own. Here's our conversation with Tim Murray CEO of Alba. Ken WhiteWell, Tim, thanks for joining us. Thanks for taking time, and welcome to William & Mary. It's great to have you and your team here for a couple of days. Tim MurrayAlways a pleasure to come to William & Mary. As you know, they're a big partner with us. We have people we've sponsored, we've got people we've hired, we've had interns, so it's always a pleasure to come to William & Mary and see our actually we had the chance to see our students our Alba students in action, and you know they're doing very well, and the ones that have come back where we're getting our payback on them. Ken WhiteAnd that's always it's always great to hear. And it's wonderful to have you as a part of our community. You have a really unique position. You're an American, not only working in another country. You're leading an organization in another country. How did you end up first off to start off as CEO at Alba? Tim MurraySo it's a long story, but to keep it short. So I came to Alba in 2007 as the General Manager of Finance. So my background is accounting. I'm a CPA MBA, so I'm more of a financial person. I was my prior company. I was the VP/CFO. It was a company that made airbag systems, and I'd been there ten years, and I was pretty much fed up with automotive, and anybody who's worked in the automotive industry understands the pressures and the stress. It's a great training ground, but it wears on you. So this opportunity, you know, happened, and we had the chance my family and I go to Bahrain. We were at a good age in my life. I was 36, my kids were 6 and 3, so we had never lived overseas. I mean, I had traveled a lot. My wife had not been out of the U.S., but it was an opportunity. And my wife, even though she hadn't been out of the U.S. She had spent a lot of time traveling within the U.S. Her dad was a sales manager with 3M, so she was all over the country. So it was, you know was, an opportunity, so I went there as the GM of finance. That was in 2007 when the world was good. Then the world went south the following year, and so that actually created a lot of opportunities for me because we did a lot of restructuring. We brought in McKinsey. We had McKinsey in for a year and did really change the management structure. We used to have 12 executives. We went to five executives. And so, during that time, I had the chance to be. I was CFO. I was chief marketing officer. I was chief purchasing officer. So I got to do a lot of functions in between as we restructured. So that created a lot of opportunity. And then in 2012, I'd been there roughly five years I was promoted to CEO. So it was the last job I hadn't done, so they gave me the chance. Ken WhiteYeah, there you go. But this isn't a move to Illinois. I mean, this is Bahrain, very different. No hesitation to go? Tim MurrayOh no, there was big hesitation, so yeah, we were living in Knoxville, Tennessee. At the time, both my kids were born in Knoxville. We had been there for seven years, and if you've been to Knoxville in Tennessee, it's a very nice part of the country, so no, there was huge hesitation. My wife, you know, at first, when I first did the first couple of interviews for the job, she was very much nothing will happen. One, you don't have any experience in aluminum, you know why would they pick an American and anyway so. But we went through the process, and actually, when I did the final, I flew to London for the final round of interviews then. I think she got a little bit nervous and then, but ultimately we got the job, but you know, but I give her credit, she was open to it. She knew I was kind of unhappy in my current job, and she was like, You know, you know, she did research on it, and you know, I mean, okay, it is the Middle East, and unfortunately, our perception of the Middle East is wrong and we here we think it's terrorists and crazy people and it's unsafe where it's 100 percent the opposite. And it's actually probably the most welcoming place I've ever lived. So it was a chance. It was something different. It was much bigger company my current company at the time was 250 million in sales. Alba is about 2 billion in sales, so, so in terms of looking at it from a career point of view, okay, it was moving a much bigger company. So I kind of thought in terms of experience, it's overseas, different industry. Got me out automotive, you know so, so we took the leap of faith. I mean, it was a leap of faith, and you know, and I can tell you the first year was very, very difficult transition. After a year we were both, my wife and I were second guessing ourselves because it was very bureaucratic company, so in terms of the company coming from an automotive lean mean, you know, very fast-paced environment to it was basically a state-run entity huge company. You know Alba is about 3,000 people. It's 10 percent of the GDP of the country. So it's like an institution in the country, so it's very different. And so it's very bureaucratic and very structured, and it was almost, you know, it almost strangled you. So after a year, I was kind of very frustrated, but then the crisis happened, and then we brought in McKinsey and did a lot of restructuring. And so actually my skills which were not being used then were probably overused, so you know being somebody who was in automotive, so I had some experience in marketing I had some experience in purchasing so they're like alright you're the only one here, so you do it. Ken WhiteYeah. Tim MurrayAnd so you know, you know, one thing led to another, so so it was, but no, there was huge hesitation, but my kids were young. They were 6 and 3, as it turned out. I think it was a great experience for them. I mean, they spent eight years there, you know, in terms of their experience and what they saw and what they did. You know most Americans will never do. Ken WhiteSure. Tim MurrayYou know, they have many international friends, and you know, in terms of their experience, it's I think it was great for them, and you know, I think you know, in retrospect it was it turned out to be a great decision, but you know it was a big leap of faith at the time. Ken WhiteSo you are known when we talk to your senior leadership team talk to people at Alba, you're all about communication and culture. How did you even approach that because what you're doing today is very different than what the company was like when you first started. So what were some of your culture slash communication goals when you first got there? Tim MurrayWhen I first got there again, okay, I was in the finance manager position, so it was very different role, so it was more, I think more, just I wanted to fit in and adapt. I mean, I didn't come in as like this great leader and communicator and rallying people. I mean, I was finance manager, so I was kind of, you know, in the admin area, but where I came from, I was heavily involved in the operations going into the plant where I worked before was there was it was an admin office, but also we had a manufacturing plant in Knoxville we had about 750 people. So you know it was you were very much into the plant environment. It wasn't a corporate environment. So when I came to Alba, I actually spent a lot of time in the plant, which was very unusual. Actually have a, I had one of the former senior executives tell me maybe the second or third week I was there, you know, he said what are you going into the plant for. He said you're the finance guy. You're not supposed to go into the plant. Ken WhiteYeah. Tim MurrayAnd, like he said, it sort of kiddingly but not kiddingly. Ken WhiteYeah. Tim MurrayAnd I said no, I said I want to learn about the operation, and then it didn't stop me, but that was the mentality of, you know, you're an admin guy. You don't put on the blue uniform and go into the plant, and which again, I didn't listen to the guy. Ken WhiteBut how did the people in the plant react? Tim MurrayBut actually, the people in the plant, given the nature and the culture of Bahrain, which is extremely welcoming, everybody is very friendly. They were more curious, and actually, if you ask people today when they look back on that when I did it and where I am today, they're like now I understand why you did it. But at the time, again, they were more curious because, you know, I was also curious. I wanted to learn the operation, but they were like, again, why are you here? You're the finance manager. You're not supposed to be in the plant, but they happily showed me everything because they're very proud of what they do. Alba's been around for 40 years, so if you look at the generations that have been there, I mean it's like you know their sons and daughters and husbands and wives, everybody it's very integrated in terms of the culture, so no they were very open to show me and you know more surprised again. Why are you here? But hey, you're here, happy to show you. Ken WhiteIs that how you learn? Just literally by talking and listening. Tim MurrayYup. If you look Alba, it's a. It's a huge facility. It's 3 square miles, so it's a very big facility, but everything is there. So we have one in terms of production is there and then we have sales offices in Atlanta, Zurich, Hong Kong, and then obviously in the Middle East is out of Bahrain. So so, you can learn everything you know from start to finish from the basically the port where the material comes in and then how it's manufactured, how it's transformed, how it's put in the finished product, how it goes to our customers. Fifty percent of our product goes downstream to our customers in Bahrain. So you can actually go see how it's transformed. You know, we sell to extruders or cabling guys or wheel guys or a rolling mill, so you actually can see the whole value chain, and actually, I did that. I mean, I went and visited all the customers, and they took me on tour their operation, and again they were happy to do it. They also asked why are you here. You know nobody ever comes here. Ken WhiteSure. Tim MurrayBut they were it was very different. But the ability to do it was there if you wanted to take the initiative. Ken WhiteHow did you go about not offending people, and when? We when we interact with new cultures, we always make a mistake. What was that like for you? Tim MurrayThe for Alba, I mean, if you look at Bahrain, the people are very they're very welcoming, very accepting. So there wasn't too many instances like that, but it does happen. And I can tell you one of the first things I did as American, okay? We tend to be a bit more probably outgoing than they would be in terms of introducing yourself and handshakes. Handshakes is a very interesting thing in the Middle East. Okay, okay, when you for the men, typically the handshakes are very soft, and where we, as Americans we, have the very firm grip, and we meet you and look you in the eye, and a firm grip is actually considered aggressive in their culture. So that's one thing you had to dial back a little bit and then also for ladies. Ladies, you let them extend their hand to you. Some want to shake hands some do not. And so it was me. I was always put my hand first, and there was some ladies who look at me like no, I don't shake hands. Most actually do, but there are some so, so now you know if you see a lady, you just kind of you let them extend their hand to you, so and again it should be a soft handshake, so very thing. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurrayBut in terms of the whoopsies and doing things you know culturally wrong, it does happen. I mean to me, for the most part, when it does happen one, you just you say you're sorry I didn't know, and really they're very forgiving. They're not, you know, they're very adapting to you that they know you're, you know, you're not from this culture, so it's okay, you know. Ken WhiteWhat about language? Tim MurrayThe language it's interesting. In Bahrain, everybody speaks English even though Arabic is the native tongue, and actually, English is the language of business, so everything is done in English, so you don't have to learn the language. I learned the language about halfway through my time there, so I'm very basic in Arabic, but it's a very hard language if compared it to Spanish. I took Latin, Spanish, and some of the romance languages, but Arabic is very different so. But actually, the main reason I did it when I took over for CEO I wanted to be able to communicate with the workers at the lower level. So because we had a lot of issues on safety and so the safety to drive the message on safety, you have to go to the shop floor and just to be able to the basics. Again they speak English, but their English is not nearly as good as maybe the higher level so. So and you taking the time because most people do not take the time to learn the language. One, it's a very hard language. Everybody speaks English. So most people don't bother. Typical ex-pats don't bother. So I think as a sign of respect. Okay, the big American, I'm a very tall guy. I'm about six foot five. So you know he came to one, he's coming down to the shop floor. He speaks some basic Arabic. He's learning my name and ask me how my family is. I can tell you it goes a long way in terms of delivering a message. So I think it was one thing I would have done it sooner. I'm glad I did it. But in terms of knowing, wherever you go as an ex-pat, you should take the time to try to learn even if you don't have to. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurrayAnd then and then then, you get into the nuances of it, and you really see once you speak it like you actually see how much they actually do speak it. When you're only speaking English, you only hear the English but actually, most of the conversations they do use Arabic as their main language. You just don't hear it. Ken WhiteSure. Tim MurraySo when you speak it, then you understand it. And also, they're very careful what they say around me. Now they can't say things in front of me, which not that they do it all the time, but sometimes they flip in and out to say things, and now they don't do that. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Tim Murray, CEO of Alba, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization reach your goals with a leadership development program specifically designed for your organization and delivered by our world-class business school faculty. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Tim Murray, CEO of Alba. Ken WhiteBut you know what you're just saying going to the floor, knowing people's names, saying hello. That works no matter where you're leading, right? Tim MurrayYeah. Ken WhiteSo how did you? Your safety record has just skyrocketed. That was a huge thing that initiative occurred under you. How did you do that? How did you communicate that in a different culture like that? Tim MurrayAlthough it was okay our safety, so we had very bad safety performance of the three years prior to me becoming CEO. We had five fatalities. So we were having a fatality almost every six months. I can tell you if you ever see a fatality, it's a gruesome thing. It's horrifying thing. I mean, I've seen people's, you know, one of our fatalities, a guy was cut in half. We had another guy who was crushed by a crane. You know, and this happens in your plant. You're in the office, and you get a phone call. There's a fatality, and everyone you know is we because I was in the management team. We go to see the fatality, and you see a dead body laying there, and you're like, you know, like to me, it's like this is not normal. This is somebody died. This is somebody's father, wife, husband, you know, and it's, and it's very, very painful. You know, I remember two weeks before I became CEO, we had our fifth fatality. And so as, coming in as CEO, it was like, for sure, my number one priority. And okay, I'm a finance guy, so I'm not a operations guy. And you know how am I going to, you know, change this and what am I going to do and really the main thing I did was go to the shop floor. I mean, so at the time, we had consultants in to help us with safety, and then they were good, but they were more like auditors, but as with consultants, anywhere you go, you rely on the consultants. And so we had a big debate within the management team and about, you know, do we keep them. Do we not keep them and so my decision was the second day I was CEO, I terminated the consultants, and I told them to leave, and I said we're taking over safety now we are responsible, so I put the monkey on everybody's back. There is no consultant here. We're in charge. Okay, in retrospect, that was probably a very risky thing to do being the finance guy, and you're getting rid of the safety consultants. You just had a fatality. What are you doing? And if we had another fatality, I probably would've been blamed. But you had to do something drastic. We were at the point of what is going on. Ken WhiteYeah. Tim MurrayThis is the fifth fatality, and you're in Bahrain. It's a very small place. I remember that fatality right after it happened. I was at a dinner party in Bahrain, you know, personal, and this is mostly with ex-pats. And I walked into the party, and one of the guys, yeah, I heard another person died in Alba. Ken WhiteWow. Tim MurrayLike that's how fast, same day, how fast the word spreads in Bahrain, and it's like so culturally it's not that it's acceptable anywhere, but this is in Bahrain it's a very small culture, and these were nationals that were most of them. There was, I think, one contractor. The other four were Bahrainis. You know, really was a shock to the society, and you know we're in the newspaper, and Alba has fatalities and what's going on in the big company and investigation, and you know, so it was bad. So but the main thing my main what I did was we started doing campaigns in the plant we changed. We used to have safety principles we used to have eight safety principles which were a bit complicated. The consultants gave them to us. So I changed those. We have three now. They're very simple. We have ownership of safety is everyone's responsibility, working safely is a condition of employment, all workplace injuries, and illnesses are preventable. Those are our three principles. And every person in the plant, every contractor in the plant, should be able to give you those in their language because we have multiple languages. Ken WhiteSure. Tim MurrayWe posted them all over the plant. We posted them in six languages because we have multiple languages and cultures in our plants. But that simple message probably took 18 months to drill into 3000 people. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurrayIn campaigns and activities and posters and signs and questioning and you know buy-in and really, but the main thing was the direct communication of particularly from the top because we have a lot of layers in Alba, so the layers from myself to the shop floor there's seven layers. So when you deliver messages and if I deliver it through the layers Ken WhiteSure. Tim Murrayobviously, it will change and be twisted and maybe not delivered. And so my view, my former CEO had a philosophy called CEO to the worker communications. So I took I copied this. He said it was okay. And really, it was probably one of the key things in changing things is that direct communication to the workers. And we're heavy shop floor of the 3000 2000 are operators. So they're, you know, unskilled manual labor, so when you look at, you know, driving the message to them versus maybe the middle management is very different. Different mentality, different education level, different skill set, and so. But when the top guy talks, and if he's doing it direct, it's a big impact because they're the culture is, you know, very driven that you know the head guys, the boss, you know, and okay, and this is can be good or bad. Ken WhiteYeah. Tim MurrayBut in the case of trying to do something like a very big change management initiative, you can do it. One guy can really flip it upside down. Ken WhiteAnd you instituted town halls. That was something that how did that progress. Tim MurrayYeah, so we are now we this is our fourth year of doing town halls back to the direct communication. Okay. The first year we did it. I can tell you there was many questions on why, again, why is the CEO talking to the workers, why is he leaving his office. I remember the union people were what is this? Is this something to attack us, and you know they don't, you know, we're the ones who talk to the workers, not the management because we are very big unions in Bahrain? And I said no I said I'm going to be a one-hour meeting. I give an update of our performance and my expectations for the year, and in the first year, you know it was, we've got maybe 40 to 50 percent attendance of the employees. So and it was very okay, why are we here but we're here because we said we have to be here. And you know, and then they kind of liked it. And then the second year was a bit better. And each year a little bit better. Now we've incorporated some videos, and we do a video of the year of all the activities we did. We do some prizes. We do some giveaways. We do some. You know, you know, raffles and stuff. So we make it a bit fun now, more than probably in the beginning. So now people go. So last year we finished the one we did 88 percent of the people attended of the three thousand which was good. We also invited our customers, our suppliers, and some of the officials in Bahrain because it's all public information that I give. But that was a big again, going back to the layers. You know, I cut through the seven layers, and so it's me, you know, one guy speaking to the 3000, and this is how we. This is how we performed, good or bad. This is my view of the market, and this is what you need to do. And so everybody walks out with the same message in terms of alignment. So now I think it really has momentum. But you know it took four year, four years of prodding and why and you know it's not like you just say, hey, we do town halls, and everything's wonderful. Ken WhiteOf course. Tim MurrayIt's not like that, particularly in a culture where it's not common. I think we're the only ones who do it in Bahrain. It's not. It is not. It's just more of an American thing. I think in terms of doing the town halls, because you open yourself up at the end, there's a Q and A. I answer any questions, so and I tell you, I get some strange questions, some crazy questions, some aggressive questions, and I think in most cases they are that's not the culture that you know the head person would be challenged like that. And you know, so when you do it, you know you're opening yourself up. So you have to you know if you want to get the buy-in. That's part of the deal. Ken WhiteAny advice for someone who's who has an opportunity to lead in a different culture from their own? Tim MurrayOh, advice. I would say the biggest thing is okay one be respectful, and you need to listen and understand. Okay, this goes with any leadership position. But I think when you're in a new culture, maybe it's a bit more because there are cultural nuances that are different and messages on how you want to deliver them. What's the appropriate way? How do you push? How do you challenge? But I think you know, in general, you know, my experience around the world, I've worked everywhere around the world, you know, people, in general, are good people they want to do their jobs, they want to work, you know, they want to be treated with respect. I can tell you a smile and a thank you, and knowing their name goes a very long way. You know in Alba we have 3000 people and so when you try, and me know the names of the workers. Okay, I don't know all the names, but I can tell you I if I've met you, I know your name. I have a very good memory. And actually, most people I do my town halls, and I call on people, or I'll question people I'm calling on them by name, and I know most people are very shocked. How does he know this guy's an operator or he works in castiles? Why does he know his name? Because I go around the plant. So if I've met you, I know your name okay after I met everybody but just knowing their names is a huge, huge sign of respect. Particularly when the head guy calls you by name, it's a big big deal there, I can tell you. Ken WhiteAnd if someone has an opportunity to do this lead elsewhere, do you recommend it? Tim MurrayI would recommend it. It's not for everybody. It was, as I told you in the beginning, the first year or so, the transition if you can make it through that bumpy period, particularly when you're with the family. That's the key. Your family has to be happy. I mean, if your family's not happy, it's not going to work. So you've got to get the buy-in of your spouse as well as you know your kids depending on their age. My kids age was good, so and like if you were moving, teenagers probably would be a bit different and harder. But no, I think it's a great opportunity it, really. I mean, I've been there for ten years now, so my appreciation of the world. I think my view of the world is very different, and I think in a good way. And so the perspectives I bring and even when I come back to the states in a visit, you know, with family and doing things, you know, I'm different. I'm very different. I mean, I'm out of touch with a lot of things, and they start talking about things I'm not sure what they're talking about. I find most people don't really want to talk about what I do. They don't really care that I'm overseas. Maybe they're intimidated. Maybe they're jealous, maybe they don't care. I don't know. So it is harder to reacclimate. This is, you know, but I think in terms of the experience I had and what I know and who I know, I mean, it was by far, you know, the pros outweigh the costs. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Tim Murray, CEO of Alba. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization meet and exceed your goals with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. And finally, if you have a suggestion or comment pertaining to our podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Please connect with us via email. Our address is podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Tim Murray, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Rhian Horgan](images/rhian-horgan-77-thumb.jpg)
![Changing Financial Wellness in Retirement](images/rhian-horgan-77-thumb.jpg)
Rhian Horgan
Episode 77: April 5, 2017
Changing Financial Wellness in Retirement
Being the founder and CEO of a new venture is the goal of many professionals. In fact, 1 in 4 of today's MBA students plan to start a business at some point. Some entrepreneurs manage to start companies that not only fill a need but also align with their personal goals and interests. After 17 years with JP Morgan advising families on their investment portfolio, Rhian Horgan decided to focus on her passions of technology, health, and wealth and started Kindur, an innovative startup that reimagines financial wellness during retirement. She joins us today to discuss her startup, how it began, and how it intends to change the way retirees manage their money.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening, starting a company. Being the founder and CEO of a new venture is the goal for many professionals. In fact, one in four of the country's current MBA students plans to start a business at some point. Well, some entrepreneurs manage to start companies that not only fill a need but also align with their personal goals and interests. That's what happened to Rhian Horgan after a successful 17-year career with JP Morgan advising families on their investment portfolios. Horgan decided to focus on her passions of technology, health, and wealth and start Kindur, an innovative startup that reimagines financial wellness during retirement. Horgan visited William & Mary recently for the Women's Leadership Summit and Stock Pitch Competition. During a break, she sat down with us to discuss her new startup, how it began, and how it intends to change the way retirees manage their money. Here's our conversation with Rhian Horgan, founder, and CEO of Kindur. Ken WhiteWelcome back to William & Mary. Nice to have you here. Rhian HorganThanks so much, Ken. It's great to be here for the weekend. Ken WhiteAnd you were here last year. You were at the inaugural, so we got you back. So you must have had a good experience. Rhian HorganYeah, I know, and it'll be interesting. We've got some return stock, picking teams. That's interesting to see how they've evolved over the course of the last 12 months. Ken WhiteYeah. What's the general feel when you're meeting so many young women, really motivated, really bright? What you sort of take away as you're walking around the halls. Rhian HorganWell, first, I'm glad I got a job 20 years ago because I don't think I could compete with these women today. They're exceptionally bright, much more, I think, prepared for the real world than I was. But a real curiosity and eagerness to learn, and you know the purpose of today's event is all around the first piece is around financial markets and stock picking competition so exciting to hear them really trying to roll up their sleeves and understand companies and also to see the companies they pick. So sometimes it's out of a personal passion, and you kind of get a sense of, well, you know, these are the types of companies that actually the millennial generation are really interested in. Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganBut we've had some good stalwarts like Honeywell and others that were pitched today too. Ken WhiteYeah great. It is interesting you hear a lot of criticism about millennials, and anyone who's criticizing, I just say come on over here and hang out for a day and see what you see. Rhian HorganIt's pretty impressive, and it's been great because it's a, you know, the group that's here today is from, I guess, probably about 15 different schools. And when you see that, what you also see is that like it's, you know, it's a grueling process to get into college, but you know these women all are doing well wherever they've landed, and they're able to kind of pursue different passions along the way which is great. Ken WhiteYeah. And speaking of that and pursuing passions, let's talk about your career you. Did you start with JP Morgan right out of school? Rhian HorganI did. I interned at JP Morgan between my junior and senior year at William & Mary. Interned in New York City. I was recounting to one student yesterday that my mom had my parents live in Colorado. My mom had been telling me for a while how dangerous Washington, D.C. was because she assumed that's where I was going to go live. And all of a sudden, I got a job offer in New York, and it was too late to change anything. So yes, I started there, and then I spent the next 17 years at JP Morgan, half the time in London half in New York. Ken WhiteAnd what did you do there? Rhian HorganI was predominantly in the private bank and always was in a kind of a product, and sales role with a real focus on taking what I would say was more complex investments and really helping design them to make sure that they actually solve the problems that our customers had. But I loved that business because it was very human. We were dealing with families who had either been built companies and had charitable endeavors, and you could see how the impacts the impact of the decisions you were making in their investment portfolio actually shaped in what they did outside of their investment portfolio also. Ken WhiteYeah, and then you were there a long time, 17 years. Rhian HorganIt was it went by fast. Ken WhiteYeah, and then and now, you've become a CEO, and this is your startup. Rhian HorganYes, I started. I left JP Morgan a little bit under a year ago because I got inspired by what I was seeing in financial technology. I started working with a number of financial technology companies in my last two years at JP Morgan was really inspired, in particular, with how they were making investments more accessible for investors. I had always thought about technology as that kind of cost center behind the scenes but started to learn how design, user interfaces could really help coach people through more complex decisions while sectors like retail, etc., had been innovated on a long time ago. Financial services is still catching up. Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganSo kind of exciting to see how that space will change, and I also took a view that I have a two-year-old and a four-year-old. I don't know how they're going to bank in the future, but I know it's not going to be the same as how I transact with financial services. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Rhian HorganAnd so, to be able to learn about how it evolves seems like a really exciting adventure. Ken WhiteYeah, and the name Kindur where'd it come from? Rhian HorganWell, are our focus is on families and retirement. So think about kin, family, and really creating a durable retirement for our customers. Ken WhiteNice. So tell us about the company. What are you doing? Rhian HorganSo I was inspired to build this company actually from several conversations with my parents as they were entering into retirement, and I was I have to say I was, on one hand, really amazed with how prudent my father had been saving for retirement. On the other hand, I was very surprised by the complexity of his retirement. He had worked for six different hospitals, which we all think about millennials as having a lot of jobs. The average baby boomer today post who's gone to college. Post-aged at 25 has had six different jobs, so they probably have six different retirement accounts. Ken WhiteYup. Rhian HorganHe had a couple different insurance contracts. He had a couple different bank accounts. He had his probably Schwab account. All of a sudden, there were ten different accounts that he was managing to keep track of it in his head. But when I started digging and asking him questions about his equity exposure or another kind of market, really trying to suss out his risk tolerance, I realized that it was very difficult to pull all that information together, and I started thinking about well the tools that I'm using for my retirement or my savings I use Mint to manage my budget, I use betterment for my 401K and I realized that a lot of these tools were really focused on what I would call as wealth accumulation. Helping people get on the path to financial wellness early in life. Helping them learn how to save, how to smartly and prudently take out that first mortgage, how to pay for their kid's college tuition, and to prepare for retirement. But the reality is in the U.S., 83 percent of the capital is controlled by people that are over the age of 50, and actually, the decisions you have to make when you start spending down are very different from the decisions you make as your accumulating wealth. And so I realized with my dad, there was two things. One was that I couldn't send them to the providers I was using because they were targeted towards a younger customer. The second thing I realized was that we, as a family needed a tool that we could communicate through, and we had just gone through my both. My parent mothers had passed away recently, and my parents had been the secondary caregiver. Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganAnd so I had seen kind of this impact also as parents age Ken WhiteYes. Rhian Horganhow children get pulled into lots of different aspects, and again when you think about technology, there's a great ability to think about how we can simplify communication organization, and that was really the root of Kindur was solve for my parents and selfishly solve for me knowing that I don't live next to my parents. But at some point would probably need to be involved in helping them with some of their financial affairs. Ken WhiteAnd wow, does that affect a lot of people. Rhian HorganIt does, it does. It's, again, 83 percent of the money is held by people over the age of 50. 40 to 50 percent of Americans we're kind of above the age of 40 are acting as caregivers for their family members, and that's, you know, it's kind of given all the discussion in Washington the last couple of days the impact of health on wealth actually in retirement is pretty significant. But there is still a view. I think in the market that only millennials know how to use technology. So as I say, my customer is not the Snapchat Generation. Ken WhiteRight. Rhian HorganBut they were on the first computers. They used the first iPod. They used the first iPhone and the first iPad, like they have shown an ability to evolve with technology. We just need to create a solution that actually solve their problems. Ken WhiteYeah. So you use the term financial wellness. What is that? How do you define that? Rhian HorganSo it's interesting. I think it evolves over time as far as where you are in your own life. One of the big learnings I had when we went out to start doing our customer research last fall was that in retirement, health and wealth are actually really linked. So when we talk about financial wellness, it's actually in retirement. It's really you think about, for example, the cost of a nursing home. Eighty thousand dollars a year that's more than double what one year for most one year's tuition at a university. Ken WhiteOh yeah. Rhian HorganIt's probably along the lines of what most people put down, or many people put down for a down payment for a house. Pretty significant, but when you look at the financial planning community, most financial planning community doesn't include any long-term care estimates and any of their projections. But when you talk to retirees, what they'll tell you over and over again is if their health care is a huge portion they're ongoing and then that, let's call it, end of life is a huge financial cost for them. And so in retirement, financial wellness is actually truly the linkage of health and wealth, and are you, you know, are you financially prepared for what the financial costs of health care will be and what your options are? You know, earlier in life, it might be getting that right balance between making sure that you're not overspending. I think what was intriguing to me is that I maybe I should I don't think every day about my health impacting my finances. Ken WhiteRight, right. Rhian HorganBut I think if you talk to anyone above the age of 65, that will come up in the conversation. Ken WhiteWell, it and my mother is 93. So talk about affecting your retirement, right? And my father died when he was in his 70s. Who expected that? So and having talked to a lot of other families, in some instances, the money runs out, and I'm sure you've seen that. Rhian HorganYeah, I mean, look, that is like the crux of the problem we're trying to solve, which is maybe your mother, either through her own or through your dad, has access to a pension but as a generation that had Social Security and had pensions they had income for life. Ken WhiteYes. Rhian HorganAnd if you were really lucky, not only did you have income for life, that was a benefit for your spouse, and you also had inflation protection. Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganIn this 401K generation, not only have we pushed the responsibility of saving to the individual, but once you retire, you have your nest egg. Let's say you've been a really prudent saver. You've put away a million dollars for retirement. Now the big question is how much can I spend. Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganWell, the most aside from knowing your spending habits, the most important variable and to answer that question, is, well, how long do you plan to live? Well, I don't know. I really don't know. Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganI mean, who, who do you know that with conviction can tell you exactly how long they're going to live? Ken WhiteNo. Rhian HorganAnd so the irony is that in the pension world, we shifted this kind of longevity or mortality risk back to an institution. But with the innovation of the 401K, we've shifted all of that to the individual. Ken WhiteYes. Rhian HorganSo what we're really focusing on in Kindur actually in the early days is building our retirement paycheck, which would shift back that longevity risk back to an institution and allow a retiree to take this, you know, 401K they've been saving and swap it into a paycheck that would be paid out for life. So that you live to 70, you live to 90, you live to 100, you know that you've got peace of mind in retirement because there will always be cash that's being paid on a monthly basis. Ken WhiteInteresting. And how do you do that? Rhian HorganThere is a lot of science behind the scenes, but I think if you go back to the basics of the insurance industry, it's really about how do you pull a group of people together and think about that that group's mortality risk, their longevity as in a totality and we're what we're really working on is you know I think the insurance industry rightly or wrongly has gotten a bit of a rap for being fairly opaque, fairly expensive, hard to understand, but the core of what the insurance industry does which is take away that mortality risk and give you a predictable paycheck actually is what most people want. Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganSo what we're really focused on is how do you unbundle and get back to the roots of what it was supposed to do without maybe all the bells and whistles that have been added on over time. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Rhian Horgan, founder, and CEO of Kindur, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with a leadership development program specifically designed for your organization and delivered by our world-class business school faculty. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Rhian Horgan, founder, and CEO of Kindur. Ken WhiteSo the sons, the daughters, the caregivers how do they benefit? What role do they play other than, I think, the obvious knowing what mom or dad has? Rhian HorganSo it's an interesting evolution, and I think part of this is just based on family dynamics, and part of this is based on events that are happening in life. You know, when we did our research, we found that people that were entering into retirement, the person they really wanted to share their financial information with and get on the same page with, typically their spouse or partner. Talking to their children still felt a little too early. They're like. I'm 60. I'm going out and playing a round of golf tomorrow. I don't need to be telling my 30-year-old kids don't even have a full-time job yet. Why should I be filling them in on all my finances? Ken WhiteOr is living at home? Rhian HorganYeah, exactly. I have not gotten them off the payroll yet. Ken WhiteYeah, yeah. Rhian HorganSo that felt like it was too early interesting. On the other end, you get the scenario where something dramatic has happened, and the adult child, typically in their 40s and 50s, is brought in because mom has fallen, dad passed away. Typically the men are dying first. Ken WhiteSure. Rhian HorganAnd all of a sudden, you know, the child is trying to figure out, you know, what our mom and dad's health care options do they have enough money to spend on X, Y, and Z. And there is this well, I would say almost like a fire sale which is people are trying to figure out what do Mom and Dad have. And by the way, probably not surprisingly, you know it's typically it's either in mom or dad's head, or there might be a magic folder somewhere or and I learned when I went out to Kansas people keep it in their gun box, but there is this like in series of paperwork that family members haven't typically shared. And then there becomes this emergency situation, and I think what's scary to me about that is that emergency situation typically then requires fair. You know, I would say probably the least effective decisions being made quickly. And so you know, one of the questions for us is, we know this baton passing that happened during retirement. It typically happens between spouses. Maybe there's that maybe there's getting everyone on the same page at retirement, then one spouse dies or gets ill, the baton passes, then the children get involved with another baton passing. How do you do that in a way that preserves the independence of the retiree yet at the same time gets them the support they need? I think the you mentioned your mom being 93. So we have this in the last 60-70 years. Americans are living about ten years longer than they used to. Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganAmazing outcome of Public Health. The challenge, though, is if you look at the statistics around dementia as people age, you know the really elderly population has pretty high frequencies of dementia. And so we have this aging population who are living on their own who are drawing down sums of money every month, and all of a sudden they're losing their cognitive abilities, and that I think it worries their children. But in a DIY world of manage your own money, that actually becomes much harder as someone's cognitive abilities decline. Ken WhiteNo question. Rhian HorganWhen you have that pension, that paycheck coming in, you knew you knew the money was coming in. But what if mom is starting to lose some of her capabilities and doesn't understand the financial decisions that she's making? Ken WhiteRight, and what I've experienced is is at least in our little world, the older one gets decisions become really difficult to make something that you and I wouldn't even think twice about becomes there's a lot of anxiety. Rhian HorganWell, I think I think about do my own taxes. So I've kind of gotten to the rhythm of it now, but when I hit 65, there's gonna be a whole new set of paperwork I gotta fill out because there's a whole bunch of new stuff that starts happening when I had 70 I've gotta do all the minimum distribution requirement calculations for my 401K. So there's actually in the financial world a lot of new stuff that retirees have to figure out. Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganAnd it might be that your mom or dad typically have split decision-making. Maybe one of one is not doing the finances and is doing something else in the family, so they haven't been involved in finances for 40 or 50 years. Maybe they pay the bills, or they know much they can spend, but they haven't really been involved. That's a lot of catch-up to do. I'm intrigued when we think about the baton passing that it seems like the traditional financial advisory community hasn't quite figured out how to talk to families. So 80 percent of women move their financial up change financial advisors when their spouse dies. Women, on average, live for about nine or ten years after their spouse. Two-thirds of kids move the money. If they inherit money, they move it away from the financial adviser that advised their parents. It says to me that we're not, as a financial services community, actually really thinking about the family. We're thinking about that one person who we're talking to. But it's actually a family unit that is ultimately making the decisions. Ken WhiteAnd all kinds of dynamics there. Rhian HorganYeah. Ken WhiteWe don't live in the same neighborhood anymore. The whole the whole the whole thing. Yeah absolutely. So what do you like about being an entrepreneur? Being a CEO. Rhian HorganYeah. It's been a wild ride. What I love is, frankly, how much I'm learning every day. I hope to inspire my children. I was saying to someone earlier that I have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. I know that how they're going to interface with financial services is different to me, and I'm not saying whether they're going to buy stocks versus bonds. They may never use cash and so I could either be that person told them what banking used to be like, or I can bring my kids. My son, who's 4, is like obsessed with Legos. He's obsessed with playing class right now, and his sister is learning all of it along the way. Like if I could have them in my office to teach them how to code like, hopefully, I'll be pretty cool, mom, right? Ken WhiteYeah. Rhian HorganAnd also would be part of how this industry is evolving, and so I think that for me is fascinating to be part of. I think when you when you get in the mindset of building something new, you also start seeing problems that are out there and thinking of there's always a way you can solve something. I think I've been really inspired by the different townspeople I'm meeting right now. So I don't have a development background. I don't have a design background, and I'm meeting all these really inspiring people who are different types of projects are really focused on how do you create. How do you solve problems and do it in a way that is really easy for the customer? And that's super exciting. Ken WhiteYeah. Was it, I assume, extremely frightening to take on the role as well as exciting? Rhian HorganYeah, I think. Look, I went into this knowing that there was gonna be a long ride. So my husband and I said, look, we've got kind of we need to make some changes to how many ubers I take and how many times a week we go out to eat. So we need to be like maybe a little more fiscally conservative, but we have like a five-year runway which is I can pursue this. And then, after five years, we've got to really re-evaluate. And so I think I had enough of a safety net to be able to take this risk. Give myself the runway to try to make it successful. I think what's been probably challenging but exciting for me is I never used to be the type of person would walk into a room of people and feel comfortable just introducing myself, and you just have to. When you're starting your own business, no shame you network. You ask for favors, and I've been really pleasantly but surprised by how open everyone has been to helping me. And now after a year at it, I'm starting to be able to give back, which is really great. So I'm starting finding another group of people who are now starting their own businesses, and I've kind of been at it for a year, so I can say, oh here's a great designer or here's a great web developer, or here is someone who's really good about thinking about this and that's really fun now to be able to give back to the community that gave so much to me. Ken WhiteFor someone who had your background been with a company or in an industry for a long time but just has an entrepreneurial itch. They've got to scratch. What kind of advice do you have for them. Rhian HorganI think it's good to chit chat with people who've made the transition already. And so I actually went out and talked with a number of people who used to work at JP Morgan actually typically were a lot younger than me. They were analysts and associates that have worked for JP Morgan, gone to business school, and then gone into entrepreneurial activities. So to kind of connect with them and really understand how the skillset transitioned finding a mentor or someone who believes in you, I found early on a venture capitalist firm that really valued the domain expertise that I brought to the table and have been real champions of me since the beginning. And so knowing that I had these really smart investors who valued me gave me the confidence to get out there and then I did a little bit of homework. I took a bunch of courses on web development on, APIs on digital marketing from a company called General Assembly and just tried to get myself try to lose a little bit of the banking lingo and learn a bit of the tech lingo so that I could really make sure that I understood how this world might interface with me. Ken WhiteAnd then advice for those who are either approaching retirement age or sons and daughters and family who have someone is leading to that position in their life what kind of advice do you have for them? Rhian HorganIt can very very easily become overwhelming. And that's our goal is how to make the overwhelming feel less overwhelming. I say probably my very first piece of advice is really around Social Security today, and I would say, if possible, delay the Social Security is an amazing paycheck for life. Inflation protection but you get you your Social Security paycheck is 50 to 60 percent higher if you take it at the age of 70 versus taking at the age of 62. And it's amazing how many people take it early. While you might have a scenario whereas you know, for example, in your father's situation where he died early. The reality is your mom is still alive and she may be getting benefits from his elections. And so there's a lot of decisions that we make in our 60s that actually impact our spouse, and too many of us are making them individually and not thinking about our spouse. So I think as you enter into retirement, it's a great time to really sit down together, whether it's just you and your spouse and partner or potentially with a trusted child. Think about, you know, what are those benefits that are that the government gives you that you can afford to wait a little while to let them accrue but also make the right decisions for the two of you, not just for you. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Rhian Horgan of Kindur and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Finally, if you have a suggestion or comment pertaining to our podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Please connect with us via email. The address is podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Rhian Horgan, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Cindy Davis](images/cindy-davis-76-thumb.jpg)
![The Changing Landscape of Television](images/cindy-davis-76-thumb.jpg)
Cindy Davis
Episode 76: March 28, 2017
The Changing Landscape of Television
Thanks to technology, globalization, and demographics, just about every business today is undergoing some level of transformation. One industry experiencing considerable change is television. Viewers watch what they want when they want, and how they want, and as a result television networks and outlets are constantly on the lookout for new ways to connect with their audience. Cindy Davis is the Executive Vice President, Consumer Experience for Disney ABC Television and joins us today to discuss the changing landscape of television and how Disney ABC is working to create an experience where the company, the advertisers, and the viewers all win.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, thanks to technology, globalization, and demographics, just about every business today is undergoing some level of transformation. One industry experiencing considerable change is television. Today viewers watch what they want when they want, how they want, and the choices of programming seem limitless. As a result, television networks and outlets are constantly on the lookout for new ways to connect with the audience. Cindy Davis works for Disney ABC Television as Executive Vice President Consumer Experience. She's responsible for understanding and engaging with the 150 million viewers that watch their shows every week across ABC, Freeform, and Disney channels. She visited William & Mary last weekend to attend the Women's Leadership Summit and Stock Pitch Competition. Between events, she sat down with us to talk about the changing landscape of television and how Disney ABC is working to create an experience where the company, the advertisers, and the viewers all win. Here's our conversation with Cindy Davis. Ken WhiteCindy, thank you very much for being with us today. It's a busy day here. First of all, tell us what you're doing here today. What's your role with the Women's Leadership Summit? Cindy DavisIt's my first time and didn't I wasn't even aware of the Women's Leadership Summit and was invited to come get to know the young women that are here competing in the afternoon. We'll do panels with them to talk about ethics and values but also talk about things that could help them in their first job from a business perspective. I have a really interesting speed mentoring session set up in the afternoon that I'm really looking forward to. And I just have to say I reviewed the resume's of the women that I'm going to be meeting with. Wow. It made me a little. You know, sort of feel a little unworthy, honestly. There's some real rock stars here to speak with. So it is one of the things, Ken, that I'm passionate about is the development of women in business in particular, and so I'm really excited to be here. Ken WhiteWell, last year, of course, was the first year. It was a phenomenal weekend, so I know you're going to have a terrific day. Yeah, I just sort of hid in the corner. I know exactly how you feel. It's very impressive but so thank you very much for being here. So so, your job with ABC Disney what does it entail. What do you do? Cindy DavisYep. So it's a newly created role. Right, it never existed before at Disney ABC Television. A year and a half ago, when I joined Venture Wood, who's the president of the division created a role called consumer experience. And it's really my job is to help the organization understand the hundred and fifty million viewers that watch our channels and our stations every week and to help engage them in our programming right at a higher level. So it's really simple that's across ABC News, ABC Entertainment, Disney channels, and Freeform, which is used to be ABC Family. It's our millennial channel. Ken WhiteRight. Let's talk about Freeform. That change right when you got there, and some really good things have happened. What changes did you put in place? Cindy DavisYeah, absolutely, and in fairness, the rebranding to Freeform happened before I joined the company. In fact, it was just happening when I joined the company. Really interesting opportunity for the channel to be able to expand beyond ABC Family and to bring in a whole new group of millennials who are interested in a different kind of television experience. Ken WhiteRight. Cindy DavisI learned a lot about it. I have some really, really great people that work providing insights about millennials to the channel so that they can do a better job of developing the right kind of programming, right kind of scheduling, and really important for this millennial audience to be able to access content whenever and wherever they want. Ken WhiteYeah. Cindy DavisSo linear television and the cable channel is one part, but all of the good work that we're doing to give them access to our content on Freeform digitally really important to this millennial audience. Ken WhiteYeah, what a change from the old days where most people we grew up with three channels if they were lucky and then cable and now all these various platforms, so you're talking about a number of different audiences, a number of different outlets, and a number of different platforms. How do you juggle all of that? Cindy DavisYeah, you know it's a thing that brought me to the job is this explosion right and real transformation right that this industry is in, and it's the reason why I came because I believe my experience is consumer behavior, and I've spent my whole career understanding why people do what they do right. And bringing that sort of discipline to this industry in a time of change was just too exciting for me to pass up when you think about it. Right. It's a great time for television, and it's a great time for consumers of television. People who love television like you and I do right. What a great time. There's more content, long form, short form. You know there's more people creating great content than ever before. There's more devices by which to access that content. Right. On average, I think people have at least two and a half different devices they can watch TV on just in their home, plus all of the opportunity you have to explore content on the go right on your mobile phone on your iPad. And then, last but not least, there is this just crazy explosion of different kinds of content, from an original series on Netflix to a weekly series like Scandal, which I love on ABC, to short-form content on YouTube. So that opportunity to really explore and enjoy content it's never been greater. Ken WhiteAnd I think of people who work in the business all the opportunities that have come up compared to a generation ago when there just weren't that many outlets, weren't that many production companies, and now you know they too have opportunities. So when that when, the content changes as it is what are you trying to do. What's what is the goal? There's, like, as you say, there's so much out there. Cindy DavisIts the goal is actually the same goal it's always been, which is to create fans for your content, right, to engage people in your content. It's just harder than it's ever been because there's so much competition for people's attention. Like you said, there's not three channels, right? There's an explosion of places where I can get my content, and people are really consumers have really decided that you know, I'm going to participate in multiple different, you know, ways to get my content. You know most households both have a cable subscription or a satellite subscription and a subscription to Hulu or Amazon, or Netflix, right? I mean, sort of doubling the amount of content that they can get. They want access to a broad base of content that they can really enjoy. You know it's there's a lot of things that we have to do from a consumer standpoint just get the word out there about new shows that we have. That's never been harder. But the good news is right when it used to be that the only way you found out about a new television show was watching TV and seeing a promotion. Right. Ken WhiteYeah. Cindy DavisYou know, those great trailers for those new shows. Now with all the social outlets and digital outlets that we have. We have many, many more places, in fact, that 18 to 34-year-old group that millennials they are more likely to get to find out about a new show via social media than they are watching a television promo today. So there's so many more ways to get the word out. Fragmentations the issue, right? So how do you break through? But back to the original comment. A great show with great acting and great relationships, and great characters will always bring people in. Ken WhiteYeah. How do you learn about your audience? What steps do you and your organization take to learn about them? Cindy DavisWe have a variety of tools. Of course, we have syndicated tools like Nielsen, right, who tells us who's watching what when. The biggest challenge and our team is really leading it, is working with Nielsen and other companies is to really understand who's watching what when across all these new platforms and devices. Nielsen, as a company, does a really great job of understanding who's watching linear television right. Ken WhiteRight, sure. Cindy DavisWhat shows are you and your household watching at 8:00 pm, right? Ken WhiteYes. Cindy DavisBut that's not the way people are consuming media. Right. And so our team works to really from a variety of different sources bring together sort of in a bit of a mosaic. What are people watching when? Right, so we can see not just on our of our content but of other people's content. That's from a great example is understanding who's watching Grey's Anatomy, which is one of our, you know, just fabulous series that's been on the air for 13 years. It's just amazing. We have young women who are were too young to stay up and watch Grey's Anatomy when it started 13 years ago who are discovering Grey's Anatomy on Netflix for the very first time. Ken WhiteRight. Cindy DavisRight. And catching up on the series. Catching up on the series and then sitting, you know, sitting on a Thursday night and watching it with their mom together on linear television. Right. So you have to really understand how you attract that viewership across all those different devices. So Nielsen's one way we do that, but we have to complement that with information that we can gather from viewers themselves. So a lot of primary research. Other people that bring us information and data about how people are viewing beyond linear television. Right. So that we work with and we work with a variety of different companies beyond Nielsen to be able to get that information. And then the real challenge is for our analytics team to bring that information together at an individual consumer level. That's the real challenge. Ken WhiteYeah. So the data are out there. It's a question of what does it actually mean to you and to the network. Cindy DavisYeah, and to think and to be willing to think differently about it. Right. Our ultimate goal is to think about it at an individual household level. What does that individual household watching not just at 8:00 pm in the living room together and from their television, but what are the teenagers watching on their iPad in their own room right? Ken WhiteSure. Cindy DavisWhat is the four-year-old watching in the car on Mom's iPhone right for the Disney Channel, for example? And then you know what is dad watching when he gets together with his friends and is watching ESPN at a restaurant with his buddies. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Cindy Davis of Disney ABC Television in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary. If you're looking to improve your leadership and business skills, the Center for Corporate Education has a terrific program coming up soon. The certificate in business management. It's a five-day program, each day devoted to one topic, including strategy, accounting, operational effectiveness, communication, and leadership. It's a great opportunity for professionals who lack an MBA or simply want to improve their business and leadership skills. The program begins April 10th. For more information, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Cindy Davis of Disney ABC Television. Ken WhiteAre we consuming as a nation a lot of TV more TV than we have in the past? Cindy DavisThe last couple of years our team one of the things our team does is work with a variety of different sources to bring together a forecast of what we call total video consumption, all the things you watch, whether that's a short form video on YouTube or whether that is a traditional long-form video television series on your linear TV. For the most part, what we see is overall consumption of video is flattened out in the last two or three years, particularly for adults. When you think about it, the average adult watches about five and a half hours of video a day. Ken WhiteWow. Cindy DavisA day. Ken WhiteWow. Cindy DavisYeah. Ken WhiteI thought you were going to say a week. Cindy DavisNo, a day. Now, remember that's checking the news on your iPhone while you're getting ready in the morning. That is a television show you watch at night. That might be Ken WhiteWatching a TED Talk, watching YouTube. Cindy Daviscould be watching a podcast, it could be listening, it could be watching a TED Talk, right, a video cast anything that you're watching across all those networks. The challenge is that are pockets of time to actually watch are pretty much tapped out right. I mean, you saw growth in pockets of time when you began to be able to watch, you know, a video on your cell phone, right, or you begin to be able to watch something on your iPad, but there's almost no more pockets of time. So we're pretty much tapped out. So for all of us, it's a battle for the share of viewing. Now, if the electric car really becomes a reality, it's one of the things our team has identified that there would be a new pocket of time that would open up. Right. There's lots of people who watch television or videos, you know, on the commuter train right into New York every day. Those of us who don't live in a large city. Right. That have to drive to work, right? Ken WhiteSure. Cindy DavisEven LA, you know it, requires a drive. But if somebody else is driving me, I might have an opportunity to sneak in a half-hour comedy. Ken WhiteYeah. Amazing. I was in an airport the other day. I watched an episode of Cheers. I was walking around just to kill some time. Cindy DavisThe one place where we do a lot of work because we have Disney channels. We do a lot of work understanding how the viewing behavior of children 2 to 5-year-olds with Disney Junior and then up until eleven with Disney channels how that's changing, and there's a lot there's still growth there, and that makes total sense. Right. Because kids are still getting access to devices that they can watch more video on. Ken WhiteSure. Cindy DavisWhen they move from, you know, beg, borrowing, and stealing their mom's iPhone to having an iPhone of their own or a laptop of their own. Then they have more opportunity to watch television. Ken WhiteSo all of the platforms, the pockets of time, the changes in the audience. What does that do to linear TV, as you call it? What's the future? What do you see? Cindy DavisIn the first place, linear television will always be, I won't say always but in the foreseeable future. As you and I are sitting here, doing this podcast will always be an important way that we distribute content and news right to a broad audience. You know advertisers desperately need opportunities for broad reach in this fragmented media industry we're in and broadcast television. Right. ABC and CBS and NBC, and Fox will fill that need. Our team was recently looking at a survey even among the heaviest streamers. The people that are watching the most Netflix, Hulu, Amazon streaming their content they still say that ABC is a must-have television network. Right. They still know there's a must-have broadcast network in their household. There will always be a need for great content for children. Right. As these millennials grow up and have kids right. They're going to want Disney Junior and Disney Channel and channels that they can really share with their children. But what's incumbent on us is to understand that linear television that can't be the only way we share that content, which is why we have our own app, right? We have the watch ABC app, and we share you know back episodes of our content. We're finding new and different ways to share that content beyond linear television. Ken WhiteDoes that have an effect on the type of programming that you're buying and producing? Cindy DavisYes and no. Right. Like I said from the beginning, I mean, and it is a hallmark of the Walt Disney Company. Right. One thing we all know is that a great story with great characters will always engage. So there's a quality of storytelling that's important no matter what we do. But we're also looking at opportunities to be able to expand beyond that. I'll tell you an interesting story we launched a program this year around our Bachelor franchise. The Bachelor television franchise has been on the air now for 21 years. Ken WhiteThat's amazing. Cindy DavisWhich is incredible, and one of the things we found was that people were looking for ways to engage with the bachelor franchise beyond the television show. And so we created a program with our friends at ESPN called Bachelor Fantasy League so that our viewers could not only watch the bachelor but have their own brackets and have their own groups. And so we created content right that went along with the Bachelor Franchise that we could share that would engage people more. Ken WhiteThat has to be fun. I mean, no one in TV did that even ten years ago. Cindy DavisYou know, that is one of the things that I just wake up every day. You know, pretty blessed about is that what I do. And the product we make and the way people enjoy it is just fun. Entertainment is fun. I loved, as you know, I worked at Walmart before I joined the Walt Disney Company. Love the company, love the people, love the brands. It's such a great company. But at the end of the day, deciding whether we put one brand of laundry detergent or the other on the end cap versus what television series should we pick up for ABC for primetime, the primetime fall season. What I'm doing right now is a lot more fun. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Cindy Davis of Disney ABC Television, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level in your career with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guests this week Cindy Davis and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![John Hewitt](images/john-hewitt-45-thumb.jpg)
![Leadership & Excellence](images/john-hewitt-45-thumb.jpg)
John Hewitt
Episode 75: March 14, 2017
Leadership & Excellence
John Hewitt is one of the most successful leaders in the tax profession. He founded three top tax preparation firms, including Jackson Hewitt and, more recently, Liberty Tax. After leaving H&R Block years ago, Hewitt pioneered the development of decision tree tax preparation software which revolutionized the tax business. Hewitt joins us today to discuss advice found in his new book "iCompete," including leadership, building culture, and exceeding customers' expectations.
Podcast (audio)
John Hewitt: Leadership & Excellence TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. John Hewitt is one of the most successful leaders in the tax profession. He's a veteran of forty-seven tax seasons. He founded three top tax preparation firms, including Jackson Hewitt and, more recently, Liberty Tax. The company many know for its costumed dancers and sign wavers well years ago after leaving H&R Block, where he was a regional director. Hewitt pioneered the development of Decision Tree tax preparation software that revolutionized the tax business. Since then, he's been named one of the accounting profession's Top 100 Most Influential People eleven times by accounting today. He's an International Franchise Association Entrepreneur of the Year as Liberty Tax continues to grow to well over 4000 offices in North America. Hewitt continues to pursue excellence and share his experience. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss his new book, I Compete, and to share the advice found in the book on leadership, building culture, and exceeding customers' expectations. Here's our conversation with John Hewitt, CEO of Liberty Tax. Ken WhiteJohn, thank you for taking the time you just spoke to our students, and so welcome to William & Mary, and thanks for sitting down with us for a little bit. John HewittThanks, Ken. It's my pleasure. Ken WhiteWhy the book? What made you made you write that? John HewittWell, at this stage of my career, I'm interested in and driven by changing people's lives. And while I can do that with the thousands of franchisees, I brought in at Liberty and the thousands of employees. I wanted to get to reach a grander scale and people. Ken WhiteWhen you look back on your career, how do you identify it when someone says what have you done professionally with your life? What do you tell them? John HewittWell, I've created several great companies, and in that process, I've changed thousands of people's lives in the book. I remind people that I've created eight hundred millionaires. Just making someone, a millionaire is that's only a small change. That's a small sample of the all the changes have been made right. You don't make everyone a millionaire, but you change people's lives for the better, making the world a better place. Ken WhiteIs that how you identify leadership? John HewittNo, that's not how I identify leadership. Ken WhiteHow do you? John HewittI think leadership is you have a vision, and the vision has to be fairly accurate. And then you get people to buy into that vision, and whether it's your employees or your constituents or your vendors or customers you get or investors, you get people to buy into your vision, so first, you have to have a vision, and there has to be a reasonable, rational vision. And then you have to get buy-in from everyone involved. Ken WhiteYou were talking to the students a lot about culture and how critical that is. How do you approach that and build a positive culture where people really just love to come into work? John HewittWell, first of all, you got to think about it, and you have to focus on that then. I'm a voracious reader and I read a fiction book, and then nonfiction fiction and nonfiction, and I'm a student of lifetime. Student of business, and Thomas Watson said something very insightful he said give me. He's the founder of IBM Thomas Watson Senior, and he said give me 100 great engineers or give me a hundred people with great attitudes. He said I'll take the great attitudes every day because engineering is something you can teach. Attitude is not. And he said that you can teach people with a great attitude engineering you can't teach engineers great attitude. So we learned a long time ago that to hire for attitude above competency. Ken WhiteWhat are some of the things you do once you have the right people on board to build that culture? What are the things you're doing today? John HewittYeah, we have a team from many different departments. About a dozen that are members of the culture task force, and they meet at least weekly, and they design programs and events to give accolades and parties and innovative ways to. We have chili cook-offs, and we have ice cream sundaes, and we have a just we have a Halloween costume party and et cetera et cetera. They're always thinking of ways to make it a better working place working environment for our staff because it's anymore it's not about how much money you make it's about it's about enjoying where you work, and we spend Americans spend most of their time in the workplace or thinking about work more than in their personal lives and so you have to make it fun for people. Life's too short. You have to enjoy the journey. Ken WhiteNo doubt. So nice to wake up in the morning can't wait to go to work. Right. John HewittExactly. You know it's TGIF is the catchphrase but with me is TGIM. Thank God it's Monday. Ken WhiteI talked to a number of people, students, faculty, colleagues, and mentioned that I was going to be joining you today, and so many of them said please ask about the guys out front in the costumes waving the signs, and you call them wavers. How did you get to that? John HewittWavers is inaccurate. We changed it, and I just haven't. I've gotten, so custom to calling them wavers that they're really supposed to be costume dancers, right? They're really supposed to be dancing, and when we started it, we invented it when we first started Liberty. I had read a book, and I think it was the 22 immutable laws of marketing, where it says that the number one object that was a trademarked object was that little green Coke bottle, so you could see that 100 hundred yards away and in your mind it said it said to yourself coke or Coca-Cola. So I was always wondering when I was at my previous company Jackson Hewitt I was always wondering what could be look like a Jackson Hewitt was certainly wouldn't want a picture of me, and no one would recognize it anyway. I said it was so easy once we got the name Liberty right. It was so easy to get to to get people's attention and to get them to remember Liberty Tax. I don't talk about this often, but the only fear that I had when I named the company Liberty because I loved the name Liberty Tax. My name is Hewitt, and I love it 100 times better than Jackson Hewitt. It's just a great name, and the fear that I had was there's so many other liberties, there's Liberty travel's a huge company, Liberty mutual liberty. There's just so many liberties out there. Are we going to have attention? Well, with the dancer, we had the intention of all the liberties right. If you think Liberty Travel or Liberty Mutual or Liberty, all the liberties come to resonate with us because we have the dancer. They just have TV ads or newspaper ads, or magazine ads. We have the dancer in everyone's face. And while other companies have done this, McDonald's and Burger King and Wendy's and Chick Fillet et cetera et cetera Pizza Hut. They all tried different versions. We're the only ones that do it so extensively today we'll have over 3000 wavers out there. Ken WhiteAnd it makes a difference in terms of business. John HewittIt catches attention and people. The average person drives by hundreds of businesses every day, and most of them, if you said name all those businesses, you'll get 15 or 20, but if you saw Liberty dancer every day from January 1st to April 15th, that'd be one of the first that comes to mind you know where that Liberty is someone says where's Liberty Tax. That Liberty comes to mind. Ken WhiteAnd you may even beep and wave and interact with them as well. John HewittExactly. You know, one of the things we do is we have them put on a costume when they're training their first coming in, and I've asked hundreds and hundreds of people do you notice a difference when you're wearing the costume versus not. And they say yes, people smile and honk, and it's just you're treated differently if you have a Liberty costume on. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt in the book, one of the things you mention is a huge myth in business, and that is meeting the expectations of your customers. Why is that a myth? John HewittStan Phelps, a great author, and friend of Liberty, has written a number of goldfish books, and I think it was in the purple goldfish where he said he was teaching about customer service and customer expectations, and he started by saying if there is an event that starts at 6:00 pm almost no one arrives exactly at 6:00 pm. Most are either early or late. And he said in the same way with customers. Very few customers do you meet their expectations exactly. You either fail to meet them or you exceed their expectations. And our job is great companies. The greatest companies have a excellent record of exceeding customers' expectations. And if you don't, you're going to fail if you don't exceed customers' expectations because it's either you fail to meet them or you exceed them. Very few people meet them exactly. Ken WhiteWhy do you think so many professionals focus on meeting the expectations when it's actually, as you mentioned, pretty tough to do? John HewittYeah, I think that in America and certainly in my lifetime, I've seen a erosion of customer service and erosion of desire to exceed customers' expectations. And I've seen too many people try to monetize their customer experience and to make it a generic situation. I remember when I was a kid, there was a hotdog stand, and it was 10 miles away and before I could even drive. And we used to ride our bikes down there and go to this fantastic hotdog stand because they had these hot dogs out in this charcoal outdoor charcoal and they had huge handmade onion rings, and they had when you ordered ice cream cone it was huge overflowing. It was Jim Scott dogs. Jim in Hamburg, New York, and it just open during the summer near the lake, and then it was bought by a national big national company, and they raised the prices. They'd you got less ice cream, you got a cheaper brand. And it was out of business in two years, so that they had lost the entrepreneurial zeal and spirit of the owner that was exceeding customers' expectations. It stopped when you brought in the cookie-cutter national company that thought that they could take it and make more money by charging more and offering less and that never works. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with John Hewitt in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you are looking to expand your business leadership skills, the Center for Corporate Education has a terrific program for you. The certificate in business management is a five-day program that runs from April 10th through the 14th at William & Mary. Each eight-hour day will be dedicated to an important facet of business, including communication, managerial accounting, business strategy, operational effectiveness, and executive leadership. The program helps you broaden your professional skills and helps you think and lead strategically and successfully. For more information, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with John Hewitt, CEO of Liberty Tax. Ken WhiteSo in terms of customers in your situation, are the franchise owners a customer? Is someone coming in who needs their tax prepared? Who do you identify as your customers? John HewittThe ultimate customer is the person that files his tax return through us. The franchisees have a different relationship and their partners. When you're a partner, both of you are customers of each other, right? You have to show mutual respect and help each other, and so there, well, the poorest franchise wants to be a customer just wants to receive and not participate. It's a partnership, and so they're not an ultimate customer. The ultimate customer is the person that files his tax return. Ken WhiteHow do you lead? How do you approach leadership with the franchisee? With that owner. John HewittThe key is finding what each person wants, and people have different desires. They want to invest different amount of dollars. They want to invest a different amount of time, and they want a different result. So I've run in 5000 franchisees in my 48-year career, and they've all wanted different things and with different resources. So what you have to do is help them plan. Use our menu, our cookie-cutter system of doing business. And if you want to make fifty thousand, you have one franchise. You want to make a hundred thousand. You get two. If you want to make hundred fifty, you get three and then helping them get to realize their dreams because we're only going to be successful. Our motto is happy, successful franchisees and happy, successful employees. If we don't have that, then you know Herb Kelleher in the book nuts says you know we were raised customers number one customer is number one, but that's not true. If you don't treat your staff, your employees as number one. Your customers aren't going to be treated as number one. So we focus on our franchisees and our employees. Ken WhiteAnd you talk about give loyalty, get loyalty. Can you describe explain that? John HewittYeah, that's that's key. Loyalty things like loyalty and trust are not given and respect. Loyalty, trust, respect you wish you know I'm a CEO of a public company. I've done it twice. I've been in business 48 years. Well, you would sort of wish that you would just automatically be given it just because of all the things you've accomplished. But that's not how life works. You have to earn it. Then you have to earn trust. You have to earn respect. You have to earn loyalty. And the way that I get loyalty, and I have a huge loyal staff is you got to give it first if you expect it. You can't just say give me loyalty. Be loyal to me. You have to be giving it. And I've learned a long time ago that you can't outgive you. The more you give, the more you receive. So whether it's loyalty or money or just whatever you give it, it comes back to you ten, not tenfold but certainly more than you've given. Ken WhiteRight. There are different areas and themes throughout the book, and one of them is you talk about improve each day. And under that, you say communication, communication, communication. In what setting? How do you mean for those who have read the book? John HewittYeah, those are two different things. And let me talk about communication first and say this. That communication in relationships is so so difficult. And it never gets out. You can only get better at it, and there's so much misunderstanding, and it's sort of like have you played the game where you go around the room, and you start with a story, and then you tell the next person the story. By the time you get to 10 people, the story comes out totally different. Human beings just are not good at communication. And so we try to teach people that it's a work in progress. And I've found that people are communication stoppers. Everyone thinks I want to know everything I want to be in the know, but no one wants to give up their information. Information is power. And so while they want to be in the know, they're not in the saying the communicating part of it. They're not in the in participating. They're only part of the way they want to participate is to receive, not to share. And so it's very difficult, and that's why that principle one of our top 10 principles is communication, communication, communication because it's more than one communication because you just gotta work at it forever. And every relationship in all the relationships that I've seen, spouse or business that have deteriorated and collapsed, it's always been communication. I mean, you start out in a relationship with a husband or wife or spouse, and it's, and you just don't communicate, and it falls apart. So it's in a business setting a personal setting. It's child and parent. It's all comes down to communication. You know, as far as improve each day that, you know, everyone tells me that, yeah, I want to improve. I want to improve. I mean, how many people if we went and did a survey and asked 100 people do you want improve? How many would say no? Ken WhiteRight. John HewittBut what they do say what they do think to themself is as long as they don't have to do anything different. Right. I mean, I'll be happy to improve. I want to improve, but just don't ask me do anything different, and if you do, one of my favorite sayings is if you do what you always did, you get what you always got. Right. You can't. You must change, you know, in order to improve, and people resist the pain of change. They don't resist change itself. It's painful to change if that means getting up five minutes earlier, eating better, or exercising more, or reading a business book, or whatever it is. You know we had that mission statement. It is part of that's part of our mission statement is to improve each day. And I went to my executives. I had an epiphany about ten years ago. I went to my executives, who have been living this dream for seven years, and I said okay in each of their year-end evaluations. I said how have you improved this year. You know what not a not one had anything. Oh, I read a book. I read a book on how to succeed Dale Carnegie book right, and I said no, no, that's an improvement. It's very tough to get people to improve, and it's because they resist the change. Ken WhiteThat's a great question. We can ask ourselves that every Friday at the end of every month. How have I improved? And what a great way to keep yourself on track and try to improve. Right. To actually get the results. John HewittExactly. And if we're not going to do it ourselves, we're certainly not going to get anyone else to do it. Ken WhiteIsn't that a fact? For younger folks who are starting out want to be leaders, admire what you do and see what you do. What kind of advice do you have for them in the earlier part of their careers? John HewittFor your students, for example for, students of William & Mary and college students and high school students. My general life advice is find something you like to do, work hard, and persevere. And there was a study done, I think it was Yale or Princeton in the 50s, and they took all the graduates in and they analyzed their lives, and 25 years later and 20 percent of them had gone out and just went to Europe for a year or they went in and were a lifeguard or just did fooled around and 80 percent got a job and they found that 25 years later most of the 20 percent that have gone and done something had found something they like to do and turned it into a business and their wealth accumulated wealth of the 20 percent who had found something they'd like to do was higher than the 80 percent who had gone and gotten the job. You know you're gonna have a job for a long, long time. You're going to work for a long, long time if you're a student in college today. I mean, unless you become very wealthy and a few percent will, you're going to work for 50 or 60 years. Right. So why not take the time to find out what you want to do? And so, find something you like to do, work hard, persevere. And I've interviewed thousands of people in my career, and one of my favorite questions is what do you want to be when you grow up. And I've got to tell you that 98 percent don't know if they're 50 years old or 30 or 20 98 percent people don't know what they want to be when they grow up. They just say I don't know. And so find your passion you got a long time to for the journey enjoy the journey. Most of your time is going to be spent working or at work or thinking about work more than your personal time in your lifetime. Find something to do. Life's too short. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with John Hewitt. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization. Visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, or suggestions with us. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. That's podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, John Hewitt, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Robbie Bach](images/robbie-bach-74-thumb.jpg)
![Xbox Revisited](images/robbie-bach-74-thumb.jpg)
Robbie Bach
Episode 74: March 7. 2017
Xbox Revisited
Few people in the technology space have had careers as interesting and successful as Robbie Bach. In 1988, Bach joined Microsoft, where he began a 22-year tenure there; first in Marketing, then in Management, and then in Leadership. In 1999 he became Chief Xbox Officer, leading the team from its startup phase to the launch of Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, changing the gaming industry. In 2015 Bach wrote his book "Xbox Revisited: A Game Plan for Corporate and Civic Renewal," and joins us today to discuss his experience with Xbox, the lessons learned there, and his strategic framework that organizations and individuals can adopt to succeed.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Few people in the technology space have had careers as interesting and successful as Robbie Bach. In 1988 Bach joined Microsoft, where he began a 22-year tenure there, first in marketing, then in management, and then in leadership in the marketing space. He helped the once little-known Microsoft Office become the dominant player in that space. Now over a billion people use it. In 1999 he became Chief Xbox Officer leading the team from its startup phase to the launch of Xbox 360 and Xbox live. Changing the gaming industry. He retired from Microsoft in 2010 as President of the entertainment and devices division. In 2015 Bach wrote his book Xbox Revisited: a game plan for corporate and civic renewal. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss his experience with Xbox. The lessons learned there and his strategic framework that organizations and individuals can adopt to succeed. Here's our conversation with Robbie Bach. Ken WhiteGreat to have you with us today, so thanks for joining us. And you've recently, like I guess a year ago, wrote a book Xbox Revisited: A Game Plan for Corporate and Civic Renewal. What caused you to, first of all, thank you for your time. Robbie BachHappy to be here. It's good to be here. Ken WhiteWhat caused you to write the book? Robbie BachWell, when I left Microsoft, I left with the idea that I wanted to get more involved in civics, and so I started to think, okay, well, how do I do that? I've got some nonprofit things I've been engaged with. So I dedicated some more time. And then, I started paying attention to what was going on in the government space and in our community start to get a little frustrated. And when I get frustrated, I write. So I wrote a, you know, king for a day what would I do type document which was about supposed to be you know three pages ended up twelve, and I looked at it said you know I really love that twelve pages and there's not a single person in the world who's ever going to read it. And so I said if I really want people to hear this story, I have to go out and talk about it. And I have to write about it. Ken WhiteRight. Robbie BachSo I chose to write a book which is sort of the story of Xbox but not the tell-all story of Xbox. It's Xbox from a strategy perspective and then takes those lessons to apply them in our civic and community lives. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachSo it's really kind of a cross between a business book and a civics book. Ken WhiteRight. Robbie BachI mean, it was a blast to write. I learned a lot in the process, and I get the opportunity to talk about it now. Ken WhiteYeah. And thank you for coming here you'll be. You've already met with some students here on our campus and in the business school. But you'll be meeting with several hundred waiting to hear from you shortly after we're done with this, actually. Robbie BachRight. Ken WhiteThe civic piece. Can you tell us more about that what interests you? What do you what are you looking at? Robbie BachWell, I've always been sort of a person who thought, you know, how do I have impact beyond what I do for in my professional life? How do I think about how I can make the community a little bit of a better place? And so I started, you know, toying around with that idea and the boards I work on and things like that. And I was having coffee with somebody, and they said, well, what is it you're actually doing? I said well, it's sort of civic engineering. And that became a phrase that meant something to me. And so I started thinking about ways I could do civic engineering and really help organizations and people and leaders think about the things going on the community in a different way. And I took a lot of those lessons from Xbox and started to apply them in my speaking, in my writing, my blog work, and my board work. Ken WhiteYeah. Civically speaking, what activities are you doing? Robbie BachWell, the things I'm involved with I'm very involved in Boys and Girls Clubs of America. I've been on that national board now for 11 years. I've been on the local board for almost 20 years. I've been involved in their strategy work. I'm involved in their national governance work and their technology work, and that's passion to me because it's about the audience I care about the most, which is kids. Ken WhiteYeah, great. Robbie BachWhich is a really great audience and an audience in great need in the country. I'm involved in another organization called Year Up, which is an organization started by Gerald Chertavian in Boston. They're in about 15 cities cross country. They do vocational training in a very special way for kids who have graduated from high school but who aren't probably going to go to William & Mary. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachProbably aren't going to go to a four-year college, and then the third thing, I'm very involved in sports. I love sports, so I'm on the board of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachWhich is a different type of civic activity. It's more of a patriotism angle on civics, but sport is life for me, and life is sport, and I can learn lessons from that and hopefully apply those lessons. Ken WhiteTennis that's your sport, right? Robbie BachI grew up playing tennis. I grew up playing tennis. I loved it. Actually, basketball's my fort of passion for long reasons. I didn't play basketball mostly because I wasn't good enough. But I was a good tennis player in college, and my son was a basketball player played professionally overseas for three years. My daughters played soccer. My brothers were both Division 1 athletes, so there's a long line of Bach Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie Bachathletics that runs through what we do. Ken WhiteThere's probably a football game on Thanksgiving, isn't there? Robbie BachThere well yeah, it's probably there's some kind of competition, and now it's golf. We're all old enough where now it's golf. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachBut there's always a Bach family competition. Ken WhiteWhen you think back on the days in Xbox, and I know our students, that's what they want to hear about. They talk so much about it. What was special about that time as you because you've had time enough to reflect on that. Robbie BachYeah, I think, ultimately, what I took away from it was so many lessons I learned. You know I started there. I'd been at Microsoft what 12 years. I'd gone to business school. I did well before business school. I thought, you know, hey, I'm a pretty good leader. I know what to do and how to do it. And then the first three or four years of Xbox was the most humbling experience of my entire life. And you just realize that things are way more complicated than you think, and to deal with that complexity. You actually have to think in a very simple way. And it took me a long time to understand that dealing with complexity requires simplicity. And I learned so much about managing people, working with others, thinking about innovation. All these things happen through what was a three dark years and then, let's say, seven light years of exciting work. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachSo Xbox, for me, was a journey. Ken WhiteI'll bet most leaders probably will describe their experience quite similar. There were some dark years and some great years. On that not-so-great time. What keeps you going? How do you stay positive? Robbie BachWell, I think there's a couple of things one. I am a this comes from the sports world. I'm a very competitive person. I really I tell people I hate losing. It's to me. It's just I, you know, I want to win, and I don't mean that in an evil competitive sort of way, but I thrive on doing things well. And so part of it is just a competitive spirit and a competitive drive. The other thing is for reasons in my life, you go through experiences where you have to persevere, and you learn the power of perseverance. And it's something, you know, I've tried to teach with my kids. You know they've had a fortunate upbringing and certainly in the grand scheme of kids across the country. And you try to teach about perseverance and what it means to overcome obstacles, and the Xbox experience to me was just another example in my life of lots of obstacles. We're going to get past it to the green pasture on the other side. And the team, in fact, really came together in a way that demonstrated that perseverance can carry the day. Ken WhiteThe competition theme and leadership is just amazing. We just did a podcast recorded one yesterday with John Hewitt, who is the CEO of Liberty Tax. Before that, it was Jackson Hewitt Tax. A huge forty-seven years in the tax world. His book is called I Compete. It's all about competition, right? And he said that's it. That's what makes my heart beat and the blood flow. It's all about winning and competing, and that's important. It seems like it's a pretty important ingredient for a leader. Robbie BachWell, it is, and I think that the challenge for a leader is how do you compete and do it right. And there is a subtle balance I know lots of people who are hyper-competitive, who ultimately, I respect them for what they accomplished, and I don't always respect how they did it. And so, for me, the constant challenge is how do you harness your competitive nature but drive it in a way that is what I think of as doing the right thing. How do you treat people the right way? People may not like you as a leader, they may not love you as a leader, but do they respect you as a leader? And that, to me, has been the hard balance of trying to find that ability for people to respect what I do, even when they disagree with the decision itself. Ken WhiteRight. And I assume some of that is on-the-job training. Robbie BachIt's almost all on-the-job training, and you know you have to when I tell people who are early in their career everything you're doing right now is learning. And if you stop learning in your job, it's time to be in a different job, and you're going to look back 15 years from now and not realize the important lessons you learned along the way, and suddenly you'll for whatever reason you'll pause to reflect, and you'll go wow I learned that eight years ago and I'm applying it now without even thinking about it. In many respects, Xbox was that for me. I had ten years learning. I got down, and I went to write this book, and I said, wow, I actually I could actually fill 200 pages. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachRight. I probably had more, and the editor cut some of it. Right, I can do this. Ken WhiteYeah, you had a real story to share. Robbie BachAnd the story is compelling, too, because Xbox is sort of a rags to riches type thing, at least in the context of Microsoft. But there's a lot to share. Ken WhiteXbox was such a great brand, and I mean culturally important in the history of our culture. Did you know it would get to that point? Robbie BachNo. Ken WhiteYou couldn't imagine. Robbie BachNo, you know, when we started Xbox, it started, you know not, not to our topic on competition. It started because Microsoft saw Sony moving into the living room with what they called a computer. And for Microsoft, you know our mantra, our purpose statement computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software. The living room was a place we should be. And so it started in the spirit of competition. It didn't start in the spirit of cultural icon, living entertainment experience, all those things that it created, but it started in that spirit of competition, and then from that, you have to develop a purpose. You have to say, okay, well, the purpose can't just be to compete with Sony. There has to be a broader mission, a broader vision for what we want to do. Ken WhiteWhen you look at technology today and the culture today. What do you think? Is this where you thought we would be? Are there some surprises for you? Robbie BachI think the thing that I reflect on is not so much did I know we were going to be here versus there. I'm not that good. And frankly, I don't think very many people are that good. What I more find is that the one constant you find is technology, and advancement evolves our culture with it. And our culture has to evolve over time as well. I get a lot of questions about is video games bad for you. I get a lot of questions about, you know, texting and screen time and those things, and all of those things are the 80 percent good and the 20 percent bad. And the question is how do you meld them into your life in a way where you maximize the benefit we get from it which is hugely powerful and transformative without having the impact of the negative, and it's the same thing in culture. Unfortunately, culture isn't something a specific individual can contain. It's how our social world contains, and if you look at what goes on in social media now, that's a cultural revolution. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Robbie BachAnd we are struggling as a country and as a world dealing with that cultural revolution. The technology is not bad. Ken WhiteRight. Robbie BachDon't blame Facebook, right? This is a human cultural phenomenon, and we have to figure out how to deal with it. Ken WhiteYeah, no. And I teach in and study communication, and it's just fascinating. Robbie BachOh yeah. It's a discipline. It's amazing. Ken WhiteHow it's affected right. Robbie BachYeah. Ken WhiteHow it's affected communication. Yeah, I remember reading a piece in the 20s written about radio and how radio was going to ruin our interpersonal skills. We're going to talk to each other anymore because we're sitting on the living room floor staring at that box that where that sound comes out. Robbie BachWell, there's a political science professor at University Washington who does this cycles of great transition and change in our country. And one of the pieces of his framework is technology, major technology shifts, and innovation. Radio is one, T.V. is another, the Internet is the third. Ken WhiteThere it is, yeah. Robbie BachAnd we're dealing with that in real-time. Ken WhiteYeah, we sure are, and fast. Robbie BachWell yeah, and the pace of change has accelerated. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Robbie Bach in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're looking to expand your business leadership skills, the Center for Corporate Education has a terrific program for you. The certificate in business management is a five-day program that runs from April 10th through the 14th here at William & Mary. Each eight-hour day will be dedicated to one important facet of business, including communication, managerial accounting, business strategy, operational effectiveness, and executive leadership. The program helps you broaden your professional skills and helps you think and lead strategically and successfully. For more information, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Robbie Bach, author of Xbox Revisited a game plan for corporate and civic renewal. Ken WhiteYou talked briefly about your friend in Washington about framework. You, too, shared your strategic framework in the book the three-piece strategic framework. Robbie BachYeah. Ken WhiteAnd that could be used in business and in civic endeavors. Can you talk about that? Robbie BachYeah, and it's a business framework. It's a civic framework. It's also turns out to be a really powerful personal framework. I have my own 3P framework for what I do. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachAnd how I think about myself in my life and the basic idea of the 3P framework is if you have something complicated, something you're trying to figure out, something you're trying to pursue, can you in three pages tell me a one-sentence purpose no ands no ors no commas no dash lines a one crisp sense purpose. Can you give me five principles for how you're going to operate to make that happen? This is about culture and decision-making, and working with others. And can you give me five priorities that you're actually going to do and only five and write that in three pages? Now it turns out you think three pages one sentence purpose that's basically three pages for principles and priorities that should be easy. It's really hard. Ken WhiteI can imagine. Robbie BachIt's really difficult. The one-sentence purpose statement is brutal. Principles are hard to nail down and be precise with, and priorities go on endlessly because people struggle to make choices. Ken WhiteHow dynamic is it? Robbie BachWell, so the interesting thing that's what's interesting about it when I do a 3P framework purpose needs to last. I mean, purpose, if it's ephemeral, isn't really a purpose. Right. Ken WhiteThat's true. Robbie BachI mean, purpose seems to be a direction. It's a north star, and it can move a little bit, but you really want that. And principles are somewhat the same way, right? If you're a principled person or you're going to operate a business with principles, you can't be changing them all the time. Now priorities, on the other hand, are the connection between the framework and the operating plan because priorities you should be reviewing every year or even every six months in a fast-moving business, and you'll have five priorities. And after a period of time, you'll say how did we do on the metrics? How did we do in achieving those priorities? What's changed in the market? What do we need to do differently? And then, you'll set up the next set of five priorities, and that leads to an operating plan which is budget, resources, tactics, all the things it does to run a business or pursue an objective. And so you've end up with this cycle where every year you double check the purpose, you make sure you live by your principles, you adjust your priorities, you produce an operating plan. And I've done this with nonprofits. I've done it with governments. I've done it in business. I do it my personal life. It's not complicated. It's not rocket science. There's no its sad say this at an institution. There's no educational research that's been done on the principle on the idea, but I can tell you from experience it works. Ken WhiteIt works, yeah, in all those various settings. Robbie BachYeah, and in part, because it's simple in part because, in some ways, it's common sense decide where you're going to go, decide how you're gonna get there, and decide what you're going to do to make it happen. Ken WhiteSo when you work with an organization, how long does it take them to do that? Robbie BachDepends on the organization. It really does depend on the organization, you know. So I've done this as an example with a family-run business. Ken WhiteOh yeah. Robbie BachSo that took a little longer. You've got five individual family members who were owners of the business. They haven't been on the same strategic page for a little while. There's a lot of discussion that has to go on in the future and what happens. You're thinking multigenerational people have different ideas about where things would go. That was three off sites of a day each. I can do work in a different business setting. I'm a co-owner of a small gluten-free pasta company called Manini's, and you know my partner and I wrote that in two or three exchanges. I put a draft he sent it back to me. We went back and forth. So it really depends on the context. It also depends on where the organization has been historically. Ken WhiteSure. Robbie BachSo I'm doing work with the boys and girls clubs of America. There's been Boys and Girls Clubs around for 150 years, and the federation is over 100 years old, and it's eleven hundred independently owned and operated clubs. So when you're driving strategic change, that's not a, you know, three-email process. It's not a three-meeting process. It's a 18-month process. And that's just the way it works. Ken WhiteBut the fact is it works regardless of how long it takes you to get there. Robbie BachExactly. Ken WhiteYeah. Robbie BachAnd in part, because you know you're a communications guy and partly because I can tell you the 3P framework, you know, really crisply, really easily. It's three PowerPoint slides, and you can remember. There's only five bullet points on a slide, and they're short they're crisp. Ken WhiteFantastic. You're going to talk to our MBAs in a little bit. What kind of information advice what do you share with them? Robbie BachThe thing I'm going to talk about tonight, which is my current theme for when I go out and talk I'm talking about change. I and my personal feeling is that historians are going to look back on the year 2016, and they're going to see it like we see 1865 like we see 1932 white goosey 1954, like you see 1968. Ken WhiteBig years. Robbie BachBig years. And I think this was a big year. You know you have a populist movement that's exploding. And actually, on the left and on the right, which is very complicated, there is technology change that's going on underneath that. Culture in, not just in the United States but around the world, is evolving in a very complicated way. And so the question about change is, well, how do you not make it scary? Change scares people. People are fearful of it. And I understand that. And I think change is opportunity. In a way, 2016 tells us there's never been a better opportunity to do something amazing. Ken WhiteInteresting. Robbie BachAnd so today's discussion is about how you use strategy and a framework for innovation which I talk briefly about in the book but which I could probably write another book about. And then how leadership is the thing that drives that. And so we will go through strategy, innovation, and leadership, and then we'll do hopefully a big Q and A session. Ken WhiteYeah, great. What advice do you give to MBAs, younger people looking for a great career and a great life? Robbie BachWell, if you're thinking about an MBA career, I think a couple of things. First thing is I think about portfolio. Which I know it sounds like a funny thing to say, but you should think about your career as a set of assets that you're building and a portfolio of assets you're trying to build. And even if you're somebody who's laser-focused that says, I'm going to be this. I'm going to be an MNA specialist to pick something very precise. You still need a portfolio of assets to do that. So as you think about your career, how are you building your portfolio? What does that portfolio look like? How do you get those experiences? The second thing I tell people is you better make sure you're constantly learning. If you're in a job and you're sort of repetitive, and you've done it before I launched two versions of Office, we came to the third one. I told my boss I will finish this launch and then I will do something different. I wasn't going to learn anything new. It's great business. Huge business. Been successful. Time to do something completely different. And that led to Xbox. Ken WhiteWow, yeah. Robbie BachSo learning is important. The last thing I tell people is make sure you're working with people who you enjoy being with, even if the company is great and even if the job is a great job. Work is a social thing. You're around people every day. And if you're not enjoying those people. If you don't respect them. If you don't have people you like. If you're not having interesting conversations. If it's not an environment where you're comfortable, then it's time to move on. And it's stunning how many people find themselves in a period in their career where in the job where they don't like people are working with, and they're not learning, and they keep doing the job. And by the way, that means their portfolio isn't expanding either. So if you can get those things right, serendipity will take care of the rest. All the good things that happened in my professional career happened by accident. I wasn't supposed to be the guy who ran Xbox, and it ended up on my plate. That's the way things work. But good preparation gets to you to good opportunity. Ken WhiteGreat advice. And I know there, as I mentioned earlier, the students are really excited to hear you tonight. Thank you, Robbie. Really appreciate it. Robbie BachEnjoyed it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Robbie Bach, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, or suggestions with us. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. That's podcast@wm.edu. Thank you to our guest this week, Robbie Bach, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Michael Luchs](images/michael-luchs-73-thumb.jpg)
![Design Thinking](images/michael-luchs-73-thumb.jpg)
Michael Luchs
Episode 73: February 28, 2017
Design Thinking
Never before have we seen such a time of disruption and innovation throughout all fields of business. Companies, organizations, and leaders must be forward-thinking just to survive. Over the last decade, some of the world's leading companies have embraced "design thinking," leading to groundbreaking new products and services. Today, William & Mary business professor Michael Luchs joins us to discuss design thinking, the framework behind it, and how you and your organization can embrace it to succeed moving forward.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, regardless of your field or business, chances are it's being disrupted. Never before have we seen such a time of disruption and innovation. Companies, organizations, and leaders must be forward-thinking just to survive today. Well, over the last decade, new product design and innovation grew significantly, as did design thinking growing in popularity and visibility. The world's leading companies embraced design thinking. It's led to groundbreaking new products and services. Today's guest, William & Mary business professor Michael Luchs says design thinking is a highly effective approach for identifying and creatively solving business problems and opportunities. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss design thinking, the framework behind it, and how you and your organization can embrace it to succeed moving forward. Here's our conversation with Professor Michael Luchs. Ken WhiteMichael, thank you for taking time to join us on a very interesting topic. We appreciate you being here. Michael LuchsYeah. Thank you for having me. Ken WhiteSo for those who are unfamiliar with design thinking, how do you define it to those who don't get it? Michael LuchsWell, one of the first things I often do is sort of I reassure people it's not about being a designer because I think the name is a little misleading, but it means thinking like a designer and approaching problems the way a designer would. And so one of the first things that a designer often will do is spend time exploring a problem, and oftentimes as business people, I think we jump too quickly to trying to come up with solutions, and we haven't really explored the problem, so really at its heart design thinking is a creative problem-solving methodology that begins first with sufficiently exploring and defining the problem you're trying to solve. Ken WhiteSo problem-centric. Michael LuchsThat's absolutely right. Ken WhiteHow is that different from other approaches we use and have used? Michael LuchsWell, let me sort of, you know, walk you through a few ways in which design thinking is different from sort of conventional problem solving a business because there's some pretty fundamental differences. Well, first of all, design thinking isn't something you want to use all the time. And so it's important to sort of understand when you want to use design thinking. Conventional problem-solving approaches are fantastic when you have incremental change in mind. So, for example, let's say you're in the housing industry, and you want to develop housing that's specifically tailored to millennials. And so you're going to go out and sort of find out what are the latest housing trends you're gonna make it hip and convenient etc. So if you're looking for incremental innovation, conventional problem-solving approaches work well. Design thinking is really most relevant when you're trying to do something that's dramatically different or in a situation where you have a sense there's an opportunity, but it isn't really well-defined. So, for example, sticking with the housing context, let's say that you're thinking about new housing developments for millennials, and you're looking around you, and you're seeing all these different sort of experiments with the sharing economy, Airbnb, and you know Uber, and Lyft and so forth and you're saying huh I wonder how that might apply to housing what could I do differently. So I don't know exactly what it is I'm going to build yet. I need to spend some time really exploring and understanding, and so that's a good example of when design thinking would be more relevant. Ken WhiteSo more dramatically different. Michael LuchsMore dramatically different, so if you're looking for radical innovation or if it's a new opportunity that nobody really has offered anything significant yet. So there's no real precedent you can just sort of emulate and improve upon, but you're looking to kind of be the first mover. Ken WhiteAnd it seems like, and you interact with business professionals daily, it seems like everyone is being disrupted. Every field is in the midst of innovation. So am I correct in assuming that more and more people are implementing and embracing design thinking? Michael LuchsAbsolutely. People are using it more and more, and it's, you know, they don't always know that they're using design thinking. This is becoming actually, I think, part of our business culture. And so you'll see organizations out there that say they have design thinking departments, they have facilitators. Google has their own methodology called the Google sprint. But I think if you if you dive into lots of organizations, they're using a lot of the tools and approaches of design thinking, but they maybe don't call it that per se. Ken WhiteIn your book, you talk about the framework, and you talk about discover, define, create, and evaluate. Can you walk us through that? Is discover first is this you also say it's not quite linear but at least to explain it that somewhat has to be. Michael LuchsYeah. So to explain it, I'll do it in a linear fashion and then sort of explain how it's really much more of an iterative process. So oftentimes, it does begin with, as I mentioned before, trying to identify the problem to solve. And the first step in doing that is to discover, and discover can mean a lot of different things in different contexts, but it means learning about the market. But in particular, about the user, and that's one of the hallmarks of design thinking is it is very people-centric. It is not product or technology-centric. And so that once you're looking for solutions, you might have product or technology solutions, but we really start with discovering people and the context of usage. And so that's the Discover mode. The next mode is to define and defining the problems identifying the problems that you most want to solve. The ones that you think have the greatest potential intuitively you believe that they have the biggest opportunity for your business. The next mode is about creating. So now we're into solving the problem. But importantly, we've got a very specific problem that we've identified. And so you want to generate lots of different solutions and an experiment. And so it's not just a matter of brainstorming. It's also a matter of prototyping, and prototyping means something a little bit different in design thinking. But we try to create or simulate the experience of what the new product or service would be like for the user. And we don't develop prototypes to necessarily sell the idea to someone. Really we use these as prompts. They're probes so that we can learn more about people's needs. And that's where the final mode of design thinking comes in, and that's to evaluate, and that's really to use these initial ideas or these prototypes so that we can evaluate our solution and learn more. And that's where the iteration really continues on instead of saying. Well, they that's, you know, the best solution possible, and it stopped there. You go back to the beginning in a sense, and you say, what if I learned new about the user? How does that change how I think about the problem? Do I want to define the problem differently? Ken WhiteRight. Michael LuchsAnd so, you could iterate around defining the problem in a more specific useful way, or you could iterate around the solutions and say I got some initial feedback, I now know more, and I want to go back and generate some additional ideas and explore this a little bit more before I lock in on something just because it's feasible or just because it feels at the moment like a good idea. Ken WhiteSo it's very customer-centric. How much time A, how much time is involved, and B, how do you interact with the customers? How's that process take place? Michael LuchsWell, in terms of how you interact with people, it depends on the usage context. A lot of different qualitative techniques. But that's probably one of the other, you know, differences versus conventional problem-solving methods. With design thinking, you using qualitative techniques like observation using in-depth interviews but all sorts of ways to try to understand things that you don't know, you know, sort of a priori to look for. And so with quantitative research, we can, you know, develop a survey and send it out and quantify things. Ken WhiteRight. Michael LuchsBut really, what we're trying to do with design thinking is explore and understand, and so that's qualitative. How much time you devote to this really depends on how big the opportunity is, what your resources are, and how big the changes that you're looking for, which is why you only use design thinking in some situations because it does take time and it does take expertise to actually do qualitative research and do it well. And it's not just a matter of going out and doing an interview knowing how to synthesize or make sense of that interview data is a real skill. And that's something that we teach as well. Ken WhiteExpertise, so I just can't grab a group and do this. So are, you mentioned some companies actually hire, I assume, and I know you work with a lot of companies you need somebody to lead the process. Michael LuchsYes, but the good news is not everybody that contributes needs to understand the process. They need to understand maybe the framework in sort of the spirit of it, or so people refer to the mindset you absolutely need a skilled facilitator. And this is the sort of thing that companies that just try to do it. It's there's so many cultural norms that you're you're sort of bumping up against it's really hard to sort of stay on track and not fall back into conventional patterns. But in terms of the rest of the participants, really, what you're looking for is the maximum diversity possible in terms of perspectives. And so you want people from customer service, in particular people that are interfacing with the customer. You want people that are going to represent the technology side of the business, the finance side, but you're looking for a lot of different perspectives. And here's something that's a little kind of. It sounds crazy but can be really helpful sometimes. Bringing customers in to be part of brainstorming sessions can be really useful as well and give you insights and keep you honest in ways that you know you know, again we fall back into conventional modes of thinking when we're just surrounded by people that are familiar with what we're already doing and that's a recipe for incremental innovation. Ken WhiteAnd we always say we know our customer. That's our field. We know these people. Michael LuchsAnd we do know the customer of yesterday. Ken WhiteYeah. Michael LuchsWe don't necessarily understand where things are headed. Ken WhiteInteresting. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Professor Michael Luchs in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're looking to expand your business leadership skills, the Center for Corporate Education has a terrific program for you. The certificate in business management is a five-day program that runs from April 10th through April 14th here at William & Mary. Each eight-hour day will be dedicated to an important facet of business, including communication, managerial accounting, business strategy, operational effectiveness, and executive leadership. The program helps you broaden your professional skills and helps you think and lead strategically and successfully. For more information, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation on design thinking with William & Mary business professor Michael Luchs. Ken WhiteYou mentioned discover, define, create, and evaluate. There are other frameworks, but yet they're somewhat very similar. Right. Michael LuchsRight. And anybody who's schooled in any of the sort of the major frameworks in design thinking will be able to map onto other frameworks. And so you know, whether it's sort of, you know, five modes or four modes, etc., at their heart, they really all share this idea of identifying the problems to solve and then solving them in an iterative fashion. Some of them tend to be more sort of oriented towards consumer products. Others are more sort of open to a lot of different contexts. But the frameworks are very similar. Ken WhiteThe role of failure is important in design thinking. Can you tell us a little bit about the role of failure? Michael LuchsIt's really important, and I think it's often misunderstood, and it's even become popular to say that, yeah, we need to encourage failure. And I think there's an important sort of nuance to this, and I'm gonna borrow off of Amy Edmondson, who's at Harvard, and she talks about different types of failure, and so we'll start with kind of, you know, a conventional predictable type of failure in operations so predictable operational failures. These are not failures that are valuable. Right. So, for example, in the context of a flight and travel, if the maintenance processes broke down, parts weren't available because somebody didn't follow the rules and the regulations. That's a preventable failure. And there's no value derived from that. Right. Another type of failure she talks about are the unavoidable failures in complex systems, and so travel is complex when you have something like a major northeastern storm that disrupts travel as much as you planned for those situations, and you have contingencies each of those situations is somewhat unique, and you're going to end up with things you can't completely control. So you manage your best, and you acknowledge that that's going to happen. The type of failure, though, that we're open to with design thinking are what she refers to as intelligent failures at the frontier. And so what that means is you're actually willing to conduct some small-scale experiments to learn more about the user so that you can really innovate. So again, sticking with the context of flight, let's say, for example, you're trying to think about how to compete in this hyper-competitive market driven by, you know, things other than the weather, like commodity prices for fuel, etc. Let's say that you wanted to experiment with the idea of a one-month travel pass for customers. Instead of a ticket that you buy, it's a one-month travel pass. It's all you can eat in a sense, with the distinction being that you're flying standby just as people with the airline get to right. So how would people feel about that? Well, that would be really risky to roll that out across the board, and you know, make a big bet, and you know, sort of hang your brand on that, but if you say, you know, we're going to run that in a single market for a month and see how it goes and learn from it that's the type of failure that we should encourage because it's manageable, it's controllable, it's in the interest of trying to do something really innovative. Ken WhiteInteresting you talk about briefly the role of collaboration that's key in design thinking. Michael LuchsIt's really important and collaboration. One of the things I mentioned before was the importance of diversity and having a lot of different perspectives. But the other thing that's interesting, and we teach this as well in sort of, you know, studio and other workshops that we run, is to think about how to get the most from the individual and do that in a group context. So, for example, with brainstorming, there's debate about whether it's best to brainstorm individually, should I do something like that on my own, or should I do that in a group. And our answer is that you want to get the best of both. And so, for example, one of the techniques that we teach is how you brainstorm within a group context in ways that all of your ideas and we use post-its and sharpies and whiteboards, but you want to make sure that all of your ideas are visible to everyone else so that you can inspire other people to think. But also, you have the opportunity to get your ideas out there, and then you have a group discussion to really talk about the ideas, what inspired them, what is useful about them, and how we can evolve those. The problem with getting groups together, particularly, you know, diverse groups, oftentimes is you have one person who's particularly smart or charismatic or just happens to be the de facto boss in that group. Ken WhiteRight. Michael LuchsAnd that totally squelches the benefit of having that diverse group. So learning how to facilitate these meetings is an important skill, and that's, and that's, I think, somewhat unique to design thinking. Ken WhiteHow does design thinking and leadership how are they tied together? What does the leader need to know and do? Michael LuchsWell, I think you know what I just talked about actually is relevant to leadership. The first is making sure that you really understand all the different types of people that you can bring into a problem. You're not going to solve it yourself as a leader, but you can be really intentional about the different types of people that you pull in. Second is making sure that either you've got a facilitator there or, if you as the leader want to play this role, that you're very mindful of process in the sense that you're clear about whether you're at the particular moment working on generating ideas or instead debating what problem to solve in the first place. And sometimes, just making sure that the team is focused on the right thing at the right time and everyone's having the same conversation is really important as well. And then the other thing that's really critical too with leadership and design thinking. But I think leadership, in general, is knowing when to move forward. One of the dangers and risks with design thinking is it's very open-ended, which is very powerful, but it's also dangerous in the sense that that could become an infinity loop. Ken WhiteRight. Michael LuchsAnd you know, every company has fixed resources and having an intuition about when you've learned enough and when you have enough of a defined solution that then you can move into a more sort of linear product development process. That, again, I think requires some leadership in knowing when to make that call or empowering other people to make that call is important as well. Ken WhiteDo you have an example of who's doing this the right way? Who's embraced it, and it's led to some good things? Michael LuchsSure. I think I mentioned Google before, and there are a lot of other organizations out there. Certainly, in the consumer products and technology worlds, and that wouldn't surprise most people. What's interesting, though, is you have organizations in other fields like insurance and finance. For example, this is something that Wall Street has incurred really increasingly embracing. Capital One, I know, has a big sort of innovation center and people that are trained as facilitators. A lot of the major consulting firms, Ernst and Young, Bain, IBM, are training people in these methods as well. And so you see a lot of companies that are talking about design thinking investing in design thinking spaces that enable the types of behaviors that we're talking about. But again, I think this is becoming part of our business culture, and a lot of companies that don't really necessarily think about design thinking explicitly are starting to recognize that there are systematic ways to explore problems. They're starting to recognize the value of qualitative research. They're starting to understand that brainstorming means a lot more than just generating lots of ideas and starting to rethink how you prototype and how you sort of place small bets in an intelligent way. And so I think a lot of companies are embracing this, whether or not they call it Design Thinking. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Michael Luchs, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, or suggestions with us. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. That's podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Michael Luchs and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Mike Petters](images/mike-petters-72-thumb.jpg)
![Making a Successful Military Transition](images/mike-petters-72-thumb.jpg)
Mike Petters
Episode 72: February 21, 2017
Making a Successful Military Transition
Huntington Ingalls is America's largest military shipbuilding company and a provider of manufacturing, engineering, and management services to the nuclear energy, oil, and gas markets. For more than a century, Huntington Ingalls has built more ships in more classes than any other U.S. Naval shipbuilder. Before taking the lead in 2011, President and CEO Mike Petters was President of Northrop Grumman shipbuilding. Petters earned his bachelor's degree from the U.S. Naval Academy and an MBA from William & Mary, and he rejoins us today to discuss how professionals, especially service members, can successfully make the transition from service life to civilian life.
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TranscriptRosanna KoppelmanFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders around the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. Filling in for your host Ken White I'm Rosanna Koppelman. Thanks for listening. It's America's largest military shipbuilding company. In addition, Huntington Ingalls is a provider of manufacturing, engineering, and management services to the nuclear energy, oil, and gas markets. For more than a century, Huntington Ingalls has built more ships in more classes than any other US naval shipbuilder. The organization is headquartered in Newport News, Virginia. Its President and CEO is Mike Petters. Before taking the lead of Huntington Ingalls in 2011, Petters was President of Northrop Grumman shipbuilding. He earned his bachelor's degree from the US Naval Academy and his MBA from William & Mary. He rejoins us on the podcast today to discuss how professionals and especially service members, can successfully make the transition from service life to civilian life. Here's my conversation with Mike Petters, CEO, and President of Huntington Ingalls. Rosanna KoppelmanMike, thanks so much again for joining us at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business. It's always a pleasure to have you. I'm looking at your itinerary today. You're going to be talking with several students in our MBA program. And it's always a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with a CEO and President and anyone really in a senior leadership role of an organization to give our students kind of an inside look at what it takes to be an effective leader in your type of position. The question I have for you is, you know a lot of our service members are going to be talking today with the Major General James Wright MBA students. Some of them will be transitioning out of the military, and some of them may choose to stay in the military. What advice what guidance can you give them about how to think about that transition moving forward? Mike PettersTransitions are times in life that's very turbulent. There's always a scratchpad of expectations that sometimes are surpassed and sometimes are not lived up to. And so, as you think about what, you know why you're making the transition that you've chosen to make, and you're working your way through that. I think it's first of all important to think about you know what is it that you're trying to accomplish with the transition. I think that, you know, it's a bit of a naive notion to make a transition from the standpoint of, well, the grass will be greener there. I think a more mature way to think about that, or and I've watched this for many people over many years, is the grass will be different there. I can recall when I made my transition from the Navy into shipbuilding, I left an organization that frankly had my career mapped out for me. Not not in tremendous detail, but you know I was going to spend three years at sea and spend a couple of years on shore go back to sea as a department head. I'd go to school, and I would go back as an XO and go back as a CO, and next thing you know, you're 20 years in, and you kind of have the framework for how that's going to work itself out. And I can recall within a couple of months of being out of the Navy and into the shipbuilding business, there was nothing like that in the organization that I went into. And so, you know, so some of the things that you just you assume are going to be there are not going to be there. On the other hand, things that you never anticipated will show up. One of the things that coming out of the service and if you're coming out of the service and going into the private sector, time management will be very different, very, very different. You will find that I think the thing that says the most about who you are is what you spend your time on. People see what you spend your time on, and you know, in a structured environment like the service, at least the service branch that I was familiar with, a lot of your time was determined by lots of things, and very little of it is actually and time management is in that context is how do you get the most done in the least amount of time but time management in the private sector is really what are you going to spend your time on. You're going to invest time in something to get some return out of it. And so you can have to rethink that and just be aware of how you spend your time. There will be some there'll be people who'll be very successful in private sector because they can do a lot they're very productive. They can do a lot of things in a very short period of time, and they learn how to do that in the service. But there will also be people who did a lot of things in a very short period of time in the service who find out that they're much more inclined to be strategic, which means you don't see a flurry of activity there, but you see lots of return on that time investment and strategy. There's a conscious decision that you have to make. I think of it, and you know, I talk to my own team about if you think about your organization as a building and you're working on the ninth floor of that building, you know, when you start work, and you're sitting in the back row on the ninth floor and after a few years you kind of move up a couple of rows and then you know after some period of time they let you sit in the front row and then after a little bit more time you might get picked to sit at the desk in the front of the room and then you know someday you get the corner office on the ninth floor. In that career path, you know all there is to know about the ninth floor, but you may not have any idea what's going on on the 25th floor. Rosanna KoppelmanSure. Mike PettersAnd there's other paths where you start out in the back row on the ninth floor, and then you go to the middle rows on the 25th floor, and then you go down to the third floor for the front row, and then you're sitting at the desk on the 12th floor, and then you get the corner office on the 18th floor. Well, now you're probably trying to lead people who know a whole lot more about what you're doing than you do. And what you bring to it as a is you know you're a mile wide and an inch deep and as opposed to being a mile deep and an inch wide. Now organizations need both kinds of people, and I think that, frankly I think you have to make a conscious decision as to which way you want to go. You know when as you make the transition, and the thing about transitions that I think are the most interesting is that it's the one time in your professional career that you get to tell other people what you think you're worth. I know of you know where people are transitioning out of business schools, and they have an opportunity to go work for a company, and they decide that that's not what they want to do. So they're not going to go work for that company even though it's a great company and it has great benefits and all that sort of thing. They hang on to go and do what they want to do. My own brother transitioned from the Navy as a helicopter pilot. He still wanted to fly helicopters. So in that time of coming out, he never gave up on the dream of flying. He did a lot of things to kind of make ends meet until he got a flying position. And today, he's still flying. So you know, and it was clear that he was just not happy in any of those other things that he did until he got to what he wanted to do. And so I think that you know transitions are about being honest with yourself, giving yourself some sense of what do I want to do because the grass is different. How do I take advantage of that? How do I make sure that what I'm trying to achieve with the transition is achievable and that I have my best chance to succeed doing that? Rosanna KoppelmanThat's good. I was thinking about some of our students, and oftentimes coming through the career center, many of them who transition are really really experienced that are experienced in a particular MOS or a particular military occupational specialty, and they think that's where they should stay that that's the only pathway to get to where they want. How important is finding what you're really passionate about versus just what you're good at? Mike PettersWow, what a great question. That really cuts right to it because, you know, I've seen folks who 20 25 years in the service, and they come out looking for an engineering job. And I think that's what I mean about. You know if you, if you spent 25 years in service, you have a leadership skill that is being honed in a way that most people in business with 25 years of experience have not faced the kinds of things that you've faced. And so, I mean, I was only in the service for five years. I got a lifetime of experience leading people for those five years. I mean, I just I still go back to the things that I had to decide when I was 25 years old and had responsibility for a ship. I mean, you just those that's that's not experience that most of the folks in corporate America get. So if you want to be an engineer, by all means, we need great engineers. We never have enough great engineers, but if you want to try to parlay your engineering experience and your leadership experience into some other kind of a career, then that's what I mean about trying to make a decision on the front end do you want to be the engineer would be somebody who stayed on the ninth floor their whole career. We need all those people we can get. Rosanna KoppelmanSure. Mike PettersBut don't forget that you have a craft in your bag that a lot of people don't have and that you can find ways you can demonstrate that you've been able to move around and if they want to put you in charge of the folks on the 18th floor and you've never been on the 18th floor you know how to do that. I had an experience. I think I may have told you guys about this experience, where I had these senior shipbuilders that I went to. I was 34 years old, and I knew they knew more about what I was doing, but that's sitting down with those four guys was not any different than when I showed up at my ship as an ensign, and I had a senior chief electrician and a chief electronics technician working for me. I knew on the first minute of that conversation that those two guys they knew a whole lot more about what I was supposed to do than I did. And so you very quickly have to figure out, okay, how do we, how do I figure out what I bring to this table, and then how do we create a better team and a better outcome. That's something that happens in the military every day that doesn't happen in business every day and so so give yourself a chance. You know to consider all of the things all the craft you have in your toolbox because you've got some there that you may not have realized. Rosanna KoppelmanWe'll continue our discussion with Mike Petters, President, and CEO of Huntington Ingalls, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the CEO and President of Huntington Ingalls, Mike Petters. Rosanna KoppelmanMike, I've heard your employees many times say that you're a great communicator, and I've heard you, and I think they're right. And I'm wondering there are a few nuances that one has to kind of master or understand transitioning from service member to private sector. Communication is certainly one of those. And the way perhaps you may communicate as a service member might be different in certain settings than how you would transitioning into the civilian sector. You have communicated across many diverse groups over your 30-year career history. From kids all the way up to the C suite all the way up to and even across that spectrum. What are those nuggets of truth that you would pass along to the service member as he or she is thinking about how do I change my style? What are those tenets, perhaps, or elements of communication that have worked well for you that you could pass on to them? Mike PettersThis is something that I don't spend a lot of time thinking about, frankly. I consider communication to be another one of those tools in your tool bag. And you know it's tied it's so closely tied to leadership that we actually believe that people that are really good communicators are natural-born leaders. You know, when you ask a room, is leadership something that you can learn, or are you just born with it? You'll see a couple of hands say you're born with it. But most people say you can learn it, but then you ask who are the natural-born leaders that you've met. And almost invariably, the natural-born leaders are able to communicate very effectively, you know. And I think you can learn to communicate effectively. But I think that the most important aspect of communication is that you have to be authentic and honest. I mean, I jokingly would tell somebody that I can sell ice cream to Eskimos if I believe in the ice cream, but if I don't believe in the ice cream, I can't sell it to people in the desert. Rosanna KoppelmanSure. Mike PettersRight so, so you have to believe in what you're saying because the one thing people will see right away is that if you don't really believe in what you're saying, they can tell. I mean, people are smart, and they can tell, so stick to the stuff that you really believe. If you believe, bring a passion to it, and people will appreciate the passion, and then practice and do it as often as you can. I stood up in front of my church when I was in third grade and started reading the lessons on Sunday morning. So I've I was too young to be nervous about that. And when I got older, I'd been doing it for so long that I just I never got nervous about being in front of a crowd. I know that sounds kind of minor, but I've seen folks with really important things to say not be able to say it because their nerves get them. I had a band director at one point in my life who said that if you're nervous, it's because you didn't practice enough. And so you know every chance you have to stand up in front of somebody and tell them what you're thinking you should do, and you should look for feedback. You know communication if you think about what communication is and why it's so important for leadership. Communication is taking what's in my head and getting it somehow into your head. Now we're only in the 21st century, and there may be some point in the future where you can read my thoughts, and we don't have to do all that other stuff, right? But I can just think it, and you've got it. But think about just the transition from what you thought to what you say. What's the efficiency of that? And then the transition of what you say, you know what I say to what you hear, what's the efficiency of that, and then what's the efficiency of what you heard to what you think. If you put those things together, you kind of quickly realize that there's probably less than a 25 percent chance that my thought is actually going to end up being your thought which means you've got to do it over and over again. Right, you've got to reinforce it. You've got to, and that's why you have to be true. I mean, you have to be authentic because if it's something you really believe in, you don't need a script. You just keep saying it, and you keep saying the same things, and then people will start to understand not only that that's what you believe, but they will understand why you believe it and what you believe about it, and they'll see your actions because you're being honest they'll see your actions align with your belief which will just reinforce your credibility. So understand that there's huge friction in communication and that, you know, simplifying messages is a way to cut through some of that, but repetition is a way to cut through that too. And your confidence and honesty, and authentic passion cuts through most of it and just practice. So there was a time in my career when I guess I had responsibility for human resources in Newport News, and I had only had the job for a couple of months. It was on the back end of a 17-week labor strike. We had a situation where some leaders in our organization were leaving the company to take hourly positions at another company, and we were having a big town hall meeting. The president was holding this meeting and came to me, and you know, I did kind of the usual here's where we are, this is what we're going on, this what we're doing with your benefits and all that sort of stuff the usual things that the HR guy does. And somebody asked a question about that situation where people were leaving the company. I got pretty emotional about it. I mean, I, you know, somewhat uncharacteristically for me, but I got somewhat emotional about it. I said why is it why would you choose not to be a leader in our organization so you could be a follower in another organization. What's wrong with what we're doing where we're setting that up? You know I've only been in this job for a couple of months. But let me tell you all, I'm going to fix that problem. And I mean, it was a lot more emotion than that, but that was basically what where I was, and it wasn't screaming. It was just passion coming out. I really believe in leadership as a competency of our business and how important it is to make sure that everybody's pulling on the rope in the same way and if we're not, if we're not even on a, you know, on the same team as a leadership team, we don't have any chance with the followers you know. And so when we went through the strike a couple of years before that, the leadership team was pretty divided as a member of the team. I was I saw that. And so it became a let's get the leadership team, you know coherent cohesive get everybody in the leadership team on the same page. Not the Chiefs. You know the C Suite folks get them all on the same page or not all? It was everybody. If you are a frontline supervisor, you need to be on the same page as the CEO. And you need to put as a leader in the organization wherever you are. You need to put energy into making sure that we're on the same page, and if we're not on the same page, let's go figure out why and what we can do about that and the success of that. We spent that was three years before our next round of bargaining with the labor union. We spent those three years creating cohesion in the management team, that bargaining went without a hitch. After that, I became the president of the shipyard in Newport News and continued that energy of let's get everybody on the same page, and let's keep moving ahead. And we had a pretty good run for two or three years and so much so that Northrop decided to put all of shipbuilding into the tent. The first thing we did was we said we've got to get all on the same page. We've got to get the leadership team all pull in the same way. Three years after that, we spun the company out. It's now been six years since we spun out and this tenet of let's create cohesion in the leadership team was. And this is more than just saying you got my talking points. Rosanna KoppelmanRight. Mike PettersI mean, this is I understand what your job is. Here's how I want you to think about the decisions you have to make so that you'll make the kind of decisions that we can all be proud of. And one of the things I tell my senior leaders all the time is we all represent each other. You know, if people see me, they're not seeing just, you know, Mike Petters, who lives in Newport News. They're seeing the corporation, but we're the largest employer in two states. So when they see a manager in our business or a vice president in our business who is behaving badly in some way. That reflects on all of us. And that's a 24-hour a day, seven-day commitment to the team. And I ask my team every year I ask them are you up for that. If you're not up for that, come see me, and we will. We'll be fine. We'll figure out something. But if you are not up for it and you don't come see me, and then something happens, you're in the deep end of the pool without a life jacket. I mean, it's just, you know, it's I take it that seriously, and that's about creating the leadership cohesion that we need. And I would go back to, I mean, I guess that's sort of been a philosophy of mine all my life. But it was that moment in that day when that question got asked when I think part of my answer was I don't need the newspapers or the workforce leadership to tell me where my workforce is. I've got a leadership team here who should really be able to tell me where the workforce is. And you know, 15 years later, it's working out okay. Rosanna KoppelmanAll good stuff. Thanks so much, Mike, for your comments today and your insight. Sure this will be. I know this will be very valuable to our listeners. Mike PettersI'm glad to do it. Thanks for inviting me. Rosanna KoppelmanThat's our conversation with Mike Petters, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Mike Petters, and thanks to you for joining us. Filling in for Ken White, I'm Rosanna Koppelman, Executive Director at the Center for Corporate Education. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Robert Gates](images/robert-gates-71-thumb.jpg)
![A Passion for Leadership](images/robert-gates-71-thumb.jpg)
Robert Gates
Episode 71: February 14, 2017
A Passion for Leadership
One of the toughest leadership challenges is being at the helm of a big institution. Whether civic or private, bureaucracies often move at a snail's pace, and it takes a special leader with special qualities to drive change and improvement. Former Director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says large companies can be transformed and explains how in his book "A Passion for Leadership." Dr. Gates joins us today to share his advice on successful leadership.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. One of the toughest leadership challenges is being at the helm of the big institution, whether civic or private bureaucracies often move at a snail's pace, and it takes a special leader with special qualities to drive change and improvement. Robert Gates says large companies and organizations can be transformed, and he explains how in his book "A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from 50 Years of Public Service." In the book, Gates shares his experiences from his many leadership roles, including director of the CIA, president of Texas A&M, and Secretary of Defense. Currently, he's partner in the consulting firm RiceHadleyGates and serves as chancellor at William & Mary. On the podcast today, he shares his advice on successful leadership. Here's our conversation with Dr. Robert Gates. Ken WhiteWell, thank you for being here. We greatly appreciate your time. I know there's a roomful of MBAs is waiting to hear from you, as you're going to interact with them as soon as we have completed with our conversation. Robert GatesI'm happy to do it. Ken WhiteSo the book. What encouraged you to write it? What got you to write the book? Robert GatesActually, it was midway through my experiences as Secretary of Defense and especially after I'd been asked to stay on by President Obama, and that had never happened before. I look back on my career and realize that I had led several different very different organizations. All of them were huge and had made some pretty significant changes in each of those institutions, and the light dawned, and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe my core competency was actually leading change and figuring out how to do that in institutions that are not generally perceived as being amenable to much change. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. In one of the chapters is my favorite chapter in the book. You call it agent of change mirror mirror on the wall, and it's a chapter where it where you're encouraging the reader, if they want to be a leader, to look at themselves and really say do you have these qualities? One of the qualities you talk about you say the best leaders have their egos in check. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Robert GatesWell, I think that I think that leadership is a team sport. Most people think of it as somebody riding in on a white horse and sort of taking command and so on and so forth. But in fact, in most big institutions, leadership leading change is about how you, first of all, developing in league with others. The career professionals, outsiders, and others, a vision of where an organization ought to go. What's wrong with it? How can we make it better or simply a vision of a different future? And the only way you get people to be honest with you and get their best ideas is if you're not always talking. And so it requires a lot of listening. It requires respecting other people's points of view, and then at the end of the day, when it comes time to make decisions, it's a matter of integrating what you've learned from all these different sources into your own decision-making process as the person responsible. But an egotist is the antithesis of the kind of leadership that is needed for transformative change because I believe for that kind of change to last and to work, it has to have the support of people inside the institution, and that means they have to have buy-in and that means they must feel that the change was as much theirs as it was the leaders. Ken WhiteYou talk about listening one of my favorite pieces in the book. It says never miss a good chance to shut up, and you know when you're talking, you're not learning. One of the pieces you share as a leader must maintain his or her dignity and some distance. On the distance, how do you negotiate that? Because you don't know if it's too distant. Robert GatesI think you don't want to be aloof. You want to be approachable, but by the same token, you have to maintain a certain mystique a certain distance. And that means you can't be just one of the boys or one of the girls. You can't be the student's best friend. You have to realize in dealing with staff and the people who work for you that the time may well come when you have to fire that person. And if you've developed a very close personal relationship, that's going to be very difficult and even more difficult for the person who has to be let go or demote them or move them someplace else. But you will have to take an action that they will regard as negative. I also think that the leader has to be a role model. And I think if you're in a leadership position. I'll give you an example of avoiding too much familiarity. And in this day and age, this will sound very anachronistic, but I used to chide the combatant commanders. Now, these are four-star generals. Okay. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesFor their tweeting and Facebook. I said you know the truth is people really aren't interested in your travel schedule. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesOr what you did on your summer vacation. Ken WhiteGood point. Robert GatesBut the more, the more you are familiar with your troops, the less awesome they see you. The more that you're sharing bits and pieces of your private life or what you're doing in the office the less, the less mystique there is around you. You're a four-star general, and you're going to order people into battle. It's hard for me to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or George Patton on Facebook. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesI just think that you have to remember that once you're in charge, you're no longer one of the gang. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesIt's very interesting. I have a friend where I live who was a fireman, and he was promoted to a deputy fire inspector. So now he wears a tie and a white shirt, and the guys in the firehouse hardly talk to him anymore because he's management. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesThey work together, they sacrifice together, they did everything together for years, and now he's in a different place in their eyes. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesAnd it was a shock to him the first time he went back to the firehouse, and you know, I will say I think the guy who's got this formula down just right is the president of William & Mary Taylor Reveley. I think everybody every student on this campus loves Taylor. Ken WhiteThey do. Robert GatesThinks Taylor is a great guy really enjoys him. But you don't see Taylor out in his t-shirt playing touch football. Ken WhiteNo, you don't. Robert GatesAnd so there's a there is a way to do this that makes you accessible and friendly. I've been told the military the guys in the military in, particularly those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, really admired me and thought I had their back and was their supporter and their friend, but they were never familiar with me. Ken WhiteRight. You talk in the book about having Lieutenants who you can really count on that they're willing to do the work and buy into the agenda. My point what I'm getting at is who can you be familiar with in the organization. Can you be close to them, or is that friendship you have where you confide in someone else? Is that someone outside the organization? Robert GatesI think that you know, in an organization, there's generally one or two people where you can really let your hair down and share, and generally, that's somebody who is very close to you in your office or in your immediate staff. Somebody like that, somebody you can trust so that when you do rant against something or somebody, you know it never goes beyond the four walls, so you can at least let off steam. But by and large, you have to be very disciplined. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Dr. Robert Gates, author of A Passion for Leadership. In just a minute, our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is offering a terrific program for professionals looking to expand their business leadership skills. The certificate in business management is a five-day program that runs from April 10th through the 14th at William & Mary. Each eight-hour day will be dedicated to an important facet of business, including communication, managerial accounting, business strategy, operational effectiveness, and executive leadership. The program helps you broaden your professional skills and helps you think and lead strategically and successfully. For more information about the program, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the Former Secretary of Defense and author of A Passion for Leadership. Ken WhiteYou say a good leader must compromise and adjust plans because you don't always get what you want. That's difficult for some leaders. They think what they say goes. Robert GatesWell, one of my role models in this is Ronald Reagan, and it used to drive some of the ideological purists in the White House and in the conservative movement because Ronald Reagan was himself a dealmaker and a Ronald Reagan could cut a deal on a proposal that he made and get 65 percent of what he wanted. He would grab it, take it, and then immediately turn around and start the effort to get the other 35. So I cut thirty-six major military programs in the spring of 2009. If they had been built to completion, it would have cost the taxpayers 330 billion dollars. Most of my predecessors were lucky if they got one or two programs cut. I got 33 of the 36 approved or sustained by Congress in the summer of 2009. And I came back the next year and got the other three. Ken WhiteThere it is. Robert GatesSo you know, sometimes you don't eat the whole pizza at one bite. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesYou take a piece at a time. Ken WhiteDon't overstay your welcome. When do you know that time's up? Robert GatesOh, I think this is the hardest. This is the hardest question for every leader and particularly if you've had a pretty good run. As I like to put it, the key question is, when do you dance off the stage? And ideally, the sweet spot is to leave where people are saying I wish he weren't leaving so soon instead of how the hell do we get rid of this guy? Finding the place right in between those two is key. And I think a part of it is understanding that you're not indispensable, as many people in history have said the cemeteries are full of indispensable men. And I think the key is it goes back to keeping your ego in check that the institution will survive without you. And a key part of this also that I write about is when are you out of gas. When are you out of energy? When are you out of ideas? Part of the theme in the book is you got to be continually changing an organization. No organization can be static, and so you know when you go on vacation or on a trip, and you've got your yellow pad, and you're putting down the kind of the to-do list of things that I want to continue to do. As long as your yellow pad is filling up, you probably ought to stay in the job. But once you come back and your yellow pad is empty, then it's time to go. The other key for me is can you be as critical in evaluating the success of programs you've put in place and people you've put in place as you were in evaluating the programs and people your predecessor put in place. And if you can't evaluate and see if these people have grown, if you're ideas no longer work, or need to be changed. If you can't do that, if you're defending rather than moving forward, it's time to go. Ken WhiteYou talk about how leaders are custodians of the organization. They should believe they can and should make it better. Is that front and center first and foremost? Is that what leaders should remind themselves of beyond, above, and beyond all others? Robert GatesWell, I think that I think it's the leader's responsibility. I believe that every organization can be better. I believe I've worked for some amazing places, and I've always felt they could still be better. And I think that leadership is the central purpose of leadership or aim should be. How do I preserve those traditional elements of the culture and the traditions of this institution that give it life that give it meaning for the people who work here, and yet change the way we do things to make us relevant five years from now, ten years from now, 15 years from now? The core challenge is identifying the critical parts. Every organization has a culture and has lots of traditions. Some of them are foolish and don't make any sense anymore and can be put to the side. But what's core? What makes it different? And I would say that I discovered this at the agency at CIA, at Texas A&M, and at the Defense Department, and subsequently at the Boy Scouts. The one thing that is common that is critical in the culture of each of those institutions is that they consider themselves part of a family and that they will take care of each other and look out for each other, and a leader has to figure out okay that's fundamental. How do I strengthen that because that's the foundation? Ken WhiteYou mentioned Ronald Reagan. You quote Winston Churchill, who are some other leaders you think are just fantastic. Robert GatesWell, I think one of my favorites has to be first President Bush, George H.W. Bush. He was wonderful the work for a wonderful sense of humor. You know, I worked with some amazing people in the military, and you know, in each of the institutions I've, I've made friends and have learned from people. The two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs when I was secretary Pete Pace and Admiral Mike Mullen. My provost and executive vice president at Texas A&M, David Pryor, my chief of staff at the Pentagon, Robert Rangel, there just every job, there's been a handful of people who played a huge role in whatever success I had. Ken WhiteWhat would you like people to take away from the book A Passion for Leadership? Robert GatesI think two things. The first is that people are unhappy with government and government institutions and a lot of private sector institutions, and for good reason and. That all of these institutions can be changed, can be reformed, and should be, and that we owe it to our citizens and our customers to do that. And you know, a lot of times, I think particularly these public institutions, people just throw up their hands and say there is nothing you can do about it quote unquote, you can't fight city hall. Well, the truth is one of the main themes of the book is you can change these institutions. I know because I did it. Ken WhiteRight. Robert GatesAnd here are the tools to do that. The other message is really kind of at the end of the book, and it is the distinction between leadership and management. Management can be taught in school, and God knows we need good managers. In HR, and marketing, and manufacturing, and everything else. But in my view, leadership is more about the heart than the head. Dwight Eisenhower once wrote his son in 1943 that you can learn leadership and man and that the key is to try and get them to want to do things for you, and the way to do that is through devotion to duty, sincerity, fairness, and good cheer. And I tell people devotion to duty, sincerity, fairness, good cheer. You don't learn these in school. These are personal qualities. And it boils down to do you have a vision on how to make a place better and do you love people well enough to work closely with them to help bring about that change. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Robert Gates. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, and suggestions with us via email at podcast@wm.edu. That's podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week, Dr. Robert Gates, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Kathleen Powell](images/kathleen-powell-70-thumb.jpg)
![The Employment Business](images/kathleen-powell-70-thumb.jpg)
Kathleen Powell
Episode 70: February 2, 2017
The Employment Business
Back in the day, colleges and universities focused most of their efforts on classroom education, leaving the job and career search to the student. Times have changed, and schools like William & Mary invest greatly in career development. Kathleen Powell is the Associate Vice President of Career Development and works with students on all facets of career counseling, placement, and coaching. She joins us today to discuss how a partnership between the student and the career development team can lead to a great job and career.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, back in the day, colleges and universities focused most of their efforts on classroom education, leaving the job and career search to the student. Well, times have changed. Schools like William & Mary invest greatly in career development, offering a variety of programs, services, and classes that help students get off to a positive start in terms of employment. On-campus career teams partner with employers, offer career assessments to students, and coach students on everything from the soft skills to resumé writing to salary negotiation. Kathleen Powell is Associate Vice President for Career Development at William & Mary. She and her team at the Cohen Career Center work with students on all facets of career counseling, placement, and coaching. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss how a partnership between the student and the career development team can lead to a great job and career. Here's our conversation with Kathleen Powell of William & Mary. Ken WhiteWell, Kathleen, thank you for joining us. I know you are always busy. There is always a line of interested students and employers over in your area but thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate you taking the time and sharing your expertise. Kathleen PowellMy pleasure, Ken. I'm happy to be with you this afternoon. Ken WhiteWhen I think back to college, of course, it was a long time for me. There was no career services, career management, probably for many of our listeners. What is it? What is it that you do, and what do you offer? Kathleen PowellRight, so just a bit of history about career services. So it really started to churn, I would say, in the 1960s, and it was more of a career counseling model. How do you feel about this career? What are you thinking about this career and it might have been one person, it could have been a faculty member, it could have been a part-time person generally stuck away in a corner, and then as folks started to figure out that we needed a return on the investment in higher education and what can that look like. What's that value proposition? I think there was more. I know there was more spotlight on career development and what that meant. So career development as a field has grown, and there is a National Association of Colleges and Employers, and I know that we're going to talk about that in a little bit, but what has happened is it went from that counseling model to the placement model. So I know that there is that nomenclature still out there for certain individuals that will say what is your placement rate. And that is a whole different language. Now we talk about our first destination survey. We talk about our knowledge rate. Again just a whole new landscape. So we went from the counseling to the placement, and now we're to that coaching area. And so what we do is we are finding pathways in creating synergies for students to connect either major to career, or alumni to alumni, or alumni to employers, students to employers. So it's this space that we have in higher education that is to educate the college around how students find opportunities and whether it's full-time, part-time, summer internships, externships again, there's just a whole body of knowledge out there in terms of how we're creating these pathways for our students and to get to that pathway it's resumé writing and critique, and it's mock interviews, and it's their elevator pitch, and it's helping with grad school applications. So there's a whole gamut that's in there that helps our students figure out what is it for them after college. What does life look like for them? Ken WhiteWhich is uncomfortable for anyone, especially a college student. But if they're willing to get out of their comfort zone, what great coaching, what a great opportunity. Kathleen PowellExactly so it's the idea of actually connecting with our students before they ever come to college, and I would say many career centers are doing that, and it's reaching out and saying you can use an assessment free of charge. We want you to think about what are your values what are your interests. Have you thought about your major if you have terrific, and what will you do with that if you haven't thought about it? We think that's terrific too. And that opens up opportunities. So keeping the students mindful about your major may be your career, or your major may not be your career. And today, employers are looking for a skill set. So not so much for majors, as you will. Engineering, yes. Accounting, yes, I would say specific types of areas, but in general, they're looking for career competencies, and that's what we're training our students to think about and articulate. Ken WhiteAnd you mentioned assessments. I mean, these are I know we do them with our graduate business students. These are really helpful. Kathleen PowellThey are very helpful, and I think it's setting up just the expectation and level setting expectations. So students will say I want to take an assessment that will tell me what to be when I grow up. And we help them understand that it will help them identify their strengths and their abilities, but it will not tell them what they should be. Ken WhiteRight. Kathleen PowellAnd sometimes, students will take one. They're like, I didn't like the answer to that; I want to take another one. We have a variety of assessments that they can take. Ken WhiteSure. Kathleen PowellSo and we'll let them take as many as they want because what we can do as a professional is look at the results and say, yes, these are different, but if you look at the thread that's running through, you have an interest in X and whether they want to own that or not we just talk about ways to help them support what it is that their interest might be. Ken WhiteYeah. Now you mentioned that there's a national association, so career offices and counseling is pretty much the standard across higher-ed. Kathleen PowellIt pretty much is, so the National Association of Colleges and Employers has over 11,000 members, and it is folks in career services offices across the country and their teams. It's also employers who do talent acquisition across the country. So we come together every year in an annual conference, and we're trying to solve for x. So it's like, what are you looking for in your new hires? And then they're asking us what's new in the curriculum, what's new in terms of ways that you're working with students. How do you get them career-ready so when we get them, they can launch? So it's this great opportunity to have those bigger conversations about what the landscape looks like around career readiness. Ken WhiteWow, you really touched on something because it seems like every week I read another piece on how college presidents say we're preparing our students for work and how CEOs are saying I'm not. I don't agree there's a disconnect there. You're trying to bridge the gap. Kathleen PowellWe are trying to bridge the gap, and I think Gallup has done a great job in terms of surveying and looking at employers and looking at students, so students will say my communication skills are spot on. I'm an excellent writer. I am good at communicating in terms of face-to-face. And then when they land on the employer side, and they think they're ready, the employers are saying you think you're ready, but you're not ready in the way that we need you to be for our organization. So again, I think it's also solving for some of that, and you know, testing academic testing is not going to get to that soft skill piece. And I think that's where we come in as the complement to the educational experience. Ken WhiteSo back in the day, an internship meant you printed out a resume, you sent it around, you shopped around. How do students go about acquiring internships today? Kathleen PowellWell, technology is a beautiful thing, Ken and I would say every school across the country has some platform that they use. And it is a space where employers come in, and they post their opportunities, and it's a place where students come in, and they upload their resumes, and then they can search different databases, and then they can actually send their resumé out through that platform and employers can actually search the resumes based on the students saying that yes I've raised my hand I'm interested in X internship and then they can post the position students subscribe to that position. We bundle the resumes in the package, and then they go off electronically, so no more copying resumes. No more putting them in the mail and hoping that they get to where they need to be. Ken WhiteSure. Kathleen PowellIt's just in time, and the employer has access to the platform as well. In terms of looking at students who've applied and they can decide just in time, I want to interview a b c d student, and then the students get a notification they need to sign up for an interview for their internship interview and then the schedule is set, and they just show up. Ken WhiteThat's a lot of pressure on the resume, then, right? Kathleen PowellIt is, it is. Right, so students say oh, the resume will get me my job. And we say the resume does not get you the job. You yourself get you the job you're in front of that person, and whether it's on the phone, whether it's a Skype interview, you know, face to face, it is your people skills that will help win the position that you're trying to land. Ken WhiteRight. Kathleen PowellThe resume is your preview, and you've got to get it right. And it's got to be right for the vertical in which you're applying. So you know, sometimes students will say I just want to use one resumé, and I'm going to use that for everything. The shotgun approach. That's probably not in their best interest. And if they do have, you know, if they have an interest in government, I'm interested in consulting. I'm interested in foreign service. Then their resumes need to be different, and they need to understand that, and that's part of our job to educate them on what the other side of the table is looking for. Ken WhiteSo this terrific online tool that you have for students and many universities have that. What about the networking piece thought. Do you still coaching students to get out there? Kathleen PowellWe do, and we do it in a variety of ways, so and like most institutions, I would say we have our trips, and in December, you'll see schools from across the country going to Wall Street or going to out to Silicon Valley looking at tech opportunities. And it's this way to engage students in an immersion, and they can actually see what's happening and what that career field is all about. So that's one way, and they're making connections during that time. We also encourage students to use LinkedIn as an online tool to do some networking and finding out who's in their groups and who would be a person that they need to connect with. And then even coming on campus. So it's outward facing, and it's also bringing our alumni and professionals to campus to talk about ways in which they can engage in their career. So it's important to have that conversation. So I think sometimes students think networking is I'm going to go to, Ken, I'm going to say hello Ken and say do you have a job for me? Ken WhiteRight. Kathleen PowellAnd helping them understand that you have to put your brand out there and they have to feel comfortable with who you are before they might take a chance on you or recommend you to someone else in their network. So helping again the students understand that process of networking and what that means. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Kathleen Powell in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is offering a terrific program for professionals looking to expand their business leadership skills. The certificate in business management is a five-day program that runs from April 10th through the 14th at William & Mary. Each eight-hour day is dedicated to an important facet of business, including communication, managerial accounting, business strategy, operational effectiveness, and executive leadership. The program will broaden your professional skills and help you think and lead strategically and successfully. For more information, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Kathleen Powell, Associate Vice President for Career Development at William & Mary. Ken WhiteBut as an undergraduate, you're young. You don't have a whole lot of experience. How do you stand out? Kathleen PowellThat's right. So when we talk about career competencies, it's one thing for a student to say I've had three internships, or I've had four summer jobs, or, you know, I've been doing research, or I'm the president of 10 clubs or organizations. You can be all that, but if you can't articulate what you've learned from those experiences, you're dead in the water. So we tell students it's not so much about capacity. It's more about breadth and depth. So what have you done that will bring value to the organization in which you have interest in? So you might not have worked in that particular vertical, but you've had a course, or you've done research, or you've done independent study or a paper. There's something that you can glean from that experience and transfer it back to that person that you're talking to, say I've had this experience in this way, and this is what I have learned from it, and this is how I can take that learning and pass it on and be a value add to your organization. Ken WhiteAnd at the same time, I would assume employers are somewhat reasonable a 19-year-old has not been a CEO of five different companies, right? And so they have to be. Kathleen PowellYes. So, Ken, the ironic thing about that is the students think that they've had to be president of a company like that's what's in their head. Where the employers are saying no, that's our job to train you up to get you there in our succession planning. So helping the students understand what the employer's expectations are. I'll give you a good example. We have an employer Advisory Board. They come in the day before. It's a two-day thing the day before they come in, and we have them do résumé reviews, mock interviews, and then we always end that day with a panel. And it's everything you always want to know about recruiting, and we know the emperor has no clothes. This is what we're looking for. This is a rubric that we're using we use it for everybody. If we see 12 students in a day, whether they like it or not, they'll say we're not going to remember everyone that we've seen because we're at William & Mary today, we're going to be at X school tomorrow. We just can't remember everyone, and we're out for a week, or we could be out for two weeks or a month. So all we have is the resumé and the rubric that we have on you. So we are really looking for that fit. So it might not even be a particular major that you have or particular skill that you're trying to shop. It could be I liked you. I can see you fitting in here. It might not be for me, but I have someone that I want you to talk to. And it could be the other way thinking the students like this is the job I have to have. If I don't get this, you know the sky is going to fall. And then after the interview, they find out, you know what, this isn't at all what I thought it was going to be, which is also beneficial. Ken WhiteRight, oh, sure. Kathleen PowellYou're not getting into something and for the wrong reason. Ken WhiteYeah absolutely. Yeah, there's really not failure, is there? Because if it didn't work, then it probably supposed to work. Kathleen PowellRight, and we say, you know, use your campus experience, so we really do encourage our freshmen to start career readiness very early, and we say if you're going to make mistakes do it here. And if you're going to network with someone and you have a misstep, do it now. You don't want to be out there in the professional world and make a mistake that is really almost a rookie mistake that you would during the college experience. And again, it's a learning lab. So think of the career development process as a learning lab, and that's what we're providing. Ken WhiteFail fast, okay here. Kathleen PowellRight, exactly. Exactly. Ken WhiteYou mentioned the interviews. That has really changed when I talk to whether they're undergrads, MBAs, the video interview everybody's in a video interview. It seems like so many companies are doing that. Why. Kathleen PowellI think it's to be scalable. If you think about you know, certain organizations, because of brand recognition, may get 500 resumes for one position. Ken WhiteSure. Kathleen PowellAnd it is they'll do word searches to figure out who they want to bring into the pool, and then the video interview is very quick, and it's not so much maybe what our listeners are thinking about the video interview where I can see you, and it's a Skype opportunity. This is a new platform where it's this timed opportunity that you pull up on your laptop, and they give you questions you have so many time so much time to answer the question, and it's videotaped, but you're just looking at the questions and you recording your voice, they're recording you visually, and it goes back, and that's how they're making some determinations. So I think we're preparing students actually, I know we're preparing students to handle those types of interviews because not all companies are using them, but I think as it gets traction and they find the cost savings in it, I think that will grow. There are some larger companies who hire 90,000 people a year, and they said no, we're not going to do that. We're in the people business. And it's important to us to be face to face. Ken WhiteWow, yeah, but what a difficult task, as you're describing it. This student is literally looking at a blank screen on their laptop, answering questions, and wow. Kathleen PowellYes, and we're like, you have to sit up straight, and you have to smile. Ken WhiteSmile. Kathleen PowellAnd you can have your notes there but you can and you can refer to your notes but you don't know the questions. And if you need to have a do-over, you get one do-over. So you've got to make that time count. And if they're prepared, and again we talk about know yourself and know the position, and if you know yourself, that's first and foremost because you that just wins the day I know what I want. I know what I have to offer. Ken WhiteYou mentioned cost savings on the employer side. How is that affecting campus visits or companies visiting fewer times a year now or what? Where does that stand? Kathleen PowellSo what we're seeing here is that it is the prescreen. So they are cutting down on their time away from campus to figure out who to bring into the fold. But they're still coming on campus. And ironically, Ken, we've just had a meeting with Virginia career services directors in January, and we were talking about our career fairs. Will they become a thing of the past? Ken WhiteRight. Kathleen PowellOn-campus recruiting with technology will it become a thing of the past. In all of the state institutions in Virginia, we're saying that everything's blowing up. More employers are coming to campus more. Employers are subscribing to our career fairs. We're trying to find new spaces to fit everyone in. So I think it's just with all the technology, I still think that people to people that relationship and especially for a place like William & Mary where relationships and relational opportunities win the day. I think that will still continue for us. Ken WhiteNow I believe as we're recording in a couple days, you have a major event. Kathleen PowellWe have a major event, so twice a year, we have our career and internship fair so we have the fall and we have a spring, so on Friday, we'll have over 70 employers coming to campus recruiting our students, both undergrad and grad and they are looking to fill positions that I would say on the business side most of those positions are generally filled at the fall career fair, but not all of them are filled so they'll come back for spring. And then there are other careers that it's just spring is their hiring season, and that works out very well for our students and to help them understand, and I think parents too that everyone has a job but my son or daughter or even for students everyone has a job at me and that's not the case. So helping students understand that your career job search may be different than someone else. So if you're in finance, it's going to be early, very early. If you're in nonprofit government, it's going to be spring. Marketing can be fall or spring. So just helping students understand what their search is their search. And I think that goes back to a student who might be in a club or organization, and the one student comes in, and they've had a great experience and we go over their resumé and then the next thing you know, you have many students from that same clever organization coming in, and the resumes all look the same. Ken WhiteOh. Kathleen PowellBecause this is what they told me to do so, I'm going to do mine just like that. So it's like, but what is you? Is this you? Is this what how you want to talk about your skills and your abilities? Have you had the same experiences? It's like I haven't, but I just I thought I had to put that down. I said well if it's not you, you can't really talk about it. So it's an interesting line of work that we're in. Ken WhiteVery. I love to go to the fair, and I thank God I'm not an undergraduate trying to go up to these. I mean, it takes guts. You got to have confidence. You've got to go up there and shake that hand. I know you go to you work hard to try to bring in alumni from the employers. It really takes a lot of the pressure and stress out of that. I think half the time, some of the recruiters are just as nervous for the students. Kathleen PowellExactly. Ken WhiteBecause they want them to do a nice job. Kathleen PowellExactly and you know we do help our students in advance for career fairs, and we have career fair prep workshops. We use executive partners to come in and just talk about, you know, what is your pitch. What would you say to that employer? What if they ask you, X, how would you respond? So again, I think it's setting them up for success and knowing that they are comfortable and will stand in line with you or buddy up with someone, so you're not feeling like you're the only one or there's no one standing at that table go over to that table and talk to that employer because you don't have to compete for attention they've got your full attention. Ken WhiteYeah, and last question. Kathleen PowellSure. Ken WhiteI think many students I've got to be with a named company. It's gotta be a name company. I was just reading a book the two-hour job search. I was just reading on the plane the other day, and the author says ninety-five ninety-nine percent of the companies out there just have a couple of hundred employees or less. Kathleen PowellRight. Ken WhiteIt doesn't have to be the fantastic brand to get a good job. Is that difficult to persuade students to buy into that? Or do they need the name-brand company? Kathleen PowellI think in their head, they feel like they need the name brand company, and sometimes that might translate down to the parents saying you know who are you going to work for. And they'll say oh, I've never heard of them or the students will say I don't know who they are; I'm not going to talk to them. But we do provide all of the information in their career fair guidebook so they can look at it and it's done by just kind of career verticals. So if they're looking, I'll give a good example. We're aware, and they do marketing, digital marketing, and we have a recent alum who's coming back for the fair. She is beyond excited, and she said who knew that I would be with a company that I've never heard of before, living in a city I never thought I would live in? I'm doing amazing work, and I get to come back and sell the brand. So I think that just adds capacity, and you know, we're aware for our students might not be something that they had heard of before, but because of the capacity of our alums, I think it's just going to grow and grow. Ken WhiteYeah, and the job search is tough but do the right thing, and it'll work out. Kathleen PowellThat's correct. That's correct. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kathleen Powell, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, or suggestions with us. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. That's podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Kathleen Powell of William & Mary and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Joyful Simpson](images/joyful-simpson-69-thumb.jpg)
![Improvisation & Business](images/joyful-simpson-69-thumb.jpg)
Joyful Simpson
Episode 69: January 24, 2017
Improvisation & Business
Soft skills. Emotional Intelligence. The willingness to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Companies everywhere are seeking employees and leaders who possess these qualities. Organizations are using multiple methods and approaches to teach a set of skills that improve communication, creativity, and teamwork. For a number of organizations and professionals, improvisation training has become a popular method. Joyful Simpson is a California-based actor who teaches improv to businesses and professionals and joins us today to discuss what improv is and what it can do for professionals and their teams.
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Joyful Simpson: Improvisation & Business TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Soft skills, emotional intelligence, the willingness to be comfortable being uncomfortable well, companies everywhere are seeking employees and leaders who possess these qualities. Organizations are using multiple methods and approaches to teach a set of skills that improve communication, creativity, and teamwork. For a number of organizations and professionals, improvisation training has become a popular method. What was once found strictly in the theater is now readily found in business. Well, last week, when attending a global business school conference, I took part in an improv workshop led by Joyful Simpson, a California-based actor who teaches improv to businesses and professionals. After the workshop, she sat down with us to discuss improv, what it is, and what it can do for professionals and their teams. Here's our conversation with Joyful Simpson of Pro-CreativeArts. Ken WhiteThanks so much. It was really wonderful meeting you yesterday being in your workshop, and then after the workshop, I said we've got to talk about this. And so, my first question is that how do you define improvisation? Because I think most people don't quite get it. Joyful SimpsonYeah, absolutely I know it's a good question. So one thing to know about improv is that it's derived from theater, right? So its ancient origins apparently were commedia dell'arte which was a form of theater from the sixteen hundreds where people would travel from town to town, and they had set characters like stock characters that they would play and stock storylines, but then they would improvise a lot of it. And so a lot of the games and the things that we call improv now came from theater. So the simple definition is simply making up performance on the spot in the moment. Ken WhiteBut you talk about applied improv. Joyful SimpsonYeah. So applied improv is a kind of umbrella terminology, and I'd say actually applied theater or applied improv both terms used, and it's the use of improv or theater training in an educational setting or therapeutic setting, any setting outside of performance-driven. Ken WhiteRight. Joyful SimpsonRight. So there's many artists or pedagogies is like Augustus Boal is, a Brazilian who created theater the oppressed which has a lot of there's just a lot of really great material there where he's really taken a lot of theater and made it applicable to work through social situations. He's probably the most well-known in terms of he's developed a pedagogy, but then improv, as it's been taken out of the theater and into this world, is called applied improv, and there's a network called the Applied Theater Network. So a lot of this use of improv outside of the theater has many names. You know, people are calling it all kinds of things, and people are calling it organizational improv. You know, I've chosen to call it applied improv because I really like the organization. There is applied improve network. And I just really like the organization. I hung on to the term cause it spoke to me. Ken WhiteSo why are businesses so interested in improv? Everywhere you go, businesses are talking about this. Joyful SimpsonI know it's so interesting because they're interested in it, but they're still they want to use it. And I feel like they don't quite understand it. So improv, at face value, is very playful. It's very freeing. We've kind of turned a corner in the last ten years where people are understanding that business isn't working the way it used to. People don't get a job and stay in it for 40 years. Right. Ken WhiteRight. Joyful SimpsonThere's tons of turnover. And so that's like the modern business person needs to be very nimble and they need to be ready to deal with change, they need to be good listeners, they need their soft skills right. We think that we're hired just because our technical skill. Ken WhiteRight. Joyful SimpsonBut really our people skills are immensely important. So improv is this wonderful way to teach these elements like listening cohesive base. I'm kind of skipping around. So if you think about the elements of good communication and you teach communication so, correct me if I'm wrong but like clarity, listening, active listening, Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Joyful Simpsonopen-mindedness, agreeableness, an interest to come to a resolution as opposed to proving yourself right. Let's see, help me out. What other elements of good communication? Ken WhitePresence. Joyful SimpsonPresence. Ken WhiteI think situational communication is really important. Joyful SimpsonSituational communication, yeah. Ken WhiteWe don't communicate the same way with different people. We adjust. Joyful SimpsonExactly and then being attuned to the finer subtler levels of reading someone, not just their face but like what are you getting from them. Where are they at, and improv is sort of like a scrimmage match to teach these things because those are all the skills you need to be a good improviser. Ken WhiteMy guess is, though, this isn't something you do for an hour and get through. Joyful SimpsonExactly and that's where I was saying businesses want it, but they haven't quite figured out because it's so playful, and it seems it's still an art form. It's hard to stomach. I think, you know, really giving it the resources or the airtime that it needs to really make the impact that it can. Ken WhiteSure. Joyful SimpsonLike I was saying yesterday in the workshop, I think there's two strands like. Right, you can use this improv applied improv or these type of workshops as an orientation or as sort of a social glue if you want to get a cohort of people off the ground and connected and ready to work together. Oh, that's another thing. Teamwork right? Collaborative ability is like that is the essence of improv because in order to be a good improviser, one of the ethos of improv is not to make yourself look good but to make your partner look good, right? So like, if you're improvising a scene and your partner is sort of not listening to you and trying to steal the limelight Ken WhiteYes. Joyful Simpsonit ruins the scene. Ken WhiteAnd you hear actors will say that they'll complement other actors by how giving they are. Joyful SimpsonExactly right, and giving means like presence and mostly like tuning in making eye contact. Like really being in the moment with that person, so you can do it as an orientation, or you get it, and you can get a lot out of an hour. But, of course, it's like anything. You're not going to learn a skill in an hour. Ken WhiteRight. Joyful SimpsonIt's a training of a muscle, and the more you do it, the more facile you get with it and the more it sort of becomes a way of life. Becomes a way of interacting with the world, which is much more engaging and much more, I think, rewarding because we're always sort of hiding and worrying, and I think if you kind of come to communication with a more engaged presence, you'd get more out of the interaction. Ken WhiteSure it sounds to me like where communication training and professional development in terms of communication was ten years ago. A lot of companies and organizations sort of said come on, give me a break. We all know how they do this, and now that's accepted, and companies want it, and professionals want it. It seems to me that's where improv now is coming about. It is what professionals are saying, and maybe I will bring this, and maybe there is value. So we did some interesting exercises yesterday. What do you try? Can you maybe describe a couple of those? Joyful SimpsonYeah. So I mean, I borrow exercises from that's one thing to note about this work is that we're all sort of feeding off of two major pedagogies. I'd like to go way back to the beginning when he said what is improv. Ken WhiteYeah. Joyful SimpsonWhat is modern improv now sort of comes from two big mothers, Keith Johnstone and Viola Spolin. They took a lot of theater pedagogies and kind of created what is the modern improv. Ken WhiteYeah. Joyful SimpsonAnyways to go back, so we borrow exercises from them, and we all sort of take these exercises and make them our own. Ken WhiteRight. Joyful SimpsonSo yesterday, I did an exercise that I learned actually from a French theater artist named Leacock, which is a funny name. And so, for instance, in order to you can create trust between people in a moment. Right. And you can give people a real physical, experiential feeling of that trust by this exercise where you have two people in a partner. One closes their eyes, and the other puts their hands on their shoulder and stands behind them, and the one in front closes their eyes, and then the person behind gently guides them through the space is their driver, and they surrender their control, and they trust the person behind them. And you have, you know, 20 pairs of people mingling around the room in this fashion. And then I have people gradually speed up until they're going through a little jog. I love that exercise. It's fun to be in. It's a perspective shift. You have to give yourself over to somebody. And the feedback I get after that exercise is I really trusted that person. It's like a non-verbal language. You communicate with people, and you realize that that's always there underneath our purple because they say that only 10 percent of what we communicate is actually verbal. Ken WhiteBut the exercise is its trust to carry that over to business. If I don't trust my teammates, we're not gonna go too far. Joyful SimpsonYou don't get to get anything done right. Because if you're always working at different, if you're just working in different odds, you're not going to like improv games like that continue to point you in the direction that you act to access the collective intelligence of the room you're going to get the best product you're going to get the best results right because ten people thinking about one project are going to have a better result than one person if they know how to work together. Ken WhiteSo it teaches us collaboration. Joyful SimpsonDefinitely. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Joyful Simpson of Pro-CreativeArts in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation on improvisation and business with Joyful Simpson of Pro-CreativeArts. Ken WhiteThere was an interesting exercise we did where each there were three people, where we were all in a circle. We had 15 or so. So one person would just run in the middle of the circle and strike a pose. Then a second one voluntarily would do the same. And then, the third, I remember thinking, I don't care about the point of this; I just don't want to fail. Joyful SimpsonRight. Ken WhiteSo failure seems to get in the way. Joyful SimpsonIt really does, and that's such a big thing that improv shows you how to do right so, and failure, and I know you're going to ask me that vulnerability. Failure and vulnerability are like two sides of the same coin, right? How many things in our lives do we not do because we're afraid of failure and okay, I'll go back to that exercise. But we, you know, we want leaders that are thinking outside the box and taking risks and leading us to the new level. Right. So this is a exercise that shows you in a microcosm how to do that in real-time in the moment. So you're in a circle with people, and you go in, and you strike a pose, and the directive is to not think about the pose, to not try to make a good pose, do not try to be clever but to surprise yourself. Just go out there and allow it to happen. Be spontaneous allowed to happen. It's a low-stakes arena where failure doesn't really add up to much. So say you make a pose that is stupid, right? In my class, there is no way to look stupid or to try not to look stupid. Ken WhiteExactly. Joyful SimpsonSo, you learn, oh, it's not that big of a deal. I'm sitting here making a funny shape in front of my colleagues, and everybody is giggling in a loving way, and it just like pops the air out of fear a little bit, even though it's terrifying. I know as a participant when I'm a participant, I get all the same fear. You know, even though I've been doing this for 20 years. Ken WhiteAnd it was interesting because we were in a group of individuals who were all in the same profession. We sort of know each other but by no means are we a team. Joyful SimpsonRight. Ken WhiteAnd I could see a team of people of the dozen people who work together on a daily basis going through this, really creating tearing down some barriers and creating some of that trust and teamwork through these exercises. Joyful SimpsonExactly. Someone said yesterday you know it's funny. It's a very egalitarian art, and I know that doesn't necessarily seem to always jive with business. But I think business is starting to really understand that the old model isn't necessarily working for now and that we people want, you know, that they want collaborative ability in their people, and that's, and that's a really hard thing to define. But if you do an hour of these exercises with a team, even you guys, right like by the end of that workshop, you felt like a unit. Ken WhiteVery much so. Joyful SimpsonRight, and you knew each other peripherally, but you didn't, you know, and like, imagine doing having done that two-hour workshop and then going to work on a project and keeping some of those strings that you were practicing like maybe people would be more bold maybe people would listen better. Ken WhiteI think people would participate without worrying about failure. Joyful SimpsonRight. Ken WhiteWithout worrying about I better not say this might not be good, but I think after going through that, most of us would say, of course, I'm going to share this idea because my teammate might make it better. Joyful SimpsonExactly, exactly like this idea of a seed of this idea is there even the way I say it isn't perfect right. It's not letting like the good enough like be the perfect big enemy of good enough right. And that's where the vulnerability comes in that it's a little scary to say something that maybe you don't think is going to be right. Ken WhiteRight. Joyful SimpsonBut that's where you know, we're always sort of in this battle between fear and vulnerability, and actually, I do an interesting exercise that I got from a gentleman who wrote a book called positive intelligence. He does this exercise, and I often do it. I love it. I didn't do it yesterday for lack of time, but I give people a little note card, and I ask them to take a moment and write on the card. You know what is something that you're afraid to share with people because you think it'll it'll risk your reputability? He does this with executives, and I do it with, you know, executives as well. And first, when I start doing this exercise, I think oh, this is too scary. People are not going to want to do this. So I have it anonymous, and then I fold, and I have everybody put it in a box and have everybody go back to their chair, sit down, close their eyes, so nobody's looking at each other, and I read them all out loud anonymously. And it is incredible. Ken WhiteI bet. Joyful SimpsonI always and that people come away with that exercise being like, oh, that little thing that I am so afraid of, and I have so much shame about ten other people in this room have the same fear. So why are we all hiding from each other? Ken WhiteYeah. Joyful SimpsonYou know, and when we stop hiding, we can get so much more done, you know. Ken WhiteIt's so much not like Whose Line Is It Anyway. Joyful SimpsonIt's so not. Ken WhiteThis is teamwork build. Joyful SimpsonExactly. Ken WhiteIt's coming together by trusting each other. Joyful SimpsonExactly and we think of improv as like this, you know, like goofy thing, and it does have that ability, and a lot of times, there is a lot of laughter, and that's actually one of the benefits of improv. But it's not there is in improv. Actually, one of the rules is you don't try to be funny, right, because when you try to be funny, you're usually making a plan and forcing things and overthinking and letting the inner critic get in the way. But when you just sort of allow your first instinct to go, and you trust your instincts, you find that a lot of times that's where the great ideas are right, the good ideas and the bad ideas are together, and sometimes you have to shoot out ten bad ideas to get to the good idea. But if you're in a culture that is not afraid of the bad ideas and just letting them fall at their own rate, and that's something in the theater that we're really accustomed to is, you know, we understand that the creative process is a little messy, but that's how you get there. Ken WhiteSo a professional and executive CEO says I'm not so sure. I don't know if this will work for my team. What advice do you have for them? Joyful SimpsonRight. So it depends on you know what are the stakes, right? How much, how much, how many resources are on the line, you know but like, say, yeah, a team has an idea, and the CEO is like, no, I don't think it'll work. You know, maybe there's an idea very close to that idea. The CEO can say well, I'm not sure about this, but I like the emphasis. I like where you're going. I like this about I like that about it, like let's see what else is in there instead of being like, no, it's not going to work. Ken WhiteRight. Joyful SimpsonCome back to me with something else. Ken WhiteRight. Joyful SimpsonBe like it, you know. I mean, the yes and thing is a little played out, but it's like, okay, I see the effort. Not quite there, but this is great. Keep moving. Ken WhiteWhat about improv itself for a skeptic who might be a professional? What do you tell them? Joyful SimpsonYeah, no, it's so funny. I mean, what I tell them like I want to get you in the room because you know it's hard to explain. And for a skeptic, I'd say there's a lot more than meets the eye to improv, and it's something that theater artists know well. The joy slash productivity slash of being in the creative space. So the room, the atmosphere that you create in an improv setting or in an improv class, is like a very great culture. It creates a culture that is its ripe right. And so I would say, you know, like you have to access that, like come experience it, and people are always more afraid. They're like, I'm afraid when they come to the workshops, and they're always surprised at how unscary it really was. Right. And it's that practice of jumping through the fear and realizing you're okay on the other side. That is such a great muscle to practice. I feel like I can really deal with skeptics in the room. It's harder from the outside, you know, from just trying to explain it because it's such an experiential activity. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Joyful Simpson, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, or suggestions with us. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. That's podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Joyful Simpson of Pro-CreativeArts, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Nick Jiannis](images/nick-jiannis-68-thumb.jpg)
![The STIHL Story](images/nick-jiannis-68-thumb.jpg)
Nick Jiannis
Episode 68: January 17, 2017
The STIHL Story
In addition to being the number one chainsaw manufacturer in the world, STIHL produces other top-quality outdoor power tools like blowers, trimmers, and edgers. The company is unique in that it does not sell its products to their very loyal customer base. Nick Jiannis is Vice President for Sales and Marketing at STIHL and joins us today to discuss the effects company culture has had on STIHL, its products, and its customers.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's the number one-selling chainsaw company in the world. In addition, Stihl produces other top-quality outdoor power tools like blowers, trimmers, and edgers. The company is unique in that it does not sell its products in big box stores but rather only through dealers who sell and service Stihl products. Stihl has been on top for decades, and this company, known best for its legendary chain saws, has a legendary customer following. Stihl customers are extremely loyal. Much of that loyalty can be tied directly to the culture the Stihl organization has created and maintained over the years. Nick Jiannis is Vice President for Sales and Marketing at Stihl. He's been with the company for 22 years. We spoke with him at Stihl's headquarters for US operations in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where we discussed the effects company culture has had on Stihl, its products, and customers. Here's our conversation with Nick Jiannis Vice President Sales and Marketing at Stihl. Ken WhiteWell, Nick, thank you for taking the time to be with us. And thanks to you for inviting us to Stihl. This is a great place. What happens here where we happen to be in Virginia Beach? What takes place here? Nick JiannisVirginia Beach is the US headquarters for Stihl. We have a full manufacturing operation. We employ around nineteen hundred people total here in Virginia Beach. If you include our distribution operations around the country, we run about twenty-one hundred twenty-two hundred Stihl employees here in the US, but this is the US headquarters, so you have sales and marketing, which I'm responsible, you've got, of course, finance, technical service, operations but within operations you have assembly, you've got machining, you've got extrusion, you've got blow molding, accessories plan a number of different departments within operations and we all work together to of course provide Stihl products to the marketplace. Ken WhiteAnyone who knows Stihl or learns about Stihl finds the culture to be not only unique but incredibly important here. How would you describe the culture? Nick JiannisI think it stems from our company founder Andreas Stihl, he started the company in 1926. And his philosophy has always been a product is only as good as the service behind it. And so from day one, he's always said that the Stihl products and Stihl brand are only sold through servicing dealers, and we've never waver from that philosophy, and this is our 90th year in business. So for 90 years, you know, always gone to market one way. And so throughout the years' everybody has worked in this company has. We have a saying here we bleed orange. And so we are we all believe in that philosophy, and we sort of feel like we are in the old David and Goliath story. You know we're David to a certain extent. We've gone the other direction, and we're proud of that. We know we're not sold in the big box stores. We're not sold on the Internet, but yet for seven years running now. We've achieved the number one status of gasoline hand-held outdoor power in the United States. How do we do that by not going to the mass merchants and not going on the Internet? It's almost a sort of a thing of pride we wear on our sleeves, and we did it our way, we did it the right way, and we supported independent small businesses that are, you know, working in local communities, and we all just really enjoy working for a company where from the top down Peter Stihl second generation is still alive. Matter of fact, all the second generation is still alive. Third-generation ownership is now at the helm of the board. And a lot of folks within the organization have worked for Stihl for a very, very long time. So put it all together, it's hard not to feel part of this culture we have. I say it's a global fraternity because it's not just in Germany but every one of our subsidiaries, even the importers, the people that that work for the company have been there for such a long time. When we go for annual meetings to Germany, for example, it's the same faces every year. It's almost like seeing an old friend again, and we all go to the same meetings. We all have to present to the same people, and over time it creates this thread that is sort of unbreakable amongst the employees of Stihl. Ken WhiteWell, you mentioned a couple of things. Lengthy tenure there are people you've been here over 20 years. Many of your colleagues have been here for many years. How does that? How does culture drive that? I mean, in today's world, people are changing jobs like crazy. Nick JiannisWhat we despite our size, we strive to continue to do things that we did when we were a small company. So, for example, you know we still have a big company picnic in the summer, we have a big company holiday party in December, but we also have monthly service award luncheons. So employees from all ranks, from executives to the folks on the assembly line. If they've achieved ten years of tenure or then 20, 25, 30, we skip 15 only because we have too many people. We have too many luncheons. But when they hit ten and then 20, and every five years thereafter, we have a nice luncheon at a local restaurant here. Every member of the local executive council here attends and we have a bio and a write-up of all the employees. And one of the executives, myself included, reads a bio about the employee, and they get a little pin, and they get a plaque, and some recognition. We did that 20 years ago. We could have stop doing that because we're a much larger company. But we say, you know, it's part of our culture is we want to recognize the employees that make this machine work because without the people on the assembly line or out in the field, this thing doesn't function properly. Ken WhiteWhat's interesting about that what you just described. I mean, that's HR 101 recognize your employees, yet so many organizations don't do that. That really works, doesn't it? Recognition. Nick JiannisIt does, and we also take care of our employees financially. Stihl has a very, very good benefits package. My father was career military, and when I first got hired on by Stihl, he saw the package and said this rivals the military. But you know we are one of very few companies that has a company-sponsored pension. We've got a very healthy 401K package. And you know, you add that all up, and we have, of course, bonuses that we give out throughout the year. There's a quality bonus to the production folks or performance bonuses that they may earn. You put that all together, and I think we treat our employees very, very well because we understand that without them, this doesn't work. Ken WhiteRight, now, you mentioned Germany. You've got headquarters there as well, and you're all over the world. That's a lot of different cultures and a lot of different generations too. How do you keep the culture going? I mean, the Germans are very different from Americans. Nick JiannisI think it stems the brand is the unifying link between all the subsidiaries because we basically only allow subsidiaries and independent importers that, by contract, have Stihl. They only sell Stihl. So you're not going to see a Stihl subsidiary also sell wheeled goods, perhaps, or other brands. It's only Stihl, so we all bleed orange from top to bottom. We also have Mr. Stihl, who is the second-generation chairman emeritus. I guess you call him a retired chairman. He visits every production facility within the Stihl group every year. He comes here every October. He also visits every non-production subsidiary, probably every other year. You've got other members of the family visiting various production sites and views, calling on dealers. So you always have an injection of Stihl family blood or visits in your organization on a regular basis. We all go to Germany at least once a year to present to the family. Interact with folks in Germany. So I would say that yes the cultures are different around the world. But Stihl is that that that binding mechanism that keeps it all together. We all have the same, more or less the same product portfolio, the same challenges, the same competitors, give or take, across the globe. And so when we get together, we can all talk shop and learn from each other hey, what do you do over there in Sweden to do that, or that's a good idea over in Canada, or what did South Africa do? What are your challenges, and we can learn from each other? We share best practices. Ken WhiteAnd the brand, as you say, that's the common thread. Nick JiannisAnd the brand is a common thread. Ken WhiteYeah. Nick JiannisAnd what while models may differ from Australia because it's perhaps a very dry air conditioned down there versus maybe what you get in Siberia, for example. The inherent machine, a chainsaw, is still that mechanism that binds us together. We all sell chainsaws and string trimmers and hand-held blowers and backpack blowers and just minor variations thereof, but we all get to talk shop with each other, and we learn from each other. Ken WhiteWith this kind of culture, and you mentioned, it's all about people. How does hiring roll into this? When someone applies, how do you know? Nick JiannisWell, when I got hired, I was a newly minted MBA and wanted to conquer the world, and my first job was working in a dirty, dusty warehouse in California, basically picking parts, and my father said, well, you know, like the military doesn't hire admirals they hire engines, and you work your way up. And so with an MBA, I was wearing a pair of jeans and boots, and I was picking parts, and I was the lead shipper and shipping UPS boxes to our various dealers across the West Coast, and we try to instill that to all the new hires and say listen you need to learn the business and learn the product and also learn the culture. We do things differently here. And once you do that and you proved yourself, then there will be opportunities to kind of either move laterally to add some more to add a broader net to your skill set, and then eventually something may open up that we always say that you need to have a broad level of experience in this organization. You know we are a dealer-centric company. We only sell through dealers. So we like for folks to have field experience. It's to simply stay at head office. We're very cognizant of the ivory tower syndrome. The real the real work happens out there in the real world with real dealers with real problems. And the competition. So we insist that people that want to make a career at Stihl gets an experience. Whether it be at a branch or, in some cases, they can get overseas to another subsidiary of ours for a couple of years and then come back. But we want him out of head office for a while, and then they come back, and we'll see what happens. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Nick Jiannis, Vice President Sales and Marketing at Stihl, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Nick Jiannis, Vice President Sales and Marketing at Stihl. Ken WhiteThere's a heck of a lot of turnover when we talk to executives all over the world. It's tough to hang on to people. Does that approach help you keep people longer than, say, maybe? Nick JiannisYes, I think it does because we get these young folks at an early age, and I hate to use the word indoctrinate, but we really kind of indoctrinate them into our culture and our philosophy which we think is unique, and it's fun. You know we work hard, we also play hard. We have excursions we do. We have business trips both in the business trip. We have some group team-building exercises we might weave into the trip. So we generally enjoy our company outside of the office as well. We might meet across the street for a drink after work within various groups. So it's a family. It truly is a family organization from the Stihl family to our own internal Stihl-incorporated US family. And we think that that does pay dividends down the road that people do tend to stay longer. The average tenure here across Stihl Inc. is about ten years, and considering it's a manufacturing operation, that says a lot. Ken WhiteYeah. Nick JiannisNow, if you were to move into the office ranks, you've got people here that have been there for 30 years, 35, 40 years. It's not unheard of. Ken WhiteAnd in some companies where that happens, things might go flat. New ideas, innovations not there but still manages to stay on top. Nick JiannisWe do. We do hire from the outside. I won't tell you that every single job is promoted from within. So we do have a constant injection of new ideas and new blood, which I think is healthy because, you know, we don't want to become incestuous to the point where we only think of our own ideas. We need outsiders to come in and bring a fresh set of eyes a matter of fact, our new President, Mr. Fisher, had a nice long career with Siemens. So he brings with it a different perspective in a different way of looking at things which has been wonderful for all of us long-timers to get a different view of how we could attack a certain problem or strategize about a certain scenario. Ken WhiteThis unique culture also applies to your customers. You have one of the most loyal customer bases. For those who don't know Stihl boy, the customers are unbelievably loyal, aren't they? Nick JiannisWe have. You're right. We have. We look it as almost two sets of customers. We have dealer customers, and they are really our gateway to the consumer customer because, as I said earlier, we only sell through service and dealer, so and dealers have a choice in the outdoor power equipment they want to sell, and we have some formidable competitors out there. So we have to win their minds and hearts as well. So we have to meet the dealer customer expectation but then also your point the consumer customer expectation and within the consumer base or customer base we have different segments as well we have the professional logger, the professional landscaper, the professional arborist, the professional construction worker, the homeowner. So each of them thinks differently. Consumes media differently. But to a certain extent, they, particularly in the pro segment, they have a very, very strong affinity for brands. And I know other brands I could think of they have that similar type of emotional heartstrings would be a Harley Davidson, for example. Ken WhiteYeah. Nick JiannisWhere where you know you're a Harley guy, you're a Harley guy, and that's it. And you talk to some of the loggers in the Pacific Northwest. They've run Stihl all their lives. Their daddies ran Stihl, and they've had they've got Stihl's that are 20 30 years old that still run, and you see pictures of guys with Stihl tattoos on their backs, on their shoulders. And they just love the brand, and we love that about them. And so we started a campaign, I'm guessing here a little bit, Ken, but I would say maybe three to four years ago called real people Stihl people, and we used our social media outlets to let the consumer speak to us. Now we'd say okay, tell us about your best brand experience or tell us about you know what you like about Stihl and send us a photo of how you use our equipment. So we call it UGC or user-generated content, and we can then repurpose that information, those pictures and images and stories in advertising, for example. Our on our Facebook page. So many of our ads have been real consumers, real loggers, real landscapers. And it speaks to the authenticity and the integrity of the brand. They're not paid, actors. That guy's a real landscaper in Texas, and he swears by our equipment and that sort of feeds into this whole philosophy that we are a consumer-centric brand. We fight for the small guy. We have outstanding equipment, and it resonates in the hearts and minds of our customers. Ken WhiteI can think of so many organizations that would love to get to that place where your customers are just crazy about you. And will go to bat for you. For an organization, maybe starting out, maybe trying to reach that. What kind of advice would you have for them? How do you get that kind of a loyal following? Nick JiannisWell, first and foremost, you have to have product quality. You can't have. You might have short-term ad campaigns or gimmicks, which might create some initial demand, but if the product quality is not there, you will not have a sustainable model. And you know we've put product quality. We are essentially an engineering-driven company. I mean, Peter Stihl, who is probably now 84, 85 years old he, could still on his mind draw up carburetor schematics on a piece of paper. He knows the product, he knows how it's designed, and it's his name on the nameplate, and he's willing to spend quite a bit of money to make sure that maybe a small deficiency that any other organization might say, oh, it's not a big deal, it's not a safety issue I'll let it go. He'll fix it because it's his name on the nameplate, and he wants to make sure that the customer gets the best product possible, so that's number one and number two don't take shortcuts. If it was easy everyone would do it. So take the high road and do it the right way, do it the smart way. In our case, we felt so strongly about the service behind the machine, and a lot of the big box stores don't have service. So why would we entertain that? Matter of fact, there's a book that was written several years ago called the distribution trap, and I can't recall the author right now, but they dedicated a chapter of the book to the Stihl story and talked about how brands and companies can get caught up in the distribution trap chasing the quick buck, and they go to the big box stores or go to the Internet looking for volume, and they may get it initially, but over time the brand gets watered down for a number of different reasons. And we've always felt that as long as you have the product quality and maintain your brand equity, don't let go of the brand equity. The rest will follow. And it may take time. Won't be easy. It requires investment, but in the long run, I always use the analogy the tortoise and the hare. We are the tortoise. We will win the race in the long run. In the short term, other brands might look flashy or have some short-term gains over here or over there. Meanwhile, we're just doing our thing every year, consistently high product quality through servicing dealers and build that now over 90 years. That builds the culture and the affinity for the brand that you have when guys have tattoos on their shoulders because their daddy had a Stihl, their great granddaddy had a Stihl. It always runs, and they can get parts, and their dealers are a buddy of theirs, and it's this big woven matrix that it's very hard to replicate. Ken WhiteAnd it's fun when you win like that, isn't it? Nick JiannisIt's fun when you win it the right way. You don't need. My predecessor in this position, I recall him saying it to many dealer groups. He said the nice thing about working for Stihl is you never have to apologize. And so sure, we may have a quality issue here or there. Every company does. No one's immune from that. But when you can look in the mirror and look any dealer in the eye or any customer in the eye and say you know we did the right way, we might have messed up over here, but we'll fix it, and we'll make it right for you. That's all they want. They want to know that the manufacturer stands behind their product, and we do. And we have a servicing dealer base take care of them. Let them do their job. We'll take care of the rest. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Nick Jiannis. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, or suggestions with us. Email us at podcast@wm.edu. That's podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Nick Jiannis of Stihl. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Faculty & Staff](images/faculty-staff-67-thumb.jpg)
![Great Reads for 2017](images/faculty-staff-67-thumb.jpg)
Faculty & Staff
Episode 67: January 3, 2017
Great Reads for 2017
The start of a new year—a time when many professionals set new goals—and for many, one of those goals includes catching up on their reading. If finding the right book for 2017 is on your list, today's show is for you. We spoke with Faculty and Staff here at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business and asked them to share a recommendation regarding a book that professionals will find useful and entertaining in the year ahead.
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TranscriptKen WhiteThe College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. The start of a new year a time when many professionals set new goals, and for many, one of those goals includes catching up on their reading. If finding the right book for 2017 is on your list, then today's podcast is for you. We spoke with faculty and staff here at William & Mary's Mason School of Business and asked them to share a recommendation regarding a book that professionals will find useful and entertaining in the year ahead. The first stop on our book tour is our McLeod Business Library ranked as one of the best libraries in the business school world. Tom Marini leads the efforts there. Here's Tom's recommendation. Ken WhiteTom, you've selected a book for us. What book would you recommend to professionals to read in the New Year? Tom MariniWell, this book is called Power Listening, and it's by a gentleman Bernard Ferrari. And essentially, it talks about something that not as many of us pay attention to as we should. The power of listening in a digital media-driven age. We spend so much time with information overload we have lost the art of conversation. But more important, we've lost the art of listening. This gentleman has a very readable book and talks about this, and I think this is something every one of us should pay attention to because we're not born listeners. We have to practice this. This is a skill set. There was a survey done by the ACT educational services with major business company leaders who said 70 percent of them used listening as one of the most critical components in hiring an individual. They further went looking at high school grads. Less than 19 percent of those people responded that the high school grads had any listening capabilities. So it's a skill set that needs to be practiced, and I think the book is not overwhelming. It's not a self-help book. It is common sense, but it's something that can give us a lot of reason to think about understanding being attentive, paying attention. The 80-20 formula which is in here, 80 percent listening, 20 percent conversation. So I think it's a great book to recommend for everyone, both professionals and students alike. Ken WhiteTom Marini recommends Power Listening by Bernard Ferrari. Next up is Professor of Strategic Management Brent Allred, who also selects a book that's career-focused. Brent AllredSo of the many books that I've purchased and hoped to read over the break, the one book that I have read and recommend highly is a book called How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christiansen with some other co-authors and Clayton Christiansen's one of the top management minds in the world today. Famous Harvard business professor and author of Innovator's Dilemma and other books that came after that. But this is different than the classical management fad of the day book, which many that were constantly reading, and we read today and then forget tomorrow. This book is more about how will you measure your life. How will you behave? As mentioned earlier, one of the key points he makes is that it's easier to be true to your values 100 percent of the time than 98 percent of the time because once you start making poor choices, it's easier to continue to make them and often they can lead to tragic consequences. And so it's a book that really is not just how you're going to be famous rich, and famous and change the world by curing cancer, but it's really what is your impact on the world around you and the greater world as well. Ken WhiteProfessor Brent Allred recommends How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christiansen. The Mason School's chief marketing officer is Jeff Rich. His recommendation is a bit different from the two career-related books on our list. Jeff, what book would you like to recommend to professionals for the new year? Jeff RichWell, you know, I normally like to stay away from things that have political overtones given a work environment, and you know, religion and politics are never good things to talk about at work. But given what we've gone through the last year with the political cycle, I've had a book on my reading list forever. It's been out forever, and it's been critically acclaimed. I just haven't gotten to it. But the book is Team of Rivals by the noted historian Doris Kearns Goodwin a frequent appearer on shows such as Meet the Press. But I've always been a big fan of her perspective. I think she frames issues and situations in a historical context very well, and I appreciate the sort of non-bias approach that she takes. But I thought it was a particularly interesting book to pick up and to really hit. Given the polarization that's been going on in our country, and you know, up until perhaps this cabinet, Lincoln's cabinet may have been viewed as the most controversial in American history. The premise of the book, for those that are not familiar with it, is in the lead-up to the election cycle of 19 or 1860. It was very contentious election a lot of rivals for the nomination for presidency, from Edwin Stanton to Sewell. All of the key political players at the time were very much aligned against Abraham Lincoln. And as we all know, of course, he won that election, but instead of continuing to marginalize or minimize the impact that his rivals could have on our country and its politics, he chose the path of bringing them into his cabinet and creating a harmonious group ultimately that really helped govern the country and take it to new places by having a much broader and diverse perspective on issues across the country, particularly the issue of slavery at the time. So I very much appreciated, you know, reading that in given what we're seeing right now, and it makes me stop and think that we all come from different points of view and have very different perspectives about things, but there are some common threads that tie us all together, and we had to remember that more and find those common threads and come together and work in teams to solve some of our problems. Ken WhiteChief Marketing Officer Jeff Rich recommends Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Rosanna Koppelman is Executive Director of the Center for Corporate Education here at the Mason School. She works with executives and leaders from companies and organizations across the world. She suggests a must-read for leaders and aspiring leaders. Rosanna, what book would you recommend? What's the title, and why. Rosanna KoppelmanSo the book that I would recommend is The Five Levels of Leadership by John Maxwell. It's one of those books that is a great go-to book. If you've been newly appointed in a leadership position and you are interested in kind of figuring out where you start your leadership journey, and that journey can be in a variety of places. It can be at any one point of the five levels. John Maxwell talks about levels as position, permission, production, people development, and then the top level is that pinnacle level. And he has a short little assessment at the beginning of the book where he, you know, instructs the reader to go through the assessment to figure out where they are on their leadership level and then very methodically. He takes you through a series of steps and behaviors that you need to master and to develop in order to get to the next level. And I really think that this is a great book. It's an all-time favorite of mine. I've read many books from different clients that they're using in their leadership and development programs, but this is just a great go-to book. I come back around to it time and time again for our clients as well as for myself. Ken WhiteThat's Rosanna Koppelman of the Center for Corporate Education recommending John Maxwell's The Five Levels of Leadership. If you're interested in understanding the power of statistics without having to take a statistics course, Professor of Operations and Information Technology Bill Stewart has this recommendation. Bill, what book would you recommend professionals consider for this year and why. Bill StewartIt's a couple of years old now, but I would recommend The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. It has wonderful background on statistics and how you use it, misuse it, and sets a context for the use of statistics that I don't think is demonstrated very frequently by other books. So it covers a lot of different issues. It talks about baseball and gambling and volcanoes erupting and so forth, but it has some business situations as well, like talks about the housing collapse and why the credit default options were not good monetary investments, and the why that the bottom fell out of that market. It talks about investing in Wall Street and talks about the efficient market hypothesis, which basically says you can't predict what's going to happen in the market from day to day without inside information of some sort. Talks about how you determine risk and how you communicate that risk to people when you've done some kind of a statistical analysis. Giving a point estimate of how high the river is going to get doesn't do you much good if you prepare for that height and the river gets two inches higher. You're flooded out. It talks about overfitting models and trying to extract more from models than is really there and with the limitations of statistical models are. So anybody who is interested in good and entertaining background in statistics and how it works and so forth should read this book. I think I thought it was fascinating; I use it in my courses. Ken WhiteThat's Professor Bill Steward recommending Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise. Gaining a better understanding of the United States and its people is the goal of this next recommendation. Rita Murphy of the Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance shares her suggestion. Rita MurphyThe one I'm most looking forward to reading and I've just started it, is it's a book called Hillbillyology and it's by J.D. Vance and it was one of the most talked about books during the recent election and I think the outcome of the election helped me realize that I wasn't listening then and I may not. I didn't pay enough attention either. What this author is claiming he was a he's a young white working-class person from Ohio who is basically trying to say that people aren't listening to us, and I thought it would be worth kind of getting a different perspective. So it's a memoir, and it's also a social commentary, and it's a variety of different things. I'm just looking forward to seeing what he has to say. Ken WhiteThat's Rita Murphy of the Boehly Center suggesting Hillbillyology by JD Vance. And finally, one more recommendation of a book to read in the New Year from me. If you don't mind, I suggest the classic communication book written in 1936. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. A title that sounds a little unusual in 2017, but the content is excellent, and it is relevant. Almost every communication book written today can trace the root of its content back to How to Win Friends and Influence People. So to review our list of books to consider for professionals in 2017, Power Listening by Bernard Ferrari, How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christiansen, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Five Levels of Leadership by John Maxwell, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Hillbillyology by J.D. Vance and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. If you have a recommendation that's not on our list, please let us know via email. Our address is podcast@wm.edu, and that's our podcast for this week. Ken WhiteLeadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs and get results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dawn Edmiston & Phil Heavilin](images/edmiston-heavilin-66-thumb.jpg)
![Finding Your Dream Job in 2017](images/edmiston-heavilin-66-thumb.jpg)
Dawn Edmiston & Phil Heavilin
Episode 66: December 20, 2016
Finding Your Dream Job in 2017
The beginning of a new year is the time many professionals decide to take the plunge and change jobs. According to monster.com, December, January, and February are excellent months to apply for and secure a new position. If you're considering an employment change in the coming new year, our guests today will help you make all the right moves. Dawn Edmiston is a Clinical Associate Professor of Marketing, and Phil Heavilin is the Executive Director of the Graduate Career Management Center at the William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business, and they join us today to discuss how you can find the job of your dreams in 2017.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. The end of 2016 and the beginning of a new year. This is the time many professionals decide to take the plunge and change jobs, and it's a good time to do so. According to monster.com, December, January, and February are excellent months to apply for and secure a new position. If you're considering an employment change in the New Year, we have two experts on the podcast today to help you make all the right moves. First, Dawn Edmiston is a Clinical Associate Professor of Marketing here at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Dawn works with professionals, clients, and students to improve their personal brands. In addition, she helps people utilize social media strategies in their job searches. Phil Heavilin is Executive Director of the Graduate Career Management Center here at the Mason School. Phil works with countless companies, organizations, and job seekers. He also serves as a career advisor to MBA students and other professionals. Dawn and Phil join us on an extended episode of the podcast today to discuss how you can find the job of your dreams in 2017. Here's our conversation with Dawn Edmiston and Phil Heavilin. Ken WhiteWell, Dawn and Phil, thank you for joining us. We're actually recording when are we about the eighth or ninth of December, and for people in an academic setting, this is such a busy time, so thank you for spending time with us. It's great to have you here. Phil, I'll start with you. You oversee the Graduate Career Management Center here in the Mason School of Business at William & Mary. You're constantly working with MBA students and Master's students looking for work. The end of the year search what's it like? Why do people seem to start a search at the end of the year? What's going on with people? Phil HeavilinWell, the first thing I would say is that don't take a holiday from your job search. This is a time period where many people will take some time off and maybe go on vacation, which is great. You need that. But if you're either actively seeking a position or really want to make a transition, this is a time to really double down on those activities. On the employer's side, many recruiters, many organizations are trying to fill positions by the end of the year. Maybe they're reaching trying to hit certain numbers. And so, recruiters are very active during this time period. And so you want to take advantage of an opportunity where you have many job candidates who are taking themselves out of the market temporarily, taking a break, a hiatus, but you have recruiters who are actively seeking candidates. This is a great opportunity you double down, get some applications out, reach out to recruiters during this time period. You're really going to put yourself at an advantage where during other times of the year, it's just not the same thing. Ken WhiteWhat about the new year after the New Year? Is it a completely different cycle and setting, then? Phil HeavilinYou're going to have another ramping up on recruiting activity right at the beginning of the year. And so if you take advantage of, you know, around the holidays where you're doing that outreach, you imagine that people are starting back up January 1st who took that break. They're trying to make some inroads where you've already made them with some of these companies. So it's really important to take advantage during the holidays whereas before or the new year to really get those inroads in with those recruiters. Ken WhiteSo I have a job. I like it. But I think I might want to look for something else. Is there a checklist or questions I should ask myself before launching a search to make sure I'm actually doing the right thing? Phil HeavilinYeah, something I've mentioned before on a podcast and with clients that I work with is make sure you understand what you're trying to get into rather than what you're just trying to get out of. Really taking stock of what it is that you're doing right now, what is it that you like. What is it that you don't like? Because that's usually the driver for people when they're they're out online, and they're looking at job postings, and they're applying to things on the side. It's usually the dislikes that are driving that activity. So really understanding what that is so that when you make that next move, you're not just duplicating, you're not just getting into a similar situation. So, for example, typically, it's the relationship with a supervisor that's driving people to change jobs. So maybe when you're looking for a new position, and you maybe get deep into the process, really understand who it is that you're going to be working for. Ken WhiteRight. Phil HeavilinAsk your potential colleagues what it is like working for this individual. You get a lot of good positive feedback, as are opportunities for growth. Making sure that those questions are answered before making that big move into a new position. Ken WhiteIs that one of the top reasons that people look at the relationship with the supervisors is not as great as it can be? Phil HeavilinThat's correct. It is the top reason why people transition out of their current employment. Ken WhiteThat's number one. So good for supervisors and leaders to know about and good for those possibly seeking a new position. We here and in, the three of us, deal a lot with millennials, many of them just I'm going to go online and apply and apply and apply. Is that the one and only way to do it? What's the best way? Phil HeavilinThat's a strategy. That's a strategy. If you don't like getting out and networking and meeting with people and just want to apply to job postings, and you really do have to apply literally to thousands, it can be a numbers game at that moment. And that's actually more difficult than networking because people try to manage their job search and try to manage the positions they've applied to. It's just a nightmare because you have an excel spreadsheet with hundreds of companies on there. You really have to. That's part of it, but you really need to get out and just meet with people and the holidays, whether it's pre-holiday or the new year. There's great opportunities to get out and meet people in your industry. There's always a typical networking events which kind of put people off. People feel uncomfortable going in networking events. They feel uncomfortable meeting new people, especially if you characterize yourself as an introvert, but there's other opportunities like volunteer activities where maybe you get attached to an organization or a cause that you really believe in, and so really the byproduct becomes meeting people. And I don't. I've met many people just through my volunteer activity and what you have is now you have something in common with everybody who you're meeting in that in that activity because you all are there. You have a shared interest and a shared goal trying to contribute to this organization, so immediately you have something in common, whereas if you're going to just a general event, networking event, the whole goal is to find someone who has something in common, and so you go through this period of awkward back and forth small talk with the whole purpose of trying to land on something you had an interest in. Ken WhiteDawn, I know you work with clients 18 all the way up in terms of age and experience, and I know you spent a great deal of time talking to them about networking. Networking season beginning a bum rap lately. People are saying don't network, make conversation instead, make friendships, and so forth. How do you position networking, and how do you try to share tips and ideas with people with whom you interact? Dawn EdmistonI really like Phil's opening statement that you should never take a holiday from a career search. In fact, I would take that analogy one step further and say that you should give yourself the gift of opportunities of networking of reflection, and the holidays are a great chance to do that. We live in such a hectic environment where it is react react react, and we need to take a moment to reflect. And the holidays are an ideal point to be able to do that. And as we go through that reflection process and as we start thinking about the things that we can do to further contribute our time and our talents. Networking is a critical element of that. And it does at times. In fact, when I was in graduate school, one of the greatest lines I ever heard at a conference was networking is not a negative word. Ken WhiteRight. Dawn EdmistonAnd I have often thought about that because I'm an introvert. I'm an introvert by nature. It is very difficult for me, and I know that my students and clients would never believe that, but by nature, this is not this. Even this podcast is not what I would choose to do. However, I am passionate about marketing and passionate about personal branding, and I understand the value of networking. And to Phil's point, if we can think creatively about networking and what works for you, then move forward in and through those channels. And with that, too, we had a brief conversation just before the start of this podcast about how digital technologies allow the introverts and all of us to be able to connect with other individuals. So I was just having a conversation with students about a conference that they are attending during the holidays. And I said to them have you looked on LinkedIn for those individuals who are speaking. Ken WhiteRight. Dawn EdmistonHave you tried to connect with them in advance because that can help when you approach them at the end of their session and acknowledge what they've shared, and share with them how you value their insights? And that's yet another positive relationship moment. And know we have plenty of those opportunities through digital technologies. Ken WhiteThere seems to be a lot of discussion, books, articles written about don't treat it as or don't go in and say I'm looking for a job but instead say I'm looking for advice or could you help me. What do you think about that approach? Dawn EdmistonNo doubt about it. I mean, in a focus, I've said again and again the focus should always be on the other individual's needs because if you are meeting their needs, they will eventually appreciate your value and that that's really where the focus needs to be. We should not be starting with I statements. It should be what you need and how can I contribute to those needs. How can I bring value to you as an individual or as an organization? Phil HeavilinI would go piggyback off that and say that when you're reaching out to these people, ask for advice, ask for insight that's you're going to trigger something that's just part of human nature, and as that, we intrinsically we want to help other people. We do. And when people come to us seeking advice and insight, and it's something that we can give. Oh, I know that topic. I feel comfortable sharing that information. That is incredibly fulfilling for that person to be able to meet the need of the individual who is coming to them asking for advice and insight and through that exchange, what you're doing is you are establishing a rapport and establish a relationship that it may be something that turns into a professional opportunity, but it might turn into a mentorship or something down the line. So if you can use that a word advice and that be the goal objective of that initial contact is asking for advice and insight that can launch you into a whole variety of different directions with that person. Ken WhiteSo if you're looking for a job, go ahead and apply online but make sure that networking must be a part of that. But as Dawn said, don't treat it as a negative. Treat it as an opportunity, a way to meet people, a way to build relationships, and the fact is most people would love to help you, especially if there's a connection right an alma mater, something you both like, the field, whatever that happens to be, and it may not be quite as tough as maybe some people make it sound. Phil HeavilinIt's tough in the beginning. Ken WhiteYeah right. Phil HeavilinWe get through a few and what you actually find is that there is a certain rhythm when you meet someone for the first time. There's always initial small talk kind of banter going back and forth, and maybe you identify something that again you have in common, and so you'll find that there's a rhythm to that exchange. And the best way to be successful in that kind of an engagement is to prepare for it. To go into it, whether it's an event or going into or maybe you reached out to someone on LinkedIn and said hey can we schedule 15 20 minute chat and they respond. People are frightened that someone will actually respond to them. I mean, they're frightened. And so when they actually say yes, then having a set of questions half a dozen or so that tap into that person's specific career path. What do they like about that industry? What do they like about that company? And so having some questions established ready ahead of time that's going to give you a little bit more confidence knowing what it is that you're going to actually address with that person, and then you're going to find that there's a rhythm. And then the subsequent conversations you have with people can be easier and easier and, dare I say, fun. Ken WhiteYeah great. So let's back up. I mean, if we were talking about networking, probably the first thing most people will work on when they're seeking a new position is their resume. There don't seem to be necessarily a hard and fast rules. What do you tend to advise people in terms of resume? Phil HeavilinResumes are important to keep up. For one thing, it's difficult, especially if you've been in a position for a few years and you've had some great accomplishments, to then go back a few years after your accomplishments and try to remember the details and then structure, you know an accomplishment statement within your resume that is a good reflection of what you did. That can be very difficult. So as you have these winds currently in your career and in your position, you have your resumé on your desktop on your computer, so you quickly get up there, and just maybe you're not wordsmithing it at that time but just get it up there on your current employment so that if you find yourself either having to transition out you already have something there to work from and you're ready to go. Ken WhiteYeah. Phil HeavilinIt's got to be one page too. These recruiters they are breezing through these resumes in just a few seconds. So making sure that's one page. It's not a biography. It's just enough to get you the interview. That's what a resume is for. It's just to get you the interview, so giving them everything that you think that they need and that they're looking for. That's the content of the resume. Dawn EdmistonAnd that's actually the most important point at the end. Is what the employer needs from you. It is not a reflection of what you have done. They are not concerned about your titles or your credentials. They want to know about the experiences that you've had and the insights that you've gained from those experiences that you can contribute to the organization. And having that mindset is critical, and Phil's emphasis on preparation before you are seeking advice those are critical success factors. Having an understanding, you do not have to have a specific knowledge about your exact dream job. However, you do need to know where it is that you want to direct your focus, and you can do that through aspirational job searches. The holidays are also wonderful opportunities to do aspirational job searches. Print out two or three positions that you do aspire to achieve even if you're living happily ever after in your current role. And look at what is required to succeed in those roles and then be certain that you are using that language to describe your experiences, whether it's on your resumé or your LinkedIn profile or in conversations when you are networking with others. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Dawn Edmiston and Phil Heavilin in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Dawn Edmiston and Phil Heavilin on landing a new job in the new year. Ken WhiteOlder workers, how far back do you go on a resume and on a LinkedIn profile? Dawn EdmistonWell, to Phil's point again, I think it's important that you think about the employer. Ken WhiteAnd what's relevant to them. Dawn EdmistonAnd what's relevant to them. Yes. So I would not say that, you know, go back 20 years if you had started in that career field and perhaps had transitioned into another industry and now are interested in moving back. That foundational experience can be very important. Ken WhiteRight. And it could actually be wrapped up in a sentence if you want to say I had one career, now I'm in this one sentence can cover that old career just sort of let them know. Phil HeavilinYeah, that's right. Ken WhiteYeah. Phil HeavilinAnd oftentimes you're you have to fill out a pretty extensive job application for the employer, too, and so they're going to ask for a little bit more detail. Ken WhiteRight. Phil HeavilinSo the resume again it's a marketing tool. It does not have to have all these specific details from 25 years ago. It's just not necessary. Ken WhiteIt seems like we've been talking about LinkedIn for 50 years. It hasn't been around quite that long. Some people get it. Some people don't. Dawn, you do a lot with executives and professionals in LinkedIn. I guess rule number one if you don't have a profile, for crying out loud, you don't exist. Dawn EdmistonIn most cases that's, that's true. Yes. I mean, LinkedIn is now in excess of 400 million users worldwide, and it is a great platform for networking. I will share that there are always exceptions. Ken WhiteSure. Dawn EdmistonIf, for example, in your particular field, it is more important for you to have a creative portfolio or other aspects. Yes, and that's where your focus should be first. However, I will share that LinkedIn has become quite robust as they've evolved and now have the opportunity. One of the initial challenges with LinkedIn was you were taking a one-dimensional resume and simply importing it into your LinkedIn profile. Ken WhiteRight. Phil HeavilinYeah. Dawn EdmistonAnd again, to reinforce a point I made earlier, it is not about the titles that you've held or the credentials you've earned. It really is about those experiences. So if you can share examples of your work, whether it be projects that you presented, videos that you've developed, LinkedIn is a really powerful place to be able to do that. And it's free and it still tends to be one of the first search results that will appear on any of the major search engines. And that's the only thing that you are doing to develop a personal brand that is a very good place to start. Phil HeavilinWhen they look up Dawn online, and her LinkedIn profile is going to be on the first page of Google. I saw a statistic. I think 93 percent of people do google searches don't even go into the second page. Ken WhiteSure. Dawn EdmistonYes. Phil HeavilinSo LinkedIn it's going to be right there in the first pages of the google search. Ken WhiteOne of the things, Dawn, I think a lot of people at least many executives that I interact with really struggle with is this the professional summary know LinkedIn for those who know it or don't you have your photo you've got your resumé your title and so forth. But we have this opportunity to write a commercial, for lack of a better term about ourselves. But some people really struggle with writing the summary. How do you guide them? Dawn EdmistonWe do. It's hard. Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn EdmistonIn fact, in a senior-level undergraduate course that I teach at the College of William & Mary, we've now developed this concept called the perfect pitch and perfect pitch videos, and in 60 seconds, my students need to deliver their perfect pitch. And if you look at the summary sections now on their LinkedIn profiles, many elements from those perfect pitch scripts are now appearing in their summary. It's a narrative to allow you to connect with potential employers. I think it's very important again that the focus is not entirely on you. It's a summary of the experiences that you can contribute to others. So as you are developing that summary, you need to think about what it is that you want to do. I also encourage students and clients to think about LinkedIn as a forward progressive media channel. Do not think about it as a reflection of what I've done in the past. So, for example, if you're looking to transition careers, your LinkedIn profile should be a reflection of the values that you will bring to that future career, not a reflection on what you've just done in the past. I just have a client who has been an accountant for more than 20 years wants to move into marketing for financial services. So we're literally reflecting on everything that they've done in the past 20 years that can also be perceived in the marketing communication role, and that could bring value to them in this financial services market. And that's that's important to consider as you develop the summary section and as you develop the bullet points that explain the contributions that you've made to past organizations that you will bring to future employers. Ken WhiteSo have your profile have a professional photo. We all know that and really take time to have it other centric or employer-centric summary. Any other new tools that LinkedIn has introduced? Is there video? Dawn EdmistonYes, you can embed video. One of the most important tools, and I know that you have both heard this from me before but give yourself a gift during this holidays if you have not already personalized your LinkedIn URL. That is the single most important tactic that you can take because, to Phil's point earlier where, if you were to search for Dawn Edmiston, even though I have my own domain named dawnedmiston.com. The LinkedIn profile because it is personalized is still typically the first result that appears. Phil HeavilinI always tell my students and clients that every morning I log into my email, and then I immediately open up LinkedIn every single morning because, to me LinkedIn the breadth of activity that you can engage in on LinkedIn, whether it's developing and nurturing your personal brand, your personal profile. The job opportunities that are there setting up job alerts that are relevant to what either you're doing now or what you want to do in that next step. The ability to mine for contacts for informational interviewing or networking, I think people are bought in that it is essential, but just in case there's a few doubters out there. LinkedIn is absolutely essential on a variety of different fronts. Dawn EdmistonAnd I do encourage networking building to the 500 plus. That's the critical point within LinkedIn once you reach 500 plus that that appears on your LinkedIn profile. It seems to have a certain credence in the marketplace. However, it is important to have contacts and connections that are valuable to you. Ken WhiteRight. Dawn EdmistonBecause they are now, that is the content that you will see in your LinkedIn feed, and that is how other individuals will potentially associate you. They will look at who you are associating with and getting a greater appreciation of your interests of your experience. But in particular, I do think that LinkedIn has become more powerful at curating content as well as creating content. Now that you're able to do LinkedIn publish posts. Ken WhiteRight. Dawn EdmistonWe really have no need to do professional blogs because LinkedIn now serves that purpose, and with a touch of a button, I can reach thousands of individuals where I would have never had that outreach those outreach opportunities in the past. Ken WhiteFor those who don't know that. Yeah, you can. Everybody with LinkedIn profile doesn't have to be a premium account. Any kind of LinkedIn profile, you can create thought pieces, opinion pieces, instructional pieces, write them, you can add a really cool graphic or a photo if and I'm telling you I am horrible at technology, and I can. It's so simple to do this. It is very, very simple to add the photo and write a piece and push it out, and it's not only to your connections, is it? It can really have some legs because your connections can then share it. Dawn EdmistonYes. Ken WhiteWhat do you recommend to professionals about posting and about writing on LinkedIn? Dawn EdmistonFirst, you should start with what you know and very often, I've had the privilege of also teaching undergraduate and graduate students at the College of William & Mary, and recently in the online MBA course that I taught several of the students their posts relative to market research tools for a particular assignment were so good that I told them that they needed to share those insights on LinkedIn. Ken WhiteGreat. Dawn EdmistonAnd because other individuals would want to know about those market research tools and the value of those tools to their organizations or to their individual success. So I would start with what you know. Phil HeavilinAbsolutely, I would concur. Definitely write what you know, and question for Dawn how important is it to have someone maybe who's within the industry or close colleague maybe take a look at it before pulling the trigger. Dawn EdmistonYeah. Ken WhiteYeah. Phil HeavilinI think everybody is so nervous about putting something out there. Dawn EdmistonAnd one of the other good things about doing that is then you also have an individual. Once that article is done, you can ask them would you be willing to share this across your social media channels. Yes. I mean, getting that feedback getting that insight, that's invaluable. Ken WhiteAnd it doesn't have to be that lengthy, and actually, if you're not a journalist, it's pretty easy to kind of figure out the formula. Five tips to this or three highlights about this I think if you'd like to post one of the best ways to learn to read others who do it well, look at the daily feeds from Entrepreneur magazine, Fast Company, Bloomberg Businessweek. All of those have really, in fact, some of them even tell you right up front three-minute read, five-minute read, and then you kind of get the idea, oh I get it. The main idea may be back it up with two or three points and then and then wrap it up. Is too often? Can that be an issue? I'm posting twice a week or once a week. What do you think in terms of how often someone should publish on LinkedIn? Dawn EdmistonYes, there is definitely a limit. I have actually removed connections because they just are constantly in my LinkedIn feed, and LinkedIn, unfortunately, that's one of the attributes that they do not have at this point. Unlike Facebook, for example, where you could limit what you see from certain individuals. LinkedIn does not seem to have capabilities at this point. So it is similar to Twitter. You just continue to watch. Watch the feed build, and that can be difficult. So I would state that if you're an individual, posting once or twice during the week could be powerful. I do not post that often. I do certainly share that often. I make a valiant effort to be engaged. I think it's important to know that you don't necessarily have to be creating content to be engaged in these environments as well. So if I see something as usual that Dean White, you know, shares or Phil shares, you most likely have seen me share it to my constituents as well because it's relevant to the environment in which we live, and I know it's relevant to the connections that I have. So you do not necessarily have to simply create content to be effectively engaging through LinkedIn and other social media channels. Ken WhiteAnd an easy way, I think to be involved in LinkedIn is to endorse others for their skills. Right. So you know Phil, I'll go into his profile. I'll click on leadership, and he then gets an endorsement from me, and I think that's a great way, and you see that. What a wonderful way to connect with other individuals. What about I'm talking to a number of professionals who say I seem to be getting a lot of invitations from people I don't know, and man, that takes time. Do I know this person? Did I meet this person? There's no introduction. It's just connect with me. Dawn EdmistonSo there are so many points in that statement that need to be. Phil HeavilinYes, quality contacts are very important. I remember when I was a new professional, I was happy when anybody. Ken WhiteYeah, right. Phil HeavilinI don't know who you are, but by golly, you're in my network now. Ken WhiteYou have a job you're in. Phil HeavilinNow because, you know, for a variety of reasons, and I work with a lot of students who, you know, I want to connect them with my network. I'm much more interested in quality connections who if someone that comes to me and says to me oh, I see you're connected with so-and-so on LinkedIn, you mind maybe making an introduction? I want to be able to confidently say yes because I know who that person is. I've had some circumstances where someone asked to be introduced to someone in my network, and I don't really remember who that person was. And so I realized, okay, I need to really begin to vet the requests that come through to me. Ken WhiteSo when you're making a request because all three of us get several a week from people we've never heard of, and there's really nothing written in the box, it just says, let's connect. So when you're making the request. Dawn EdmistonSo that's another limitation of LinkedIn. There are certain parts within the LinkedIn environment where you connect, and LinkedIn sends an automatic invitation. Ken WhiteRight. Dawn EdmistonDo not do that. Ken WhiteRight. Dawn EdmistonYou always want to send a personalized note with your invitation. In fact, when I speak now at conferences, I do feel because I speak on personal branding and marketing communications that, there might be individuals who want to connect with me afterwards and follow my work. And so, I just simply ask them, please, when you send the invitation to connect. Just let me know that we met at this event, and I would be glad to accept your invitation. Ken WhiteYeah, so simple. Hi Dawn we met after your speech at the conference loved it. Would you mind connecting? Dawn EdmistonYeah. Ken WhiteOther than these blanket. Very strange. And I've actually run into people I have, in fact, met, but they didn't put it in the invitation, and then you say no thank you. And you know you've offended somebody and so forth, and Dawn, you were talking about the number of connections too. The 500 is the magic number or that that sort of, and those are connections people who ask you to connect and vice versa, what to do in terms of LinkedIn and social media if I'm not searching for a job. The person is really happy. Dawn EdmistonYou should not change what you do. I mean, the time to start building these relationships is now when you do not necessarily need them but could still value them. Phil HeavilinAbsolutely your connections you have to nurture whether you're actively searching or not. And I think many people are always passively looking for new opportunities or at least open to new opportunities as you want to maybe be open to that. But I think absolutely you have to continue to nurture, update, like, share, communicate, post so that if you do find yourself in the unfortunate situation where you have to tap that network, it's already developed, and now it's a matter of harvesting rather than trying to grow. Dawn EdmistonWe had an executive recently deliver a guest lecture here, and they said that graduates will now have between 16 and 32 different positions in their career. Ken WhiteYeah. Dawn EdmistonAnd knowing that that's true. You do not necessarily know where these opportunities when they will arise and but you always have to be available for them. I mean, you always have to position yourself so that you can take advantage of these opportunities when they're presented to you. Ken WhiteSo our listener who's seeking is doing a great job at work. And so now they've decided I'm going to look. They've got their resume together. They're out there network as difficult or as easy as that might be. They're on LinkedIn, any other social media, any other channels that they should be considering as they start this new year and looking for new opportunities or is doing working hard, networking, and LinkedIn enough. Phil HeavilinI think there's always opportunities to explore different avenues to maybe tap a network of people we haven't tapped before. And getting involved in professional organizations I think especially if you're transitioning into a new field that's a great way to start establishing people and professionals within that industry. So getting involved in maybe a local chapter of an organization, I think, is really important. To me if I had one piece of advice, is that you got to set goals. Once you're kind of ready to go and ready to move forward, really have set goals in order to know how to get to wherever your destination is because you don't have goals, you don't have direction, and direction is what gets you to that destination. So you've got the LinkedIn profile you kind of have an idea of what you want to do then set those goals in order to get where you want to be. Dawn EdmistonAnd be proactive about not only developing this personal brand presence but also in monitoring it and using tools such as Google alerts. You should definitely have a Google alert set for your name, for organizations of interest to you, for fields of interest to you, for competitors. Another great free tool is mention.com. I've actually found mention.com to be even more robust than Google Alerts, especially relative to social media. So I had a student recently post a very kind comment in a random blog about me. Thank goodness it was kind, but mention would have told me otherwise, and it appeared in my mention.com feed, and I thanked this student, and they were shocked that I would have had access to this particular blog because it was so industry specific. It was, in fact, it was a music blog, and this was her field of interest, and they were asking about individuals who had inspired her work, and I was very I was flattered to be a part, and I wouldn't have known about it had it not been mention.com. And a third free tool I want to mention is brandyourself.com. Another free tool, brand yourself, is especially good because it monitors what appears on your the first page first pages of your Google search. So again, having that professional online presence is important. Having those networks are important but monitoring the process is also a very important part of engagement. Ken WhiteAnd final question Phil. Is there a certain amount of time have we've seen statistics, or have you seen anything that how long a job search might take? Does it vary? Phil HeavilinVery good question. It does, and the federal government does a lot of studies related to this, and it's a part-time job it really is. It can be upwards of 20 hours a week just from all the activities associated with what we discussed today. Establishing a profile on LinkedIn if you don't have one, reaching out to connections, reading content, getting up to speed on an industry, going on interviews, applying to positions this takes real tangible time for an active job seeker who might be still employed. That can be up to 20 hours a week that you're dedicating to that kind of activity. Ken WhiteAnd it may take time for you to find that right job, but you got to keep doing the right thing and hang in there. Phil HeavilinYou got to do it. I always say it's a marathon, not a sprint, if you can just commit to certain activities a week. Set those weekly goals maintain that activity because as long as you're doing the right things, it's going to happen, and it's going to work out. Ken WhiteAnd that's our conversation with Dawn Edmiston and Phil Heavilin, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, or suggestions with us via email at podcast@wm.edu. Well, thanks to our guests this week, Dawn Edmiston and Phil Heavilin from the Mason School of Business, and thanks to you for joining us for our final podcast of 2016. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe and productive week. And happy New Year. |
![Sheri Bias & Amory Holloway](images/bias-holloway-65-thumb.jpg)
![Innovation & The Talent Agency](images/bias-holloway-65-thumb.jpg)
Sheri Bias & Amory Holloway
Episode 65: December 13, 2016
Innovation & The Talent Agency
In today's constantly evolving business environment, companies and organizations must innovate to stay on top. The business that embraces change and disruption is the business that sets itself up for success. Sheri Bias is the owner of Liquid Talent Agency in Richmond, VA, and joins us today with her business partner Amory Holloway to discuss their new framework for doing business with actors, models, and producers and how they've brought innovation to the talent agency business.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. In today's constantly evolving business environment, companies and organizations must innovate to stay on top. The business that embraces change and disruption is the business that tees itself up for success, as we've seen from the likes of Dollar Shave Club, Airbnb, Uber, and many others. Innovation and disruption can apply to any business. Sheri Bias is the owner of the Liquid Talent Agency in Richmond, Virginia. She works with actors, models, and producers. In the process, she's created a new framework for doing business in that industry. On today's podcast, Bias and one of her business partners share their story of how they've brought innovation to the talent agency business. Here's our conversation with Sheri Bias and Amory Holloway from Liquid Talent. Ken WhiteSheri, Amory, thank you for taking the time. It's great to be here. This is not at all what I expected. We're in your space. Not at all what I expected, so this is really exciting. Sheri, I think when some people think about talent agents, they think of what they maybe see on TV in a sitcom. You're discovered, and suddenly you're in a movie. What was the setup? Because you what you're doing is very unusual and different, but what was the old way of talent agents? Sheri BiasSure. And welcome. Welcome to Liquid. Ken WhiteYeah, thanks. Sheri BiasWe do have an interesting setup which we can certainly talk more about, but previously before we decided to go with business strategic partnerships, it was mainly agency-focused. So talent would go to an agent and discuss representation. There are a variety of types of representation, from an exclusive to non-exclusive contract. So understanding that and understanding what type of agency if you want to go modeling, if you want to be fashion, do you want to focus on talent. We focus at Liquid on real people, particularly in the casting and then the talent management that we do for our business lines. But there are just a variety of different ways an organization can be set up specifically for talent, which again is more of an older model, and what we've done is taken that and morphed into a unique position within the industry. So we have liquid performance arts. We have liquid action martial arts. We have liquid talent. We have liquid casting lots of liquid stuff here. We have Kim Alley models, and then we also have shots by Bobby. So we've got lots of strategy as far as our business partnerships, and that's how we've aligned ourselves within the community because we want to be a one-stop shop for our clients. Ken WhiteSo in the old days, if someone wanted to be a model, they would go to an agent, and the agent would then farm them out to a photographer and to get training correct. Sheri BiasAbsolutely. Ken WhiteAnd now you're doing it here. Sheri BiasWe're doing it here. We're assisting our clients in identifying those many, particularly hard-to-find niches, as far as skill sets. We're training people to have the corresponding martial arts skill set. The dance skill sets, we do photography here, so we have clients come to us for those needs, and we can pretty much again be a one-stop shop. Ken WhiteWhere'd that idea come from? Sheri BiasIt really just grew. We had a space over in Shockoe Slip behind the Martin Agency, and it seemed to be outgrowing that with our casting and talent services and found this place at Stony Point started to build out, and that's when people started really coming to us, and saying I would like to be involved from the martial arts aspect to the dance aspect. Kim Alley with modeling. So Kim focuses on more New York type of traditional modeling, and all of us together just kind of put our heads together and said this is a great place to be and something we can really offer that's unique to our clients. Ken WhiteWhere are you placing much of your talent? What kind of jobs do they get? Sheri BiasIt really runs the gamut. We just finished legends and lies, which is a national broadcast Fox TV network show. We've done feature films. We do a lot of broadcasts, so it can be national, or it could be local broadcast, and then we do industrials. We also have if you drove 64-95, you probably saw a lot of our models on billboards. So anything along the lines of that. We've also been working with some folks out of LA to place talent out there and wherever the clients want us to be. We just finished a production with Publix down in Florida, so they did the casting here, and then they flew the folks down to Orlando. Nice place to be. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. So how do you make the relationships with various production companies and movies and so forth? How is that done? Sheri BiasIt's really word of mouth and getting our reputation out there. I built this company on honesty and integrity. Without that, we have nothing. So it's establishing client relationships and not only making sure talent are taken care of but also clients. Ken WhiteFirst of all, this is exciting. We've never had two guests on the podcast. We had about 75 interviews, that we've never had two guests. Sheri BiasIt's all about doing new things. Ken WhiteYeah, this is exciting. We're very excited about it. Amory, you've got a dual role. You're part of Liquid, but you're also a partner. Can you explain that? Amory HollowayYeah absolutely. I came on board specifically in the dance region of it and then it kind of worked into more of a partnership than anything where my expertise in the dance world lent itself so much to the casting world. And so I just it evolved. It became something that I was passionate about, and then started working on the most recent legends and lives project. And here I am, you know, kind of a full-fledged partner. Ken WhiteSo how much dance, how much business or leads come your way? I mean, what kind of projects are out there for those who dance? Amory HollowayWell, I mean, clients often need different dance niches. We did a commercial last year for a local client where it was a full-fledged dance scene right here locally, and they needed dancers, and that's a great opportunity for me to tap into my clients and say here's an opportunity for you that's outside of your realm of Ken WhiteRight. Amory Hollowaywhat you've done before. And get them into more of a working space which is my niche in the dance community is creating working dancers, not just the prima ballerina but a dancer that can go and book jobs. Ken WhiteYeah, find work. Amory HollowayAbsolutely. Ken WhiteI'm not so sure people understand the investment that the talent have to make. You don't just show up, do you and get a starring role in something? Amory HollowayRight, no, you definitely need to invest in creating your skill set, whether it's martial arts or dance or horseback riding, or monologues. Whatever it is, you really need to look for every opportunity to expand that skill. Ken WhiteAnd Sheri, in terms of people you represent full-time, do they pursue is it part-time? What's the mix? Sheri BiasUsually, you find they build the majority of folks do other things outside of acting typically. It is a challenging environment to be in. So lots of my talent. I'm a non-exclusive agent. I mentioned those terms earlier. So I am perfectly tickled pink when my talent work with other non-exclusive agents. It's just if you go exclusive, then that means you can really only work with that one organization. Since we're non-exclusive, lots of my talent also work with other non-exclusive agencies, which again is absolutely fine, but that opens up the amount of opportunities they can be exposed to. Many of our clients are sole source. So they come to me to sole source an opportunity. So if you're not exposed to Liquid or have connections with Liquid, then you wouldn't get that opportunity. So, needless to say, from a full-time perspective from Liquid, I don't have any people on my roster that I would consider full-time. But if you're adding up all the non-exclusive relationships that they may have, that probably is what leads them to more of a full-time occupation in acting. Ken WhiteWhat drove you to go the non-exclusive route? Sheri BiasHonestly, I don't feel like people should put all their eggs in one basket. So again, if you're not with Liquid or at least have the ability to work with us like we just did a great project with Amtrak, we've worked with Wal-Mart, we've worked with Pizza Hut. Those are sole source opportunities that clients have come to us and only asked to help them facilitating cast. So if you were excluded from working with Liquid, then you wouldn't even be an option for those clients. So to me, going non-exclusive allows you to, as a talent to, also build your skill sets with other agents on different projects. Ken WhiteHow did you get into this? You have a corporate background. Sheri BiasI do. An MBA from William & Mary. I've got a doctorate in human resources. Goodness. I worked for Anheuser-Busch, Philip Morris. I'm a corporate gal. The opportunity presented itself. My son has been acting for ten years, and the opportunity presented itself to purchase Liquid. And at the time, I was like, sure, sounds like fun, never dreaming. Again I wanted to be a marine biologist when I grew up, so never really dreaming that this could expand and flower and really blossom the way it has. So it just opportunity knocked, and I open the door. Ken WhiteBut did you have much knowledge and background in the field? Sheri BiasI had several years working with various casting directors, other agents before I actually took over in Liquid leadership. Yes. So I did have experience and built my experience on a variety of TV sets, movie sets, as well as corporate broadcast sets. Ken WhiteIs that your son or through other? Sheri BiasThrough my son and other opportunities through other castings, yeah. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Sheri Bias and Amory Holloway in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Sheri Bias and Amory Holloway of Liquid Talent. Ken WhiteSo what do you try? What is it you bring to this personally? What do you try to do that's different, that's better, that's unique than maybe others in this field don't? Sheri BiasHaving a passion for what I do. I love this. It's putting the people puzzle together. And as I mentioned earlier, it's caring about clients also caring about talent, making sure that the talent have great opportunities but also making sure that the clients have great people that they're working with. Ken WhiteYeah. Sheri BiasAnd then getting that feedback and just constantly rebuilding the organization because our roster can be transient at times. So we have people going to first market, which would be in New York, L.A., and so forth. So then we have to rebuild and re-establish and make sure we have that continued supply of great people here for our clients locally. Ken WhiteI had told a couple of MBA students that we were going to talk today, and they immediately went to friends, the old series of friends, and Joey and his agent, which was a pretty big role in that show. She would show up every so often, and it made me think of the relationship between you and the talent. How do you manage that? I can assume people have high hopes. They have goals, and sometimes it clicks, and sometimes it doesn't. How do you manage that? Sheri BiasIt's realistic. Having to provide that level of realism at the first meeting. So our business model is we have a one-on-one meeting. We look each other in the eye and say are you serious? Is this something you want to do? Ken WhiteRight. Sheri BiasAnd from there, we develop that relationship so that I have a feel to know what you want to do. Maybe you don't want to do print modeling. Maybe you only want to do acting. So I get a feel for the talent, the directors get a feel for the talent making sure that we understand what the talent want to do and then just being open and honest there are some opportunities that you know if you came to me and said I want to apply for this role for a 20-year-old African-American female I'd say Ken WhiteProbably not. Sheri BiasIt'd be a challenge to place you there. Ken WhiteYeah. Sheri BiasBut just being realistic with people about what they're bringing to the table and what their options might be as far as project participation. Ken WhiteSo a talent, as you refer to the individuals who you represent, just striking out, you're not hitting it. Is it one of those things that it's not personal? It's just you weren't what they were looking for. Is that the case? Sheri BiasAbsolutely. Ken WhiteReally. Sheri BiasYou can, and there's probably more rejection in this business than maybe many others, but you can't take it personally. Ken WhiteRight. Sheri BiasExample, we did a casting for a TV commercial that's actually airing now. And the initial casting was they wanted eight-year-old Caucasian girls. We brought in a bunch of eight-year-old Caucasian girls, and the client said no, they look too old for what we want to do. So we recast the role at five years old, and that was perfect. Nothing personal, nothing the girls could have done differently. It was just they wanted a different look. And it's very it is different in this business because they can be specific about make, model, shape, and size. Ken WhiteSure. Sheri BiasSo anything from ethnicity to height, weight, even hair color, and eye color. Ken WhiteSo some of it is it's not personal, but some of it is make sure you're working to have ability that can set you apart at the same time. Sheri BiasAbsolutely. Yes. And we offer a variety of classes like we talked about the martial arts classes. We offer dance classes. We try to offer those unique courses so that we can build skill sets like on legends and lies. One of the unique things was equestrian-trained riders or equestrian-trained actors. So you've got to be able to ride a horse and act at the same time. Ken WhiteYeah. Sheri BiasAnd we offered through a credible source that has done many features, many TV shows. He came to us and said I would like to offer this for your talent so that you can then supply your clients with good talent who are trained to ride horses and talk at the same time. Ken WhiteRight, right. And Amory, what do you teach? What do you coach to the talent? Amory HollowayJust the dance. The dance is my realm. So if a client comes in and says we need folks that can waltz, then that is my realm to find our talent, teach them how to waltz, and then they'll now have that skill set too. Ken WhiteAre they learning from square one? They have never danced, or they've got some background? Amory HollowaySome. Ken WhiteReally. Amory HollowayIt depends on who's interested. Honestly, if you're willing to build the skill set, we're willing to teach, and there is a spot for everybody in that world. Dance is one of those things that you just have to put yourself out there, and everybody is trainable. Ken WhiteIs there a limit in terms of dance, a limit in age? Amory HollowayNo, definitely not. Actually, dance is really one of those things that is encouraged later in life. It's good for the body. It's great stretching if you there's all kinds of studies that show that it can prolong life and can prevent injury as you get later advanced stages of life. So absolutely not. Ken WhiteSo for your clients, the more they know about it, the better position they're going to be. Amory HollowayAbsolutely. Ken WhiteTo land something. Amory HollowayYeah. Ken WhiteSheri, for someone listening who thinks well, I've always wanted to be a print model. I've always wanted to do this or that. What do you tell them? Sheri BiasCheck out our website liquidtalentgroup.com, and you can do a new submission if it's something that you find you want to do. We don't guarantee representation to everyone. It is we when we get our new talent submissions in. We do review them compared to who's on our roster. So it's not a guarantee that you would be moved forward in the process. We are looking for new talent. So hey, that's exciting. We've got lots of projects that are coming up with the holiday is usually, things slow of it, but then Artie got some things we were just discussing on my way up here about the spring of next year. So if someone's interested, definitely check out the website. Do a new talent submission, and then you will get a response from one of us within about 24 hours. Ken WhiteWhat kind of a role? And, of course, we're in Virginia but does state film commissions in the state. What kind of a role do they play across the country in your field? Sheri BiasAbsolutely no. There are lots of incentives for features to come. I know we were working with one recently that actually ended up going out-of-state just based on better incentives. So it really depends on what is being offered to the productions and if it's somewhere that they feel is viable. Obviously, being here in historic Yorktown, Williamsburg, and so forth. We've got lots of great lands to use as far as scenery and backdrop. So I think that's a definite plus for productions as well. Ken WhiteMedia changing like crazy. Netflix it's no more a 26 episodes series. It could be six episodes. Those changes not just in that but media all over how is that affecting your business. Do you see much of an impact or opportunity or less opportunity? Sheri BiasI don't really see it impacting us too much as far as what we've been involved in. I know we've had some discussions. Pam is working on, you know, piloting some things and floating some things by Netflix as well. At this point, we've got another project we're working on, possible HBO. So I think definitely it's an evolving field, but the need for talent is the need for talent, be it, you know, a wee, be it a month, or two months just depending on what the duration of the project actually is and that's where we can add value is making sure you've got those great people and that they're getting great opportunities to continue to build their skills. Ken WhiteAnd final question is it lucrative for someone who is fairly successful? Sheri BiasAbsolutely yes. Particularly when you get into more of the SAG or the union roles, and then you get residuals, and that can continue to build. So there are definitely lots of lucrative opportunities. You do have to start somewhere. Again back to that reality. So you have to start somewhere, and generally, people just getting into the business would start maybe as a background or an extra such as, you know, the production that we talked about legends and lies where you may be part of that interpretive piece, and you're a background so you may not be credited. Then you build up to credited roles, even gaining your union eligibility. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Sheri Bias and Amory Holloway, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, and suggestions with us via email at podcast@wm.edu. That's podcast@wm.edu. Well, thanks to our guests this week, Sheri Bias and Amory Holloway. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Matt Williams](images/matt-williams-64-thumb.jpg)
![Leading a Good and Tough Culture](images/matt-williams-64-thumb.jpg)
Matt Williams
Episode 64: December 6, 2016
Leading a Good and Tough Culture
Some of the best organizations in the world have some of the best cultures. An effective organizational culture will attract the best professionals who generate world-class results. One such organization is the Martin Agency, one of the top full-service agencies in the world, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. CEO Matt Williams joins us today to discuss advertising, leading creative professionals, and the agency's good and tough culture.
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Matt Williams: Leading a Good and Tough Culture TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Some of the best organizations in the world have some of the best cultures, and organizational culture so effective that it attracts the very best professionals who generate world-class results. Well, one such organization is the Martin Agency, an advertising agency headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. It's one of the top full-service agencies in the world. The Martin Agency's responsible for the popular ad campaigns for Geico, UPS, Oreo, Chevy, Hanes, Benjamin Moore, and countless others. The Martin Agency's success is due in part to its good and tough culture where employees are good to each other and tough on the work. Matt Williams is CEO of the Martin Agency. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss advertising, leading creative professionals, and the agency's good and tough culture. Here's our conversation with Matt Williams, CEO of the Martin Agency. Ken WhiteMatt, thanks for taking the time to join us today. Take time out of your busy schedule. We appreciate it. Thank you. Matt WilliamsIt's great to be here, thanks. Ken WhiteThis is such a cool environment. The Martin Agency, how do you describe the is it a campus, a building, what do you call it? Matt WilliamsIt's just a building, but it's one that we were lucky enough to be able to design from the ground up about 18 years ago, which is when we moved in to be an advertising agency, so we didn't have to retrofit an existing office building. We built it directly on top of an existing parking structure, so you didn't have to dig a foundation which was great. And you had built-in parking. And more importantly, you could design it to be a collaborative creative work environment. So we did that. Ken WhiteWhich collaboration is so incredibly key in what you do. For those in the audience and don't understand what a full-service agency does. How do you define that? Matt WilliamsWe do brand strategy, creative development, media planning, and production for any number of national and international clients. So any kind of advertising or marketing communications you might need we can do. So whether it's mass media, television, radio, print things like that, or digital, which is becoming obviously an increasingly part of our business. We can design websites. We can manage communities and social media. Kind of soup to nuts. Ken WhiteAnd I would think that the public probably knows you more for the mass media campaigns. Matt WilliamsYeah, that's right. I think that's right. Ken WhiteWhat are some of those that people might recognize that the Martin Agency's done? Matt WilliamsThe most present out there is Geico. So we've been Geico's advertising agency for twenty-three years. So we invented the gecko, and we invented the cavemen, and you know, all the Geico television that people see came from here. Ken WhitePretty fun. Matt WilliamsA lot of fun, an amazing client. Fascinating company and an amazing client. Ken WhiteWhy do companies come to you? What is it about the agency that they like? What is it they're looking for? Matt WilliamsWe are consistently rated among the ten highest agencies in the country or the world in terms of creativity. So when somebody wants our ideal client is a chief marketing officer who's got a brand that has kind of lost its momentum that people know, but they've fallen out of love with, and they need new energy injected into that brand through new strategic thinking and new creative thinking. We're really, really good at that. It's what we did for Geico twenty-three years ago. It's what we did for UPS with what can brown do for you about ten years ago. Ken WhiteSure. Matt WilliamsIt's what we're doing every day for Mondelez and Oreo. So the wonderfilled campaign for Oreo came from here. When we have a brand that people know and a CMO with an ambition to reenergize that brand with new thinking and new ideas, were tailor-made for that. Ken WhiteHow do you manage and lead so many creative people? This isn't necessarily accounting or finance. This is very different. Matt WilliamsYeah, there's an inherent chaos to this business which is part of what makes it attractive and makes it interesting. You want your company to be populated by people who think differently about solving problems. So you're constantly surprised about the, you know, the angles into problems that they take, and that's what you want from them. That's what makes them creative. So that's part of the energy and the fun of this business. So you're always looking for people who think differently about solving problems. You're looking for people with different backgrounds, different interests. You want all those things to rub up against each other in surprising ways. So you have to create a physical environment that allows for that to happen. So lots of open space, lots of collaboration space, lots of stimulation around the building. But you also have to create a culture that allows it to happen. Ken WhiteRight, right. Matt WilliamsSo we describe our culture as good and tough. We are good to each other and tough on the work. So the best days are the days when I can walk through the agency and hear people arguing about ideas. Really really fighting it out about ideas but then go across the street to the watering hole that we tend to frequent and see those same people laughing over a beer. Ken WhiteRight. Matt WilliamsI want people to feel like this is an environment where they can passionately argue about ideas but where they feel there's an underpinning of support and caring. I want people to know that this place cares about them. Ken WhiteCan you coach people to become like that? Or is it setting up the environment and bringing the right people in? Matt WilliamsIt's a little bit of both. It definitely begins with bringing the right people in. What we found is that in a good and tough culture, you can bring the most talented person in the world in here, but if he or she is not a good cultural fit for the agency, it just isn't going to work. And we found ourselves in the past making the mistake of being overly enamored of massive talent. When you kind of know going in this person is not a good cultural fit, but you take a deep breath, and you do it anyway, and it never works. So I want to assess talent, but after I assess talent, I want to be able to assess cultural fit, and if both those things aren't there, we're not going to make the hire. So you have to bring the right people in, and then you have to create an environment where those people feel safe. Business has done a really good job over the last centuries of creating an environment where they use fear as a motivator, and in a creative environment, that is exactly the wrong thing to do because creative people wake up terrified every day, and the last thing you need to do is scare them. You need to make them feel like they're safe. And when they feel like they're safe, they'll amaze you with new ways of thinking about things. If you try to motivate them with fear, you'll turn creative people into exactly the kind of people you don't want them to be. Which is the people who look at you and think I wonder what he wants. I'm going to give him what he wants, and that's not what you want from them. You hire them because they think differently from you, and if you put them in a place where they feel like out of fear, they have to give you what you want. You're not getting value from them. You're not getting the value they're able to provide. So we try to create an environment where we're good to each other. We're supportive of each other. We're respectful to each other. We care about each other, but we push the ideas really hard. Ken WhiteThe space has changed so dramatically. Social media, television's changing, print is everything's changing. How do you keep up and lead? How do you embrace that? Matt WilliamsWe try to do two things. One is you have to stay facile in the technology. If you're not, you're gonna get left behind before you know. Before the starting gun sounds, you're going to be behind. So we encourage people to engage with social media, engage in new media we hire people who are experts in it. We create new disciplines like community management that we didn't have ten years ago five years ago. So you have to stay organizationally nimble that way. But you also have to stay true to the thing that made you the kind of company that you are, and I don't ever want to put form at the center of the definition of our company. I don't want to be a TV agency or even a digital agency. I want to be an idea agency. I want to put the idea at the center and surround that idea with whatever resources are required to bring it to life in whatever way it needs to be brought to life. I know that's going to be digital a lot of times because people are consuming more digital media than they ever have. So I need to have digital experts in the building, but I don't want to make the strategic mistake of defining this as a quote-unquote digital agency. You hear a lot of people talk about digital at the center. That is a strategic mistake to me because it falls into the category of defining your company or your marketing effort by the form your efforts take. I think that's the wrong thing to do. I want killer ideas. I want world-class ideas to come out of this agency all the time because they have for 50 years, and I want the form to change all the time because those forms are changing before our eyes, and we have to be nimble enough to do that. But if you fall victim to defining your company by the form your ideas take, you will become obsolete. It's just a question of when. Ken WhiteRight. Matt WilliamsAnd it's gonna be faster than it's ever been because the forums become obsolete. Ken WhiteBut the forms have always changed, actually just a little faster now. Matt WilliamsYeah. Ken WhiteThen we've seen in the past. Matt WilliamsThink back 50 years ago. Everybody thought that television was going to put movies out of business. It was going to put radio out of business. Then the Internet was the death nail of television. Ken WhiteRight. Matt WilliamsThat doesn't happen. These media complement each other, and they fill people's lives in ways that are increasingly discerning because there's a finite amount of time. But as these different media come in and different ways to interact with brands come in. People start to find places in their lives for those things. And we have to know what those places are. And we have to use those media in a way that makes the most of the places people have put them in their lives. Ken WhiteBy putting the media first, is the tail wagging the dog. Matt WilliamsExactly. Ken WhiteIn this world. Matt WilliamsWhy wouldn't I put the idea first? Give you a killer media-neutral idea that I know will build a brand and a business and then make me nimble enough and capable enough to bring that idea to life in whatever way it needs. Maybe it's television. Maybe it's social. Maybe it's websites. Maybe it's PR. Maybe it's an event. Who knows, maybe it's all those things. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Matt Williams, CEO of the Martin Agency, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Matt Williams, CEO of the Martin Agency. Ken WhiteIs it more fun today having all of those media at your disposal versus, say, the old days where it was pretty much print, radio, TV? Matt WilliamsIt sure was easier then. Ken WhiteRight. Matt WilliamsIs it more fun? It is more fun. You have to constantly get over the fear of I don't know what the hell's going on here because the media changes so much, consumers change so much, the way they interact with brands change so much. You have to be in a constant mode of learning, and if you can't change your mindset and it's hard to do. If you can't change your mindset from one of executing that which you know to one of constantly wondering what it is about the world you don't know and then executing around what you're learning. If you can't make that switch, you're gonna be in trouble. And that's a hard switch to make. And the other politic answer your question is, oh yes, so much more fun, so many more options. That's true, but it is a little terrifying because you're constantly learning. Ken WhiteI just read on a social media blog the other day, and I think it was HubSpot. Someone wrote there's no such thing as a social media expert. It's moving too quickly. You can't be an expert. Matt WilliamsI think it's true. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt WilliamsIt's part of the problem of defining your company by form because you're always going to be chasing it, you know. Ken WhiteRight. Matt WilliamsYeah. Social media experts. The minute they create the PowerPoint that tells you the secrets of social media, the social media is changed. Ken WhiteIt's gone. Matt WilliamsYou got to constantly be running after it and learning as much as you can and trying things and experimenting. You have to create in an agency, and frankly, in any company, I think. You have to create a more experimental culture. You have to use the creativity that's resident in your company to be constantly experimented. And that's true of every company, not just quote-unquote creative companies like ad agencies. Ken WhiteWhat do you like best about being CEO? Matt WilliamsI like watching over the culture of this community. So it rankles me sometimes when people call their companies their family. Oh, thank you. Welcome to the x y z family. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt WilliamsMy family is at home. This is a community of people. This company, this agency, is a community of people who think the same things about what we do. We think that ideas are powerful things. We think that a great idea can enrich the life of everyone it touches. We think it can enrich our clients by building their business. We think it can enrich the culture it operates in by elevating that culture and not polluting it. Too much advertising's pollution. We don't want to make it right. We want to elevate the culture. We want to reward consumers for the time we asked them to spend with our ideas and have them interact with those ideas in new ways and bring a smile on their face. Bring a tear to their eye. Have them connect with each other in different ways. Ideas are powerful things, and we all believe that. If I can combine that shared belief with the equally strong belief that a community of people who are good and tough can actually make their lives better. Work can be a positive force in people's lives. That's a big privilege for me. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt WilliamsAnd that's what this company represented to me for 23 years before I took this job. And it's what I hope that can continue to represent the people to the people who work here. That's what I love about this job. Ken WhiteIt's interesting we've had a number of CEOs on the podcast throughout the year and plus that we've been doing it. Culture seems to keep coming up. We just interviewed Mike Petters, the CEO of Huntington Ingalls. First thing he talked about culture, culture, culture, not family, culture, culture, and how when it works, look out. Matt WilliamsIt's all you've got, really. I think culture is the new competitive advantage. It's not access to capital. It's not because capital can be accessed all over the place now. It's not physical assets because you look what people can create out of the ether using the Internet. I think competitive advantage is no longer whether you can get access to things no one else has access to or precious few have access to. And it's now a question of what you can do with those things to which everyone has access. You have to create a culture that can unleash the creativity of your people so that we can do new and never before seen things with the assets at our disposal with the information, with the capital, with the assets at our disposal. And you can't do that without a great culture. Ken WhiteYou can't hire perfectly 100 percent of the time. Matt WilliamsYou won't. Ken WhiteYou're right. Matt WilliamsI wish you could. Ken WhiteThere will be those who aren't buying in who aren't on board. How do you handle that? Matt WilliamsYou have a frank conversation with them, and I'll tell you this good and tough culture. We are good, and we want our people to succeed. I was lucky enough to go to the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, and somebody asked Warren Buffett what the biggest weakness in his company was. And he said we're too slow to make changes at the senior management level, and that's not going to change because I like my people, and I want them to succeed. And I think we're a little bit the same way, modestly if I could say that. Ken WhiteYeah. Matt WilliamsBut the way you deal with it is you have a frank conversation with the person who's somehow not fitting in or not meshing the way you want them to mesh because they're feeling it. They felt it before you felt it. They felt it before you knew it. And it's awful for them, and it's awful for you. And the sooner you address it the better it is for everybody. It's painful. It's hard. You asked me what I love about this job. What I hate about this job is having to make decisions that I know will screw people's lives up. That's really hard to do. Ken WhiteSure. Matt WilliamsBut if you address those situations, you know that person is feeling it, you know you're feeling it, and it's best for both of you to put it on the table and talk about it. Sometimes you can fix it. Sometimes you can't. But if you don't deal with it, it just gets progressively worse for the company and for the person, and that's no good for anybody. Ken WhiteHow do you spend your time? What's your day like? Matt WilliamsA lot of client work. I stay in constant touch with my clients. So conversations about campaigns that are in development or business challenges they might have or anything we can be doing that we're not doing or ideas that we can have that we can bring proactively, so a lot of client contact. A lot of internal conversations about how do we staff this team. How do we make sure this work is as good as it needs to be? How do we present this work in a way that brings out the power of this idea? So reviewing creative work, reviewing strategic work talking about how we can bring it to life the right way. Some conversations with our leadership group. I'm very close to my fellow managing partners. There are three of us. It's me, Joe Alexander, who's the chief creative officer here, and Beth Kelley, who's our president and COO. The three of us are very tight. We've got a tight executive management group that we stay pretty close with. So a lot of conversations about that. It can be unpredictable. You know you're one phone call away from a fire drill, as we all know. But as long as I'm focusing on the people of the agency and the quality of the work, I'm paying attention to the right things. A lot of business development, so I'll talk to prospective clients a lot, but people at the agency and the quality of the work are the things I need to focus on. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Matt Williams, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you regarding our podcast. Please share your comments, thoughts, or suggestions with us via email at podcast@wm.edu. That's podcast@wm.edu. Thanks to our guest this week Matt Williams CEO of the Martin Agency, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Jennifer DiMotta](images/jennifer-dimotta-63-thumb.jpg)
![Creating the Customer Experience](images/jennifer-dimotta-63-thumb.jpg)
Jennifer DiMotta
Episode 63: November 29, 2016
Creating the Customer Experience
The way we shop during the winter holidays and throughout the year continues to evolve. Consumers have many ways to buy from and interact with their favorite stores. Jennifer DiMotta is Vice President, Digital and Omni Channel for Blue Mercury, a leading luxury beauty retailer. She spends much of her time and attention making sure her customers have a good experience with Blue Mercury, wherever they happen to be, and joins us today to discuss ways Blue Mercury—and other retailers—are connecting with their customers.
Podcast (audio)
Jennifer DiMotta: Creating the Customer Experience TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Amazon Music/Audible | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. The winter holidays what the nation's retailers call the 61 days that makeup November and December. The way we shop during the holidays and throughout the year continues to evolve. Consumers have many ways to buy from and interact with their favorite stores. While most sales take place in the brick and mortar stores, customers visit websites, interact with social media sites, read catalogs, view TV commercials, and other channels in the process. Jennifer DiMotta is Vice President Digital and Omni Channel for Blue Mercury, a leading luxury beauty retailer. She spends much of her time and attention making sure her customers have a good experience with Blue Mercury, wherever they happen to be. She joins us on the podcast to discuss ways Blue Mercury and other retailers are connecting with their customers. Here's our conversation with Jennifer DiMotta, Vice President Digital and Omni channel at Blue Mercury. Ken WhiteJennifer, thanks for taking the time to be with us. This is your first trip to William & Mary. Welcome. Jennifer DiMottaThank you. I'm glad to be here very excited. Ken WhiteIt's a beautiful place, isn't it? Jennifer DiMottaOh, it's gorgeous. Ken WhiteYeah. Jennifer DiMottaYeah, it's gorgeous. Ken WhiteWe'll have to get you around a little bit more, but I know you're going to be talking to some students. Some MBA students and a group of students here as soon as we're done recording, and I know they're really looking forward to hearing from you. You live in especially interesting space. Would you call it marketing? What would you call it? Jennifer DiMottaThat's a very good question. I would call it. I guess business. My boys managed e-commerce businesses, and you've gotta understand all the aspects of business when you manage e-commerce for everything from marketing to supply chain to finance to operations. It all counts when it comes to running an e-commerce business. Ken WhiteYeah, no kidding. Yeah, and a big piece of that is Omni channel. Jennifer DiMottaA big piece of that is Omni channel. Yup. Ken WhiteI think people know what it is. They may not know the term. Jennifer DiMottaRight. Ken WhiteHow do you define that? Jennifer DiMottaWell, even get that in retail space as well. I think people have different definitions for it. My definition is pretty simplistic. It's looking at it from the customer's point of view, so how does the customer want to interact with retail? And more and more, I think you and I know, a long time ago, it used to be that the customer interacted one way with retail. They went to the store. That was their one real option, and now there's many channels, and they want to interact with them depending on what they're doing at that moment. They want to go on their mobile phone. They want to go on their desktop. They want to do research there and then go shop in the store. They want to go the store and do research and shop online. And really, this is a very customer-focused way of looking at. What do I need to do to grow sales in the retail industry? It's coming out from an Omni channel perspective. Ken WhiteSo creating the relationship with the customer is what it's all about. Jennifer DiMottaThat's right, yes, yeah. Ken WhiteHow do you and people who work in the field like you? How do you balance all of those channels? There is a heck of a lot of it. Jennifer DiMottaIt's not easy. Definitely not easy. Some of it, you've got to be consistent because the customer is looking for those cues to be consistent, whether it's a marketing promotion, the products that they're trying to research, the prices that they're looking for when they're buying a product or service. Those are the kind of the consistent pieces. The inconsistent pieces are giving the flexibility the customer is demanding for. So if I'm online and I want to reserve that product go walk in the store have it ready for me right up at the front. Those are the things where you bring together the two channels, and they don't even look like channels anymore. They're just one continuous path of purchase for that customer. Research and data kind of shows you quite a bit. There's a lot of great avenues for data, and this anymore used to be very difficult to understand what is a customer doing online and then how are they also doing something of the same transaction in stores, but the data is pretty omnipresent at this point in time. Ken WhiteIn your experience, are customers using that many channels, or do they tend to have one or two channels that they go to? Jennifer DiMottaCustomer, I think it's very ubiquitous at this point in time. They are using a lot of channels. They're just using them for different paths in the purchase, and their purchases don't look the same. So my purchase today for something might look different than what my purchase looks like tomorrow, and it's because what I'm doing today versus what I'm doing tomorrow. I'm here at William & Mary today. I'm at work tomorrow. So all in, what I'm doing throughout the day will be very dependent on how I react and because I know I have that flexibility at my feet. I use that to my benefit, and that is knowing that customers are doing that is really how you think about the Omni channel world. Ken WhiteHow much is video? How much of a role is that playing? I mean, before, it was print and photo. Now video, right? Jennifer DiMottaSo important. People want to watch and visually see things. Shopping has always also been about visually shopping. And so the stores you're walking in, you're not reading as much content in the stores. You're looking at things. You're touching things. You're trying things on. It's your eyes that are either going toward something that's visually appealing or not. And in e-commerce, it's taken a little bit of a longer road to get to that point because we originally thought we needed tons and tons of content. The customer wanted to do a lot of research. And what we're finding more now is the customer actually doesn't want to do any more research than they used to do. They want to do a little bit more, but they need it to be very fast. Customers need convenience. They need insights just like retailers actually do. They don't need the data to be all in kind of a sprawled raw format. They need very quick insights, and video tends to connect all those dots very quickly. So if a customer can watch a 1-minute video and pull together as much information as what they can intake in that one minute, they're going to be much more satisfied than a picture or description or anything like that. Ken WhiteYeah, it wasn't that long ago content was king. Jennifer DiMottaIt was king. Ken WhiteNow video. Jennifer DiMottaAnd it's still content. It's funny. That's another definition that's kind of thrown out there quite a bit in a few different ways. The new content marketing is now becoming video, and it's not just video on your site anymore because customers are spreading their wings and where they actually make transactions. They're making transactions in Facebook. They're making transactions in Pinterest. They're making transactions really across the web wherever they are. I have a dash button for my smart water that I use, and I push the dash button, and Amazon delivers me smart water every couple days, and it's fantastic. Ken WhiteYeah. Jennifer DiMottaSo those types of things are content, including video that's creating interest enough for somebody to transact right where they are. Ken WhiteDoes this mean that people in your field are now video production professionals? How do you tackle the video? That's not easy. Jennifer DiMottaIt's not easy. Ken WhiteWriting a text is one thing. Jennifer DiMottaYup. Ken WhiteA really well-produced video because many of our customers, millennials, grew up seeing terrific production. Jennifer DiMottaThat's right. Ken WhiteThat's kind of what they expect. Jennifer DiMottaYes. Yeah. I think even the younger generations expect it on some level. But as long as the customer is getting the information that they really want. I think that's the king part of content to me. If the aesthetics are not always there, that's not going to be the priority. Every analysis we've done asking our consumers what is your priority when we're serving up marketing materials to you or when we're trying to develop the next beautiful website. What's priority to you? And often, their content requests are. I want the right price. I want to know the products in stock. They still have those very generic needs that you need to fulfill, even within some sort of content like video. So the aesthetics of it isn't as important as we think it is. The other parts of it, the meat of the content, becomes really important. Ken WhiteSo some things change some things. Jennifer DiMottaSome things stay the same, yeah. Ken WhiteYeah. What's next in terms of reaching out to customers? It seems like the tools we have at our disposal are really so many. Jennifer DiMottaYeah. Ken WhiteAnd with social media and the very audio, video, and somewhat. What do you think is next? Jennifer DiMottaWell, one of the things that I think is next is social. It's going to play a much bigger role in the transaction and service of retail. So if you think about the Internet of Things is important because customers you know how customers used to go to stores, and they still do. But they now have other avenues. Well, now that's going to also change for our dot coms. They don't have to necessarily go to your dot com. You need to be where they are. They don't need to be where you are. So if they're in Facebook, or they're in Pinterest, or they're in Instagram, or they're on Twitter. If you're where they are, and they can touch base with you, they're highly likely. So we talk about things like chatbots things that are coming up in the picture and all these new words and opportunities, even beacons or apps for mobile. One of the best things about apps for mobile is you can push a communication to your customer, and the value of that to the consumer is only if the information that you're providing the customer is right time, right place, and so the more you think about right time right place. Transactions can easily happen in social because people are always in the social environment these days. They practically live there, right? We all do, and it's becoming a multigenerational activity, and that's how we're all connecting. We're going to connect the consumer to the retail more and more and more inside of those areas as well. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Jennifer DiMotta, Vice President Digital and Omni Channel at Blue Mercury, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Jennifer DiMotta Vice President Digital and Omni Channel at Blue Mercury. Ken WhiteNow you're with Blue Mercury now, which is beauty, cosmetics. You were with Sports Authority very different. Jennifer DiMottaOffice Depot before that. Ken WhiteThose are three different. Jennifer DiMottaReally really different, right? Ken WhiteSo what was that like moving from one to another? Some similarities and some differences, I guess. Jennifer DiMottaSuper similarities retail is fairly similar regardless of the product you're selling. Same functions. Lot of the same leadership styles, I would say. Retail is a very flexible environment because it's private most often. And that brings on, you know, the energy to change or the energy to grow. And there's a lot of sense of urgency in retail. We're always moving very, very quickly. Yes, there's some nuances when you're selling the different products that you're selling, and especially it kind of lands at a little bit higher level, so in Office Depot, those are consumable products. You're buying paper every so often. The consumer is different because it's most often businesses. So you think about that in a different way. The Sports Authority world is very fashion. So it's changing every 90 days. Nike's always coming in with something, or Under Armour, whoever the brand is, but it's always changing its constant fashion. And then the interesting thing about beauty is there's two different sides of it. Skin care is very consumable, so it's very similar to the Office Depot. It's the same people they're coming back, and reordering and reordering, and then the makeup is the fashion side. And that's changing every 90 days. So I'm glad I've had both experiences because those can you really have to think about those types of marketing vehicles and how they work for both of those types of products very differently. Ken WhiteBut the common thread seems to be it's all customer-centric. Jennifer DiMottaIt's all customer-centric. Ken WhiteIt's all about them. Jennifer DiMottaIt really is. Yes. Yeah. Ken WhiteAnd it sounds like retail is in your blood. You love it. Jennifer DiMottaLove retail. I've been in retail for 20 years. I've been in digital about the same period of time, so really sort of growing up in digital and seeing the huge differences. I mean, we didn't have mobile phones when I started in digital. We didn't even think dot com was going to be that much of a driver for store sales. And it's now a huge influencer of store sales, and we just thought it kind of sit over there, and it's own little island and do its own little thing, and it's really come a long way. It's really very interesting. I love it. Ken WhiteYou know, we actually have a lot of alumni and corporate partners in retail here, and a question they tell me they're asked often is what's going to happen to the brick and mortar. Jennifer DiMottaYeah. Ken WhiteWhat do you what do you think? I mean, moving forward. Jennifer DiMottaWell, it's still about 89 percent of sales. It's not going anywhere. There's really holistic reasons why customer shops in a store and shops online. We are no longer an online buyer or a store buyer. We are that's where we are an Omni channel buyer. So sometimes you want to go the store because you want the tangibility you want it right now. You want to talk to somebody. It's a social experience. It's kind of like reading a magazine and pulling up your Kindle or your iPad. You kind of want that blend because, you know, in the end, there's a social side of stores, and there's a really non-social side of e-commerce. But there's a really great convenience in e-commerce. It's super fast. It's easy; I don't have to get off the couch. So it's all how do I feel today. What do I want to do? What am I buying, and do I feel comfortable doing it online, or would I rather do it in-store? And it's very contextual. It's one shopping experience at a time. Ken WhiteYou mentioned leadership in the retail space and in, the marketing space and all of these areas of business. How do you approach leadership? Jennifer DiMottaThis is my favorite part of the last 20 years. So I've always been on the digital space, and most often, I'm building the e-commerce team from the ground up. It's been really fun, and I've had to bring it in a different way. So we're in a space right now where we have a lot of wonderful, amazing, intelligent digital folks. But 15 years ago or 20 years ago, there was no one. And even myself, I had limited experience. So I looked for potential. I looked for those things that I think we all look for now in leaders. You know you look for good analytical skills. You look for someone who's trusting, influential. Those are the things I was looking for when I was hiring 20-person teams or 40-person teams. And then you have a whole fun path after that because once you hire a bunch of new people, you watch them start interacting with each other, you start developing plans together, you start developing processes, you build team building. On top of that, you are the group that's making quite a bit of change. You're shaking things up in a store business. You're shaking things up in a catalog business. So leadership skills are incredibly important when you're the one kind of shaking things up, and it may not be well-liked across the board, and in other areas, they love it. So you have to be super influential. You have to be very persuasive. You also have to be very patient, listening, trusting, transparent. It's really one of the most important parts of being in a digital land, especially when you're in a company where the store sales are a good 90 percent of the business right now. Yeah. Ken WhiteYou've worked in three different industries, so to speak. How much, and I asked this of a lot of leaders. How much does passion about the industry? How important is that in terms of the way you lead? Jennifer DiMottaYou mean for like the beauty industry or the sports industry? Ken WhiteYeah, those are two different industries. Jennifer DiMottaYeah. Ken WhiteSo do you approach leadership differently, and I guess more importantly do you have to love the industry in order to be an effective leader? Jennifer DiMottaYou know, that's a good question. I would say that you don't necessarily need to love the products, but you need to love what you're doing for the customer and for the industry, so if you're really bought in and so passionate about what you're doing for this industry that's how I've always approached it. And I love learning while I'm at a beauty industry or while I'm at a sports industry. But I think what people read in me is seeing that passion for digital or just passion for helping the customer, or I'm a digital person that has a lot of passion for helping move customers into our stores because a Blue Mercury one of the big differentiators is we have true experts in our stores. And you know you're not going to get that on e-commerce. You're not going to get that feeling in e-commerce. You'll get that fact, but you won't get that feeling. And so that passion in me leads me, I guess, to the right decisions and the right strategies. Ken WhiteNice to have a job you love. Jennifer DiMottaI love it. Yeah. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jennifer DiMotta, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Jennifer DiMotta, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Donna McDermott](images/donna-mcdermott-62-thumb.jpg)
![It's all about the Customer](images/donna-mcdermott-62-thumb.jpg)
Donna McDermott
Episode 62: November 22, 2016
It's All About the Customer
Donna McDermott has spent over 30 years as a brand management executive for some of the country's most well-known brands: Oscar Mayer, Tropicana, Bacardi, Heinz, and AutoZone. She's developed scores of new concepts and prototypes while launching 12 new brands and line extensions that have resulted in annual sales of over 2 billion dollars. She is currently the marketing principal at FedEx, and joins us today to discuss the differences between branding and marketing, product management, and why professionals need to always put their customers first.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Oscar Mayer, Tropicana, Bacardi, Heinz, AutoZone, and FedEx they are some of the most recognizable brands in the country and the world. And our guest has spent time working for each of them. Donna McDermott has spent over 30 years as a brand management executive. She has developed scores of new concepts and prototypes over the years while launching 12 new brands and line extensions that have resulted in annual sales of over two billion dollars. McDermott has spent the past decade with FedEx, where she is a marketing principal. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss the differences between branding and marketing, product management, and why professionals need to always put their customers first. Here's our conversation with Donna McDermott, Marketing Principal at FedEx. Ken WhiteDonna, thank you. We have a it's busy day for you. You've got a heck of a schedule. You were talking to one student group after another but welcome back to William & Mary. It must be nice to be here. Donna McDermottOh, it's awesome to be back. I had dinner at the Greenleaf last night. My old stomping ground. Ken WhiteHas it been a while since you've been on campus? Donna McDermottI think it was back 15 years ago. It's a lot. Ken WhiteYeah. Donna McDermottSo obviously, the business school wasn't built yet. Chancellors Hall is now. Ken WhiteYeah. Donna McDermottI don't know, Tyler. I don't know what they call it now. Ken WhiteYes. Donna McDermottSo it's very, very different. Ken WhiteYou've had a wonderful career working for some incredible organizations and brands. Now you're with FedEx as a marketing principle. What's that mean? What do you do? Donna McDermottSo initially in my career, I was a product manager. Managing a product which includes the brand and the marketing of that brand, and was very interested in new products. That's kind of been my career my whole life. Very intrigued with what's new and the positioning of how you do that and how you satisfy customer needs. Maybe some needs they don't even know they have. Over time evolved to a greater and greater responsibility. And then, at FedEx, you know, there is no brand manager. FedEx is huge. And so what I've evolved to is more portfolio manager, which is taking initiatives and projects and prioritizing for senior executives analytical data to support and looking at consumer trends and provide recommendations to the senior management for how we should invest in various different opportunities. Ken WhiteHow has your field changed over the years from when you first started to today? What are the what are the biggest changes? Donna McDermottThe biggest change I can think of it. I started my career with Oscar Mayer in 1986, and we were doing a spreadsheet on paper, and it was a what-if thing. So you know you would this would go up. So that would go down. Honestly, I would have holes in my paper because I was doing what ifs right, which today we do in spreadsheets in no time. So that's one of the biggest things is. Just it took so long to get things done. Very archaic tools. Now you spend the time on analyzing and not really that physical manual labor. Doing presentations. We used to handwrite them, then the admin had to come in and type it the next morning, and it wasn't the way you wanted it, and you had to have it redone and so many more tools for a product manager to be more effective and spend time on the things that really matter for the business. Ken WhiteYeah. Now you're going to be talking to the students about the difference between branding vs. marketing. How do you define branding? What is it? Donna McDermottYeah. And this question came from a student, which I thought was pretty astute. So branding is all about the identity of a product. It's personality. I wrote a bio coming here, a biography, and that's my brand, and in it, I mentioned a couple of different things, and the students understood who I was. I mentioned I have an enthusiastic and loyal Pitbull, along with liking craft beers. So it's the image in the mind of the customer of what that's about. It's an expression of value that the product or service offers and the characteristics and attributes that clarify what it is and what it is not. So really think about it like the branding is the what, and the marketing is the how. What is the brand marketing? How is I could sell it by using promotion advertising? We could do a discount. We could do a line extension, we can do so more the how for the brand. Branding is really the pull from the customer, and marketing is the push to the customer to get them to buy. Ken WhiteRight. Donna McDermottAnd the title product manager is interchangeable in many different companies. It's called the brand manager some places, a marketing manager, but technically there are differences in the job description. A product manager manages the entire product, including the P&L. It's like your own business. Ken WhiteRight. Donna McDermottThat's the part of love because you can manage certain things if you're too high in cost. What can you do? I think a bad example of that today is Toblerone. I don't know if you know. Ken WhiteYes, very much so. Donna McDermottDo you know what they did? Ken WhiteVery much so. They changed the product. Donna McDermottThey should've fired the product manager. Ken WhiteYes. Donna McDermottBecause deal with Toblerone was the peaks and the Alps that's the coolest part. Ken WhiteRight we're talking about the long chocolate bar. You can break off in pieces right, and they were peaks, and they changed. They made them narrow. Donna McDermottYes. Ken WhiteSmaller. Donna McDermottIt's a cost reduction that's so obvious. It's disgusting. And so that's the kind of stuff that you know they're trying to reduce costs but couldn't you find another way. That couldn't have been your first choice. Ken WhiteSo that's the product manager's role. Get on that. Have all of that. Donna McDermottUnderstanding the customer is number one. Depends on who your target is. Understand their needs. Their customer needs, I'll help them solve problems. And then from there, you know, develop products that are able to fulfill that promise. Ken WhiteIs there a difference between doing product management and branding and marketing? I know they're all different but doing that for a tangible product versus a service. Donna McDermottSo this is perfect, and that is I work at FedEx. Ken WhiteRight. Donna McDermottAnd the brand manager at FedEx manages the trademark. Ken WhiteGot it. Donna McDermottAs you can imagine, FedEx is global. It's everywhere, right? Ken WhiteRight. Donna McDermottAnd there's special characteristics and colors. You know it's FED capital F. Ken WhiteRight. Donna McDermottFED capital E X. Ken WhiteRight. Donna McDermottAnd everybody knows about the arrow, right? That's in between the E, and the X is an arrow. Ken WhiteRight. Donna McDermottWhich is a clever. Ken WhiteThe white arrow, yeah. You have to look for it. Donna McDermottYeah exactly. So the brand manager manages that because it cannot look different in different places. It's got to be a singular look and feel, and its use has to be a certain way, and that takes a lot to be able to do that. Ken WhiteSo that's graphic standards and everything else. Donna McDermottYes PMS colors. Ken WhiteYeah. Donna McDermottAnd is it appropriate to put it next to this particular thing, maybe a billboard that's inappropriate? You know those type those types of things. Ken WhiteAnd then the marketing manager. Donna McDermottMarketing manager is all about how do I drive sales. So it's about promotion. It's about taking the Toblerone and cutting the Alps out of it. Anything you can do to drive sales or revenue, whatever the objective of the company is. But you do that while trying to optimize it for the customer experience. Ken WhiteRight. Donna McDermottAt the end of the day, a good product manager, marketing manager, brand manager is about the customer. And it seems so simple, but it's hard because we tend to come to things from our own perspective. Ken WhiteYeah, that's interesting. Teaching communication doesn't it sound so simple you're supposed to be other-centric? Donna McDermottYeah. Ken WhiteSo much easier said than done because we bring our background and our expertise to the table. And so I could see a marketer or someone in branding sort of forgetting about the customer even though that's the heart and soul of everything. How do you stay in touch? How does someone in your profession know what the customers want and know what makes them tick what's available to you now? Donna McDermottSo there are a lot of different techniques, and I have a pretty interesting story with this, and that is I've worked on various brands. The target for Oscar Mayer was mothers with kids. The target for AutoZone, the auto parts store, were men. Ken WhiteRight. Donna McDermottShadetree mechanics, you know, in their 40s something like that. And as I worked at each of these companies, I learned as much as I could about the customer. For AutoZone going in the retail store. We did focus groups all kinds of things and reading trends global trends, and I became a mother with kids, although I had no children. I became a shadetree mechanic. And you need that right because if there's a question of what are you going to do with your marketing mix, are you going to do this, or you're going to take the Toblerone Alps out? You need to know that my customer loves the way those things snap apart or whatever it is, and you need to be able to understand that as if you were that customer and really that's the way I think you can really be successful and then you holistically know what works or not. You feel it, you just know, and very few people today I've seen sometimes don't really get that it's more about revenue. It's more about the business side. It's got to be about the feeling of that customer you want that customers say, wow, a good example USAA. I haven't worked there, but I have insurance and banking with them. Every time I get off the phone, I say oh my God, they are so awesome. They call me and ask do you want to go through your policy. Maybe we can save you some money. What. Ken WhiteYeah. Donna McDermottCalling me? That's total service. So that's the kind of stuff that you really want in terms of getting that target customer understanding their needs even before they think they know it. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Donna McDermott, Marketing Principal at FedEx, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Donna McDermott, Marketing Principal at FedEx. Ken WhiteOn the podcast several episodes ago, our guest was Kim Lopdrup, who is the CEO of Red Lobster, and he said we need to hire people with the hospitality gene. They're so into this it makes their heartbeat because they want to make sure each customer has a phenomenal experience while they're in the restaurant. What gene are you looking for in your field that really gets them going? Donna McDermottLet me tell you, I ate at Red Lobster yesterday so, and I never do. It's just I drove in and from the airport, and it was there, and I had someone who was all about me. Ken WhiteYeah. Donna McDermottBecause I said hey, I'm interested in a craft local beer. He went out of his way to choose one. Oh, they didn't have it in stock. Could you recommend this? Okay fine. I didn't want a huge dinner. I just wanted lobster tail, and he suggested you could do this, and a side asparagus, and I'm kind of picky it's got to be not too stringy. He was awesome, awesome, awesome. So whatever they're doing, it worked. His name was Russ or something like that. Ken WhiteYeah, and what the CEO is saying that's the kind of people we have to hire. Donna McDermottHe hired a good one. Ken WhiteAnd in your field, who are you looking for? That does get up and thinks constantly about the customer, and they're literally passionate about it like you're saying they become an advocate for the customer. Donna McDermottIt's empathy, and it's not about the business numbers. It's about the experience. It's about how awesome you feel when you hang up from USAA, and they just save you money, and or the Red Lobster, where he chose specifically what I needed. He knew it, and it felt so good about it. And then you want to go back again because that is a good customer's experience. So people with empathy, you can kind of get other people's point of view, I think is the key. Ken WhiteAnd it's fun. Donna McDermottIt is fun. Marketing is fun. Ken WhiteYeah. You're going to talk to the students, and you have talked to them about the traits of a successful product manager. This is a great job. It's fun, it's exciting, much to do, many opportunities. What does an individual need to bring to the table to be successful in a product manager role? Donna McDermottSo I would say number one is communication skills. And I know you mentioned communication and not just verbal it's written. You know, the PowerPoint. I know people hate it, but that's the way we communicate, and you need to be able to communicate to your target right. So you communicate to a financial person differently than the board of directors, which is a very high level. And so being able to understand that making things that are complicated simple in articulating that for senior executives to make decisions is very hard to do to get there. But I think that's key as well as communicating the value of what you're trying to deliver. But I can't stress enough, and then we talked about before international folks, it's real important that the lingo is right and that the emails are as professional as possible. Ken WhiteSure. Donna McDermottBecause that's your impression that that's the brand you lead. You lead with. Ken WhiteBeing a situational communicator knowing who your audiences is and what they need. Donna McDermottExactly. Ken WhiteAnd it seems so many professionals we talk to say, you know, my team does struggle with boiling it down into 30 seconds or a 60-second sound bite for the CEO or for the board. Donna McDermottIt's hard. Ken WhiteIt is hard. Donna McDermottIt's hard. Ken WhiteSo is it practice? Repetition? Donna McDermottSo I look at it this way, and that is I personally am not that good at details. And so I make it the way I'd want to see it. So I'm the user. It's easier for me to think in pictures than in words. And so I just think about it that way. What is how would I tell my grandmother what we're going to do? I mean, not that literally but really, what are we trying to do at the end of the day? Because you could go down in the weeds and nobody cares about that, what is our objective? So I think that's key is really trying to keep it high level, keep it visual, keep it simple. Ken WhiteIn addition to being other-centered communicator in terms of being a successful product manager, what other traits or skills should someone possess? Donna McDermottWell, the number one for product management is your leading without authority. You're like a CEO, but nobody reports to you. And so what that means is you have to build a very strong network. You'll have your support groups who help you in finance and manufacturing, and so forth. And you need to really develop that and hone that for mutual benefit. You know you help them. I get many emails I need something tomorrow, and I'm on it, and vice versa. I'm desperate. I got to have this for my boss, boom. I have it. Really, that is the key. The trust that you have in each other, I think, as a product manager, the vision and passion helps you lead without authority. People want to follow you cause it's fun what you do. I believe in what you're doing. So there's many different techniques. It is difficult, and I think as you go through your career, you get better and better at it. You know, at first, you're kind of not so confident. And now I feel like I'm actually pretty good at that, and you can get people to follow you, even that who are above you. VPs. Ken WhiteYeah. Donna McDermottIf you had the right idea and communicated effectively. Ken WhiteWe did a podcast with Professor Inga Carbone from our business school it's been several months and Inga talks about strategic networking and that's the kind of network we should build where you can help me I can help you. And we both benefit. Donna McDermottYes. Ken WhiteAnd it works. Donna McDermottIt does. Ken WhiteIf you're able to do it. What about business acumen? How much do I need to know about business and the whole organization to be an effective product manager? Donna McDermottJust the basics for business. I think one of the key things in this may sound unusual, but that is sometimes the basic question of why are we doing this. Are we going to make money with this? Does the customer want this? I mean, these are basic business acumen things that you'd be amazed as you go along various different companies I've worked with. At the end of the day, we didn't talk to our customer, and the product didn't do well. And so, understanding and just from a business perspective doesn't make sense to invest in this particular area. Ken WhiteFor someone who would like to do what you're doing, get into the field wherever they are in their career. What kind of advice would you have? What should they be bringing to the table? What should they be preparing in order to be successful? Donna McDermottWell, number one, I think you have to have the personality. You have to have the ability to be both strategic and tactical, which is hard, you know, creative and analytical. And these are things that are difficult to find in people and you don't have to be great at either but you've got to be very good at both. You need to have a passion for products. You need have a vision. What do I want to see? What would I love to have? I'd like to have that Toblerone stay the same. And a curiosity, why are you doing that? Why is the customer doing that? In ethnographic research is asking them why are you doing that. To understand kind of what their need is so that you could try to help develop a product for them. So another piece, too, is eye for details. I worked at AutoZone and did a good, better, best strategy for the brands. I had to look at packaging. I at 11,000 SKUs of packaging and trying to find any issue with communication on there. So if it didn't say in Mexico, it was not good. So you had to know the detail of going through each and everyone and discipline of going through various different details to be sure that you are totally buttoned up when you make your presentation when you sell your product. Ken WhiteHard work but really fun. Donna McDermottOh, awesome, awesome, awesome. There's no better thrill than having your product be on a shelf, and you're walking down the grocery store. Yes, that's mine. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Donna McDermott. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Well, thanks to our guest this week Donna McDermott, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Mike Petters](images/mike-petters-61-thumb.jpg)
![Leading the Large Organization](images/mike-petters-61-thumb.jpg)
Mike Petters
Episode 61: November 17, 2016
Leading the Large Organization
Huntington Ingalls is America's largest military shipbuilding company and a provider of manufacturing, engineering, and management services to the nuclear energy, oil, and gas markets. For more than a century, Huntington Ingalls has built more ships in more classes than any other U.S. Naval shipbuilder. Before taking the lead in 2011, President and CEO Mike Petters was President of Northrop Grumman shipbuilding. Petters earned his bachelor's degree from the U.S. Naval Academy and an MBA from William & Mary, and he joins us today to discuss how he approaches leadership and what it's like to lead 35,000 employees.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's America's largest military shipbuilding company. In addition, Huntington Ingalls is a provider of manufacturing, engineering, and management services to the nuclear energy, oil, and gas markets. For more than a century, Huntington Ingalls has built more ships in more classes than any other U.S. naval shipbuilder. The organization is headquartered in Newport News, Virginia. Its President and CEO is Mike Petters. Before taking the lead of Huntington Ingalls in 2011, Peters was President of Northrop Grumman shipbuilding. He earned his bachelor's degree from the U.S. Naval Academy and an MBA from William & Mary. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss leadership, how he approaches his role, and what it's like to lead 35,000 employees. Here's our conversation with Mike Petters, CEO, and President of Huntington Ingalls. Ken WhiteMike, thanks for taking time to spend with us and talk with us. We're actually recording on Election Day. We're between you and the polls, right? Mike PettersThat's right. Yeah, I to put it on my calendar so that I have time to get there. Ken WhiteYou and everybody else, right? Yeah. Well, let's get to it, then. Well, tell us about your job your role as you see it. Mike PettersWell, my, you know, as a CEO of the company, there are a lot of people tag a lot of lot of different job descriptions on that. But I think of it pretty simply as my job is to give everybody in this company an opportunity to do their best work. And so that means knocking things out of the way for them or creating situations where they can do work or getting them the resources they need to succeed. But that's the way I think about it, and that's the way I like our all of our leaders to think about their jobs. Ken WhiteHow did you get to this role? What steps did you take? Mike PettersI've been in this business for 30 years, and so I had a lot of different moves. I came from the Navy to be in shipbuilding business and had a lot of different jobs in the company. Different kind of diverse opportunities but most of them were in operations. And so, from that standpoint, that's kind of the brunt of my background. But you know I, I'm not sure I ever sat up and said this is, you know, I want to be the CEO someday. I think all I ever did was I want to make sure that the job that I was in I tried I did everything I could to make that job the best job I was ever going to be in. And I tried to be that kind of person in the organization that helped people around me be better and gave my people a chance to do good work. Ken WhiteSometimes when we talk to CEOs, they'll say there was a day I remember it all came to me, and I said, yes, I want to go for that. You sound maybe a little different. Mike PettersNot well, I don't know. I don't know about that. I don't think there was a day where I said I'm going to pursue being the CEO. I do know that about a year before I became the president of Newport News, I had the kind of the realization that that could happen, and if that could happen, then I probably need to start getting myself ready for that opportunity. It was never a case of I'm going to go be the CEO. I actually think that I've watched a lot of people get very frustrated in their careers because they want to be fill in the blank. They want to be the manager, or they want to be the director. And you know, I think what happens is that you start pursuing that, and your ambition gets in the way of doing good work. And at least for me, that's been my observation. So I never really wanted that to happen. I believe in what this company does and what it's done throughout my career. I believe in what the Navy does. And I've felt that it's a it's our job to do the best we can here. Ken WhiteYou mentioned the Navy. You're a naval academy grad. What did that experience do for you? That's a huge question to answer. But in terms of your role. Mike PettersWell, first of all, being from the Navy and moving into the shipbuilding piece of HII, I sort of knew the language, you know, the day that I showed up at work here in the shipyard. I mean, nobody comes into this business with a degree in shipbuilding, but the day that I showed up here, I had an advantage over a whole lot of folks because I knew how the product was used early on in my career. I had some very interesting discussion with shipbuilders about how they thought the product was being used and how it, in fact, was being used. What that did for me was really created a different kind of credibility with the shipbuilders as I went and earned my steel toes and hard hat and became a shipbuilder. You know, I came at that from a different place than if I had just come in right out of college or come in off the street with no experience. It's the kind of business where experience matters. And I had a different set of experience, and so that helped me. Ken WhiteHaving it in your DNA. Can you imagine being a leader or a CEO in an area where it's not quite in your blood and in your genes the way it seems to be? Mike PettersI can, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I think leadership is a craft all its own. And you know, I go back to my fundamental tenet of leadership is to give your people every opportunity they can to succeed. Well, that's true whether you're running Joe's Diner or you're running a Fortune 500 company. And so, and the techniques that you use, maybe the technology is different, and you might be looking at different reports and that sort of thing but having your people be successful is, I mean, that's kind of universal. And so I mean certainly there's a lot of advantages of having been in the business for 30 years. I think it's pretty transportable. Ken WhiteWhat do you like best about your role? Mike PettersWell, first of all, the folks that do this are the, I mean, just the greatest folks in the world to work with. They come to work every day, putting their heart and soul into what they do. And it's just a privilege for me to be around those folks, and anytime I start to feel like the world is moving in a little bit, I just go for a little walk. You know, it just fires me right back up to go do what I do. And I feel a great sense of responsibility. I mean these, these folks are great folks, and they deserve great leadership. And so, you know, that's a bar that I try to live up to every day. And that means I have to learn. I have to grow. I have to. I have to do new things. I have to have a vision to a horizon that's further away than anybody else's. And all of that's really challenging. And I love the challenge. Ken WhiteDo you feel you have enough time? Mike PettersYeah, I mean, I think, you know, time is probably the only currency that we have. I think when you when you start from the premise of having good people and giving them a chance to succeed, you can use that to create time for you for the things that you need to do. Now how you allocate time is your way of telling everybody what's important, but quickly, if you spend a whole lot of time on stuff that doesn't matter, everybody's going to see that. On the other hand, by being clear about here's how I'm spending my time and here's how I'm allocating my time. You communicate what's important to you, and actually, the organization, from top to bottom, will care about what the boss cares about. I mean, my staff cares about what I care about. Their staffs care about what they care about, and so that I mean that's just human nature, and so time allocation is really important. I am pretty good at saying that's not important enough for me to put a lot of time into that. I'm pretty good at that. Ken WhiteYou may have answered it by just saying what's important to you is important to your team, and so on. How do you communicate? There's a ton of people who work for you. How do you communicate? Mike PettersWell, this is something I learned here. I think that you can fall into a trap of trying to be the leader you read about in the textbook and you try to be this person. You live up to some mental model of what that person is. What the leader is. And I think that's a big mistake. I think the moment my career shifted into another gear was the day that I opened up my coat, and I just let people see who I was and just became very transparent and things that I was emotional about I let people know I was emotional about that. Things that I didn't want that I didn't think were worth my time. I let people know that I don't think that's worth our time to go waste on that, and instantly the feedback was okay now we get it. And I tell young leaders this all the time don't be afraid to be transparent. People want to believe in you. Your credibility is directly related to we preach this a lot. There's who you say you are, and there's who people see you to be. And the closer you make that. The more credibility you have. If you create a big gap between who you say you are and who the people see you to be, they're not going to believe in you, but if you close that and you close that with transparency and honesty, you know you don't take yourself seriously enough so that everything I mean you admit your mistakes. You want people to come and tell you when you've made mistakes, but if you can close that gap between who you say you are and who you actually are. You close that gap, you will have great credibility, and you will have people who will believe in you and follow you. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Mike Petters, President, and CEO of Huntington Ingalls, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the CEO and President of Huntington Ingalls, Mike Petters. Ken WhitePeople, followers, colleagues seek that transparency that credibility for an aspiring leader. What else should they be aware of? Mike PettersIt is about your people, and this giving your people a chance to do their best work. That's a full-contact sport. I mean, that means you have to know your people well enough to know what their strengths and their weaknesses are. You have to know them personally well enough to know that they've just had a tragedy in their family, and so they may need some space. They just had a great big celebration in their family and so let's all celebrate with them. You got to know that stuff. You've got to know their strengths and weaknesses well enough to know that if you assign them to a particular opportunity that they have the capacity to exceed or meet that opportunity. You know you don't. A football coach doesn't assign his quarterback to play defensive line right. And so that's what the great leaders do is they understand where the strengths and weaknesses are in there, and one of the things that I really believe that. And I don't remember the exact quote, but I think it was Winston Churchill said if you treat a man the way he is, he'll be the way he is. But if you treat a man the way he could be, then he will become the person he could be. And I believe in that greatly. I mean, I believe if you start out by having great people, not picking great people, have great people, the people that you are working with are great. Now your chance is how do you harness that and get everybody pull and all those great people to pull on the rope in the same direction. It's not easy, it's hard, it's full contact, but it's a lot of fun. Ken WhiteWhere do you spend most of your time? Mike PettersPhysically? Geographically? Ken WhiteMentally. Mike PettersMentally. Ken WhiteYeah. Where's the thought? Where's the effort? Mike PettersI don't spend a lot of my energy inside the gate of the business in the sense of the operate. I mean, I review the operations that I do all that kind of stuff. But I've got really good people running operations, and they're doing that pretty well. I spend a lot of my thinking in the future, and some of the thinking in the future is around what's the culture of the future going to look like. The culture of our business what does it need to be successful in the future. Where is our customer going to go in the future? Where is our nation going in the future? So I kind of mentally spend a lot of my time in the future. Culture is something that I spend probably as much time on as anything in the organization because I think that we fall into a trap by thinking that the culture. This is one hundred and thirty-year-old company. So we kind of can a leaders can fall into the trap of believing that the culture is something they inherit. But in fact, the culture of your work team is something you create. And for me, I feel responsibility as the chief culture officer of this company, and trying to make that move, you know, does take some effort. Ken WhiteSo there's a culture within the organization, and there's another culture that your external stakeholders see. How do you communicate with the external? How is it differently? Mike PettersWe spend a lot of wealth. External stakeholders take many forms, right? I mean, there's shareholders, there's customers, there are community stakeholders. I mean, we're the largest employer in Mississippi and in Virginia, and so so the communities that we're in are large stakeholders in our business. And so spending time with those stakeholders, to me, is something that you have to do on a pretty routine basis which you can't do is. You can't show up with any one of those folks and say, I've got a problem unless you've been with them all along. So we go, and we visit with our shareholders once a quarter. I'm out on the road talking to folks who are interested in the company, who are own shares in the company, participate in conferences about the company. I walk through the ships inside the shipyards once a quarter. Getting around and seeing as many people as you can, as many of the stakeholders as you can when you're talking to those folks, whatever stakeholders, whatever position you're in. If you're talking to them when everything's going okay, then they'll take your call when things don't go okay. And that's pretty routine. And so we worked really hard at that. Ken WhiteYeah, that's great advice. Almost every swell every CEO we've had on the podcast is looking at disruption, innovation, talking about that how the business has changed in the last ten years, how it'll change moving forward in terms of innovation and disruption. What do you see for your field? Mike PettersWe're kind of in a interesting place on that. I mean, we have a horizon that's probably further out than anybody's. We're working on a ship right now that we know will come back to be inactivated in 2066, and we're actually on the other end of the shipyard. We're working on a ship that will come back in 2072, and not too many folks can actually talk about their work in 2060s or 2070s, but between here and there. There's going to be a lot of technological change we're working through. What does that mean to us? How does our workday change? How does the workday for our employees change? And so I'm not too hung up on the technology because I think I think the technologies are going to change, and they're going to continue to change, and actually, the pace of that change is going to accelerate. What I'm really interested in is the agility of the leadership team to take full advantage of that as quickly as possible. And so that's what we're working on. Ken WhiteFinal question advice for the aspiring leader. Where should they be spending energy and time? Mike PettersI'll go back to what I said, to begin with, you know, make the job that you're in the best job you will ever have. Always look out and try to find the best opportunity for your people to succeed and be that person in your group that makes everybody else in the group better. If you do those things, you will have a great career. Who knows, you might get to be a CEO. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mike Petters, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Mike Petters, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Mike McSherry](images/mike-mcsherry-60-thumb.jpg)
![Entrepreneurship & Success](images/mike-mcsherry-60-thumb.jpg)
Mike McSherry
Episode 60: November 8, 2016
Entrepreneurship & Success
Most entrepreneurs and professionals in the start-up world know that success is hard to come by, especially in the tech arena. For many, the number of failures far outweighs the number of successes. That has not been the case for Mike McSherry, who has successfully sold four of the five start-ups he has co-founded. He is currently CEO of Zealth, a digital prescribing and analytics platform integrated into healthcare electronic medical records, and joins us today to discuss his career, entrepreneurship, and the tech start-up space.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, most entrepreneurs and professionals who live in the startup world know that success is hard to come by, especially in the technology arena. For many in that space, the number of failures far outweighs the number of successes. But for Mike McSherry, that has not been the case. McSherry has successfully sold four of the five startups he has co-founded. He's currently the CEO of Zealth, a digital prescribing and analytics platform integrated into healthcare electronic medical records. Before that, he was CEO of Swipe, the touchscreen technology installed on over a billion smartphones and tablets, and prior to that, he was co-founder of Boost Mobile, which is now Sprint's prepaid service that generates several billion dollars in annual revenue in the US. McSherry has had a string of successes, and he joins us on the podcast today to discuss his career, entrepreneurship, and the tech startup space. Here's our conversation with Mike McSherry. Ken WhiteMike, thank you for joining us. I know you've been the last couple of days talking to students and interacting with them about entrepreneurship. What are some of the things they're asking you? Mike McSherryHow I got into it? Why I made career choices? Did I worry about the risks? Are there any things I would have done differently? They're all curious. They all say they want to be entrepreneurs, but their commitment to actually making something happen might waver in their indecision against money, career, job choices, career path, intentions, etc. Ken WhiteWe'll ask the same questions I think when I hear about you, when I read about you, the label that comes up to me is serial entrepreneur. Is that a fair label? Mike McSherryYeah, although I just generically call myself more a startup guy. For 20-plus years, I've been doing tech startups. Ken WhiteAnd what is it about that interests you? Mike McSherryI was working for Microsoft at the time in Australia, and I had a conviction of strategy that I didn't think they were pursuing things correctly, and that's probably borne itself out if you see how they did on the Internet versus Google and others and against that conviction of strategy. I quit, and I was in Australia. I moved to Australia with Microsoft, and I could have worked for the Microsoft office down there doing Windows or Office. I could have moved back to the US, and I wanted to stay in Australia, so I quit and started up a company with two Australian guys I had met, and that went on to become the biggest web development company in Australia and New Zealand, and we sold that, and that set off my entrepreneur path. But as on the conviction of a corporate strategy, I didn't agree with that. I said I want to do something differently, and I'm going to quit. Ken WhiteFantastic, but that takes a certain personality. There's a certain DNA. What is it about your upbringing, family, friends, characteristics, what makes you tick, what got you there because not everybody would do what you just described? Mike McSherryFirst off, I was young and single, so decisions were all on my own. My dad spent 20 years in Navy, so I've moved all over the world, lots of different experiences, roll with the punches, flexible, and I just thought that the Internet was going to be a big thing and wanted to stay in it. But again, a conviction to just do something differently and what are the downside risks. I'd bounced around, traveled quite a bit, even extensively, before making that decision down in Australia, and that just led to flexible flexibility. I'll land on my feet. I'll do it, and we'll see how it works out. Ken WhiteAnd now, your role now, can you tell us about that? Mike McSherrySure. So well, in between Microsoft and where I am now are 20 years of other startups, but now I randomly decided to get in healthcare, and Providence which is the third biggest hospital system in the country, the biggest in six states, is headquartered in Seattle, and they hired a team and my exact team that I've done many startups with to be entrepreneurs in resident so internal innovation and they we jokingly call ourselves free range entrepreneurs in residents in that we were given no guardrails just basically invent something. Ken WhiteWow. Mike McSherryAnd so we've created a technology that more easily allows physicians to prescribe digital services to patients. For patients to consume these digital services, and then we track the engagement against all those services and show it back to the physician and care teams for interventions and monitoring for better effectiveness of outcomes. Ken WhiteWhat is it that attracts you to that to the healthcare area? Mike McSherryI was early days Internet and rode that wave. Early days mobile rode that wave and had a built-up a nest egg and a little more flexibility of choice of what I wanted to pursue. I was in mobile advertising for a while, and I didn't find that was going to have a meaningful impact for what I wanted to do in the world. And when healthcare presented itself, said big problems, big issues. I think there's something we could probably invent that would help solve some problems there. Ken WhiteIn addition to being you and your team entrepreneurs in residence, as you mentioned, go figure out something, create something. What about the rest of the company? Did you interact with people who wanted your advice? Did you try to teach entrepreneurial thinking throughout the organization? Mike McSherryYes. So Provident has a hundred and twenty thousand employees. Big organization, we're their first EIRs. Their first in-house incubation effort, and we get a lot of executive attention from the CEO on down of what we're doing. Everybody wants a silver bullet to solve healthcare, and that's not going to necessarily be what occurs, but we think we've created a solution that is going to vastly simplify physicians' efficiency to digitally engage with patients, and we're getting a lot of attention. And I was just in DC, and Providence has lobbyists in DC, and they were showing me around to all the government officials on hey look what we're doing here is a great technology we're innovating and incubating, and so we get a lot of executive attention and support for what we're trying to do, how we're trying to differently to alleviate some of the cost burdens and complexity of health care. Ken WhiteNow before that, Swipe right. Was that the stuff? Mike McSherryYeah. Maybe I'll even go all the way back. After that web development company in Australia, and we sold that. I then met an Australian guy and co-founded a company called Boost Mobile in Australia, which was a mobile prepaid service down there at the time, and I ran all the products and devices there. So early days of licensing Nokia phones. This is back in 99 so early days of mobile. Ken WhiteYeah. Mike McSherryI then moved back to the US and co-founded Boost Mobile in the US, which did a joint venture with Nextel, and now it's Sprint's prepaid service doing four or five billion a year in revenue as a global, national brand. And then, I tried the same effort against another large wireless startup that raised four hundred million dollars. Now went bankrupt. So there is a big swing and a miss. But that then led me to Swipe which was a success story. Ken WhiteYeah, no question, and you say swing and a miss. But that's a heck of a batting average for you because a lot of entrepreneurs not even close to that kind of a batting average, and that's part of it, isn't it? Mike McSherryYeah, I've been successful on exiting 4 out of 5 companies I've started, which is a phenomenal success rate in startups. I've never been the one explicitly with the idea, but I've always been one of the first three or five guys in the company, so I think I choose ideas extremely well and trust in people and bring an execution capability to that team and leadership team to help create it into a company and business opportunity and a value. Ken WhiteI think oftentimes, at least when I'm talking to people about startups about entrepreneurship, they tend to think individual, but you just said the T word team is so critical. How do you choose that right team? Is it a gut feeling is it. Mike McSherryI've heard that. If you distill a startup CEO's role, it's to communicate a vision, create some idea, and sell that vision to investors to, new hires to customers. Hire well, so create that fabulous team, and then don't run out of cash. And if you do those things as well as a startup, everything else will take care of itself. So back to the team. My COO at my company right now was my COO at Swipe, and he and I go all the way back to sharing an office at Microsoft back in 1993. So we've worked at four companies together over 20 plus years. The rest my team, one guy I worked with for 12 years at multiple companies, and of the new company itself that I'm working at, the first eight employees are all ex-Swipe employees. So you always jog back into the well and pull people you know and trust in, and it's that degree of loyalty in a team that I think propels fantastic opportunities. Ken WhiteIs it the kind of team that tends to think similarly, or is it one of those teams where there is a very different viewpoint, and you get into some? Mike McSherryNo no. We have extreme heated discussions you need you need differing viewpoints you need different skill sets. I myself was an econ major, my COO was a English major, my head of product is a computer science major, and so it's that diversity of thought and experience and clashing of technology, business opportunity, customer request, focused prioritization that all lends itself towards choosing a path and we've proven that we effectively work as a team and make these decisions collectively and ultimately in mutual fashion. And I think that you know, that lends trust to customers to investors to other hires that you know hey here's a team that's done it not once, not twice but multiple times, so I'm going to bet on them again. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Mike McSherry, CEO of Zealth, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the CEO of Zealth, Mike McSherry. Ken WhiteGoing back a little bit about Swipe. Can you tell us the story? I mean, it's amazing that it's something you created, something we're using every day, which is pretty cool when you think about that. Mike McSherryYeah. Yeah. And the story is it all rests on this gentleman, Cliff Kushler invented it, and he had actually invented a prior text input technology in the old flip phones, the 90s phones that did predictive text on that, and that technology t9 has been put on 10 billion phones. He invented that technology on disability research. So you got a PHC in augmentative communication helping people with disabilities to communicate easier. Hearing aids, speech synthesizers, and he had the insight that entering text on small phone keyboards was a difficult proposition for people with disabilities, and solving for that population brought itself to a mainstream use case. And after selling that company for 400 million, someone challenged him to come up the solution for people in wheelchairs that only had eye control or head control. And how do you do eyes-free text input? And he just thought that a continuous trace path of your eyes over the letters of the keyboard are going to be significantly faster. And he started inventing and working on that. And this is pre-iPhone, pre-touchscreen, pre-anything. He just was helping to solve a problem for people with disabilities. And then, when the iPhone came out, the opportunity exploded, and Swipes now been put on well over a billion devices, mostly Android devices. But a huge success. Ken WhiteYou mentioned earlier good batting average, but like all startup professionals entrepreneurs, there's failure. And how do you deal with that? How do you come back from something that certainly hurts? Mike McSherryIt does hurt. Fortunately, it amped the company that had the big bankruptcy. I was not CEO; I was head of product, and the product side was lauded as having done a number of innovative firsts. So I felt pride in my own accomplishments. You have to accept your failures and your role in that, but then you also want to do a revisit and a post-mortem and what could we have done differently. And even though we were a 400 million dollar bankruptcy, collectively, there were probably two or three billion dollars lost at the same time. ESPN Mobile, Disney Mobile, Helio mobile, lots and lots of other efforts tried to do a comparable business model, and the business model failed not just our company. So you can kind of relate to what you learned from that. And as I went on to my next effort in raising my next money and generically, the investment committee said well, geez, that was a big mistake. I'm glad you learned that lesson on somebody else's dime. Ken WhiteRight. Mike McSherryAnd it's no skin off my back, and it's actually seen as a positive that I have gone through failure in the decision process of declaring bankruptcy and picked up again from there with optimism, enthusiasm that there's technology change and that's going to lead to opportunities and create businesses. Ken WhiteI remember early in my career, I was applying for a position, and the CEO said have you've been fired before right. And I hadn't, and I said no. He was disappointed, and I didn't understand why, of course, and for that very reason, he wanted to see are you resilient can you bounce back. What were the lessons learned? And it is amazing what that kind of experience can teach us. We talk a lot, and we hear a lot about the gig economy and people, especially millennials thinking about not even having a full-time job but putting things together. I've got expertise. I can go out and get clients. That's a startup that's an entrepreneur. But many people don't know how to approach it. What kind of advice would you have for someone in that position who has expertise? Is really good. They don't know how to go out and do what you do. Mike McSherryYeah, the Uber of X is kind of labeled against everything, and you know, Uber has certainly created a new class of workforce, and there's a lot of laws that are trying to catch up with both the pros and the cons to that sort of gig economy basis if I stay with Uber for a second massive, massive transformational change coming in trillions of dollars, and you know won and lost. You know, the traditional auto manufacturers, the fleets, the Ubers, the technology companies, and insurance companies, parking, and transportation. And so I think staying abreast of that is going to create, you know, countless opportunities. But it's also going to create these gig jobs, and then there's risk of, well, are those jobs even going to disappear because there's going to be autonomous driving and there's not gonna be a driver there. Back to the question of gig economies and how you take advantage of it. You know, I think everybody has a discreet skill, and there's opportunities for marketing that skill now more rapidly and easily than prior. I like crafts, so there's Etsy, and there's now 3-D laser printers and cutters and lots of businesses that spring up around that. There's gig economies around design, and you know, paying people for design, you know, logo design and marketing design and elements, but you're competing at a global level. I mean, I don't care who does a design for someone from Malaysia or someone from Idaho or DC. It doesn't really matter. I'm looking for the best design for the cheapest price. And so there are going to be winners and losers against that. And I think a lot of that is going to go to how you market yourself and manage rankings and ratings. Airbnb is another one, and I use that for business travel. It's a third the price of a hotel. And generally, when I'm doing business travel, I'm out at a dinner, and I get someplace at eleven o'clock, and I wake up at seven, and I'm gone, and what do I care the bed that I sleep in and that allows people to afford mortgages and take vacations and do other things. So it's creating lots of different, more flexible options in life. And I think the more flexible you are at taking advantage of those options and marketing yourself against those options and participating in that, the more you're going to benefit. If life just happens to you, you may become a bit more of the negative consequences of the gig economy, and that might not have health insurance and might not have 401k retirement planning. And so those are the challenges that the gig economy is going to have to figure out how society helps to foster a support network against that. Ken WhiteIf you had the opportunity to go back to your 25-year-old self, give yourself some advice today. What kind of advice would you have shared with the younger Mike? Mike McSherryFrankly, I don't know that I'd have regrets on how I've chosen my life. I made the best decision at the time that I could have, and I followed the advice and insight I had at that time to do such. I have explored and traveled and made friends and family. I have a beautiful wife and two young children. I love being part of a family. Would I have wished I had started a family sooner? Who knows. That's life. So I don't know that I live life with any regrets. I myself have lived overseas for 25 percent of my life. I've traveled extensively with my family, but we've not lived overseas. And I think I'd ever regret if I didn't try to create that opportunity for my family but that I still have the opportunity. I just need to make that happen. Ken WhiteExcellent. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mike McSherry. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Mike McSherry, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Andrew Leeth](images/andrew-leeth-59-thumb.jpg)
![Cyber Attacks & The Ethical Hacker](images/andrew-leeth-59-thumb.jpg)
Andrew Leeth
Episode 59: November 1, 2016
Cyber Attacks & the Ethical Hacker
One of the biggest, most expensive, and misunderstood threats to businesses today is the cyber attack. In today's environment, businesses and organizations are constantly at risk of being hacked, and those hacks can cause a company to lose its reputation, money, customers, and more. Cyber attacks are difficult to predict and stop. Therefore many companies are bringing in "ethical hackers," computer experts assigned to penetrate and assess the security of computer and internet systems. Andrew Leeth is a security engineer for Salesforce and has worked with businesses to identify potential weaknesses in their systems. He joins us today to tell us what companies and organizations are doing to minimize the chance of a cyber attack.
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Andrew Leeth: Cyber Attacks & the Ethical Hacker TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, one of the biggest, most expensive, and misunderstood threats to business today is the cyber attack. Where an outsider damages a computer network or website, in today's environment businesses and organizations are constantly at risk of being hacked, and those hacks can cause a company to lose its reputation, money, customers, and more due to a major hack that took place just the week before last. People in the U.S. were unable to access sites like PayPal, CNN, and Twitter. Cyber attacks are on the rise, and they're difficult to predict and stop. But businesses are fighting back. In many cases, they're working with ethical hackers professionals who are brought in to penetrate and assess the security of computer and Internet systems. Our guest today has worked with organizations to identify potential weaknesses in their systems. Andrew Leeth is a security engineer for Salesforce. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss what companies and organizations are doing to minimize the chance of a cyber attack. Here's our conversation with Andrew Leeth. Ken WhiteAndrew, thank you for taking the time to join us. You're busy. You're a professional and a graduate student, so thanks for taking the time to be with us today. Tell us what you do what's your job all about. Andrew LeethI've got kind of an interesting role and a interesting way that I've got to where I'm at. To give you some background, I'm a currently a security engineer with Salesforce. I've been in that for two going on three years now. So the short explanation is I'm an ethical hacker. So a company brings me in, and I go perform penetration testing. I do reviews of their configurations and their software, and the tools they're using in their networks and systems. And I look for security holes that could be penetrated by an attacker. So we try and simulate real-world attacks against our customers, against our platforms, and you know, whatever I'm able to accomplish, we go and fix and remediate, and hopefully, if a real bad guy came along and tried the same tactics they would not be able to get in. Before that, though, I was a consultant, and I did a few years of consulting where I would go from client to client, usually in the financial services or maybe healthcare, where there are a lot more regulations around security a lot more protected data. And I would do risk assessments. I would do penetration testing. So I would go in, and I would say these employees are no longer employees with your company. Why are they still having access to your systems? That's certainly a risk that a company would have, and you wouldn't want a fired employee to be able to see medical records or even the technical things like can somebody from the internet get into your database and see your customer data. So we would recreate those testing events for our customers. And there's also what's kind of the fun or spy-like aspect to that, which is social engineering. So we would actually go to our customers who contracted for social engineering, and we would do all sorts of information gathering on employees. We'd come up with a good story to get ourselves in, and we would walk into, say, a big branch and try and get on their networks. Ken WhiteWow. Andrew LeethSo you know we'd be going to Goodwill and looking for a Cisco polo and tell them we're here to fix the internet. And, of course, everyone's got slow internet. Ken WhiteSure. Andrew LeethAnd trustworthy tellers would let you behind the counter and let you plug in. Ken WhiteWow. Andrew LeethSo then you could document that and provide that to management and say, you know. Obviously, your training is not working as well. You know that you have to have a letter from this person to let someone else on the machines. Ken WhiteMan, we've got to be on guard, personally and professionally, right? Andrew LeethAbsolutely. Ken WhiteSo when you go in a client brings you in. What ordinarily do you find? Are there certain things that you know you're going to come across? Andrew LeethYeah, there's a lot of common problems that I think a lot of organizations struggle with. Passwords are definitely really, really tough for organizations to get their hands around. It's mostly because it requires the human factor. And we want passwords when we set them to be easy to remember. We don't want to have to change them all the time. We want to make it as easy for us to get our job done. It's just human nature. But that makes it easier for us as an attacker to get into the systems. Simple things like password guessing using passwords that are most frequently used. It's a common problem out there. So you know, if you think that you're setting your password to winter 2016 exclamation point, nobody's going to think of that. Well, that's how the attackers thinking. So that's one of their first guess. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew LeethSo passwords are definitely a huge problem. A lot of times, companies have trouble with detection. So let's say an attack is happening. You would want your IT staff or your security staff to be on guard that, hey, something bad is happening. We need to go fix that, and you can do that through various alerting tools, logging things that are happening, etcetera. But a lot of organizations don't have a really mature process around detection and monitoring. Ken WhiteWho is the big case? I mean, from a business standpoint, this affects the bottom line. If this happens, and it does happen, and it will happen, you've got to be ready for this, right? Andrew LeethAbsolutely. Ken WhiteSo what's the case that everybody wants to talk about? Andrew LeethEveryone talks about the big breach. You know when within a company their own culture. Usually, we get brought in when I was a consultant on, you know, hey, we had a breach, and we want to make sure that doesn't happen again. They've felt the pain personally within their company. It had a lot of scrutiny, bad PR attention, and they want to make sure that that doesn't happen again. So they're doing what they can to help protect the money that they've lost. They don't want that to happen again. That's usually a big draw to bring us in. Another issue would be they have some sort of regulatory obligation, and they need some sort of independence. If you're with your own company, you're not going to have a really independent opinion on the state of security at the company. So they need some sort of auditor to come in and say, you know what, they've got these couple issues, but everything looks good to report back that they're compliant with these regulations. Ken WhiteI think if we were to ask the average person who does not do what you do, someone like me, you know can you name a company that really was either taken by surprise or took a hit, we think of Target. Andrew LeethAbsolutely. Ken WhiteWhat happened? What took place back then? Andrew LeethYou know, obviously, Target's got a huge attack surface. They've got lots of different applications, lots of software, lots of servers. They have lots of different stores spread geographically everywhere. So you think they've got a data center somewhere they're interacting with third parties and distributors and suppliers and all these different business connections, and so all this is going somewhere. It's really hard for the IT organization security organization to wrap their hands around all of that and secure every bit of it. Ken WhiteSure. Andrew LeethIf we think about Target, they really got in through a third-party supplier portal. It wasn't the e-commerce target.com portal. Their security team knew about that portal, and they secured it really well because they knew that that was extremely important. But this other third-party portal that you know only a few people saw. Nobody thought about it. But it provided a backdoor right into their system and then their network that hackers were able to go in, and you know, we talked about detection a few minutes ago, the detection Target wasn't maybe as mature as it should be. And so the attackers had time to dump all of their database, including credit card numbers. Ken WhiteAnd so that was one of the things that customers felt they have my credit card. Oh no. Now what. But it really affected the bottom line for Target. Andrew LeethAbsolutely. So like you mentioned some of the consequences are reputation and trust. Like, do I really want to go shop at Target because they're losing my credit card, or maybe I should go to the other retailer? We can look at the quarter that that breach happened, and there was a 46 percent drop in revenue that quarter. Ken WhiteWow. Andrew LeethSo that's pretty large. And you think of how many credit cards that Target stores. They had 40 million and they believe that one to three million of those credit cards were actually sold on the black market and used. So that's a huge number. You think of other consequences that Target had to go through. They had a hundred million dollars on upgrading their point of sale systems in each of the stores. So that's one of the tasks that they said that will prevent this from happening again because we're going to put in better security. So one of those steps was going to every store and replacing the pin and ship card swipe that you're typically used to using Ken WhiteRight. Andrew Leethto make a more secure one. So that cost a lot of money for them. Certainly, they're going to have more regulatory scrutiny. People are going to be looking at them underneath a microscope just to make sure they're doing the right things because they've screwed up. They've got a history of screwing up in the past. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew LeethTheft could happen if they had some sort of IP, intellectual property. You know, certainly, they've got algorithms around who the marketing and things of value, business secrets, trade secrets. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew LeethYou know a competitor could get that data. Someone else could use that. That's super impressive and something that they want to keep confidential within the company. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. It's not like we're picking on Target. This could happen to anyone. Andrew LeethAnd you know it probably is happening to everyone. They just don't know about it. Ken WhiteWow. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Andrew Leeth, security engineer at Salesforce, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact the Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Andrew Leeth. Ken WhiteYou had talked about right before we started recording the three pillars. Andrew LeethYeah, so. Ken WhiteCan you tell us about that? Andrew LeethWe kind of think of it as a triad or a triangle. So when we think about data security, we think of three main topics per se. So you have confidentiality, and when we think of confidentiality, we really think of keeping data private, and only the individuals who need to see that data should see it. Then we talk about integrity, and integrity is really protecting the data itself and making sure that a bad guy isn't going in and modifying data where it shouldn't be modified. And then we can think of the last bit as availability. So we want to make sure our systems are available and online. A lot of attacks you'll see lately are these denial of service attacks where a hacktivist group will be politically motivated to maybe shut down a website because they don't like something that they've done. And we can think of. I believe it was Bank of America a few years ago where they were increasing some ATM fee, and you know, the collective online didn't really agree that they should be doing this. And so they all sent traffic to Bank of America, which took their site offline. You had a e-commerce portal or something that was generating revenue that would certainly stop that flow of money coming in, and that would be devastating to their business, customers satisfaction. If I want to go check my bank balance, I want to do it when I am at my computer, and I pull up the website, and if it doesn't pull up, I'm going to be a little frustrated. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. What about vandals? Can you give us some examples because again before we start recording you and I were talking about some instances where vandals take it's not about stealing data? It's not about bringing a business to its knees but vandalizing a website. Andrew LeethAbsolutely. And this is kind of the classic example that you can think of from when the web was first started, where you'll have people that get access to your website, and they'll put up maybe some inappropriate images or politically motivated statements or various other things. A good example is Sears. A few years ago, had this vulnerability which allowed in its hacker to change a product on their e-commerce site. And so they changed it into a baby grill. So it appeared as though a Sears was promoting barbecuing of babies right, which is absolutely absurd. But it had people concerned. You know, they didn't know if this was real. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew LeethThe news picked it up, and you know, obviously, it brought a lot of attention to them and not necessarily in a good light either. So we have a lot of issues when it comes to criminals. Ken WhiteAnd then a lot of time and effort that they had to spend just to fix something that probably more of a joke than it was anything else. Right. Andrew LeethExactly, exactly. Ken WhiteIt seems like it could almost never end right from the average consumer. It feels like the who's ahead. People like you or the hackers. Is it an arms race? Is it growing and faster and faster? What's going on? Andrew LeethThere's really no finish line. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew LeethThere's no being secure. There's no 100 percent complete. There's always something new. There's always new vulnerabilities in everything we do. There's always somebody smarter thinking on the other side. So really, what the goal is for a security department is you want to make it so difficult for an attacker to go after your site that they're easier targets that they'll just go somewhere else. They'll pivot and go after a different target. So if it's going to take a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of resources to attack your company. They're going to go to the other company that's got some low-hanging fruit they can get in pretty easily and still accomplish their goals. Ken WhiteYeah. But it sounds like it's just a ton of fun for you. Andrew LeethIt's a lot of fun. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew LeethIt's exciting. There's it's a relatively new field, and it's super primetime. I mean, if you look at the Wall Street Journal on a given day or any news outlet, they're always talking about the latest breach. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew LeethIt's brand new. And I mean, schools don't really have programs around it yet. I mean, there's programs here and there that are brand new. But if you look at the developers or the IT people that are in companies today, they didn't have security classes when they went through their degree programs. Ken WhiteSo it's new but prevalent at the same time. It's out there. Andrew LeethIt's very important. Ken WhiteYeah. One thing we find interesting and it's nice to have you on the podcast. Because of this, you're actually a student at William & Mary. We've got about 60 podcasts. You're the first student we've had on. You're a graduate student in the Masters of Science in Business Analytics. Andrew LeethExcellent. Ken WhiteHow does that tie into what you're doing, and what's the program all about? Andrew LeethSo the program is all about looking at business decisions and how we can make and support those decisions with data. So if we look how users are interacting with your brand or how you're operating and you can somehow glean some statistics and do some analysis, you know the big buzzword these days is machine learning getting some intelligence behind why customers are working with you. You can make a lot smarter decisions, and you can really have fact behind those decisions. Ken WhiteAnd how do you think this will help what you're doing in terms of your career? Andrew LeethYeah, so security just as every other part of the business. You know, we have to articulate risk, and we have to quantify that and provide the business justification that they should do security. So there's definitely a lot of metrics and analysis that has to happen that you can educate your executives who probably don't have a lot of security knowledge as to what the bottom line is for them and why they should invest in security and why they should make their systems and networks and protect their data ultimately. So kind of where my interests lie are, you know, providing those metrics to the company based on their vulnerabilities but also being able to detect anomalies and other bad things that are happening. You know, we talked about that detection a little bit earlier. This is where you know Sally logs and to her banking account once a week pretty regularly. But then we see a flurry of activity that doesn't seem like her. That's where data science and analytics can really help identify that fraudulent activity and really help identify that and make our victims' lives better. Ken WhiteSo no doubt, two of the hottest coolest items out there in business cyber security and business analytics, and you're right at the intersection. Andrew LeethRight at the intersection. Ken WhiteThat's really cool. Last question for someone in business whether it's a smaller business a major corporation that hasn't given this a whole lot of thought. Where do you even start to protect you, your customers, and your business? Andrew LeethYou really got to identify what all's in play because that's, I think, the biggest problem that companies have is they don't know where all their data is. They don't know what systems are using, how people are accessing it. So really, getting an inventory of this is everywhere we store data. This is everything that's important to us. This is what we want to protect. That's an important first step, and the bigger you get, the harder it is to answer that question. You know, if you have a small four-person shop, you know, you can probably ask around to all four people and figure out where they're storing the important business data. But once you get to many locations and thousands of employees, it gets really hard, especially with the proliferation of cloud. You know everyone's just taking data and storing it wherever or they sign a contract with a third party. So it's really understanding where your data is and the risk that data. So once you get a handle of that you can better articulate what kind of vulnerabilities you could possibly have. Ken WhiteExcellent. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Andrew Leeth, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Andrew Leeth, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Elizabeth Nieto](images/elizabeth-nieto-58-thumb.jpg)
![Diversity, Inclusion, and the Bottom Line](images/elizabeth-nieto-58-thumb.jpg)
Elizabeth Nieto
Episode 58: October 25, 2016
Diversity, Inclusion, and the Bottom Line
Recently, Forbes Magazine reported that diversity and inclusion will be a top priority for businesses in the year ahead, explaining that gender-diverse companies were 15% more likely to outperform their peers. In addition, ethnically diverse companies are 30% more likely to do the same. Today, more companies are realizing that solid diversity and inclusion practices positively affect the bottom line. Elizabeth Nieto is Global Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at MetLife who has spent her career in the D&I space and joins us to discuss what it can do for individuals and organizations.
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Elizabeth Nieto: Diversity, Inclusion, and the Bottom Line TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, the weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, recently, Forbes Magazine reported that diversity and inclusion will be a top priority for businesses in the year ahead. Writer Josh Bersin explained how gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform their peers. In addition, ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to do the same. While many organizations have committed at some level to diversity and inclusion in the past, even more companies are realizing that solid D&I practices positively affect the bottom line. Our guest today knows firsthand how a commitment to diversity and inclusion drives business performance. Elizabeth Nieto is Global Chief Diversity and Inclusion officer at MetLife. She has spent her career in the D&I space, and she joins us today to discuss diversity and inclusion and what it can do for individuals and organizations. Here's our conversation with Elizabeth Nieto. Ken WhiteElizabeth, thank you for taking the time to join us. Been a while since you've been on campus. I'm sure it's nice to be back at William & Mary. Elizabeth NietoIt's great to be here, and I got the opportunity to meet with a lot of students this morning. Ken WhiteWonderful. Elizabeth NietoOf the business school, so that was a treat. Ken WhiteWhat kind of reaction do you have when you meet the business students? Elizabeth NietoThey're brilliant. I want to be sure that I get those resumes and those connections for the future. Very center and good questions, and interested in learning more. So going to the other world, I didn't know the academia and now the corporate world. They're very interested in learning. And from my experiences there. Ken WhiteThey are. They're really a special group. Your work in diversity and inclusion, how did you get into the space? Elizabeth NietoSo my background is really in leadership development, and I found the passion around education. And there was an opportunity in one of the financial services companies that I worked in to look at what kind of work do we do when we look at women and ethnic and racial diversity, what kind of leadership skills are we providing. And if we're providing the same leadership skills, do we need to do something different? And that started my research around diversity and inclusion, and it's been a complete journey. Every year we realize there's something and some other population that we have not been aware of that we need to think about how we integrate that talent into our organizations. Ken WhiteIs there a different way that people learn leadership, or should adopt leadership principles depending on their differences or their diversity? Elizabeth NietoSo leadership is leadership, and in a way, when we teach a class just for women, we're probably teaching the same thing. What we're providing is an environment where women can have a different voice as they are not competing for the microphone with their male colleagues. And there's a lot of research that universities and also corporations have done around women and participating being sitting at the table. So while we will teach the same leadership skills, we realize that there's a value of having, in some cases not throughout your career, but in some cases, groups of women that are coming together to learn and to experience and to do role plays. And there's the other training that we're doing that it's for all employees. Ken WhiteRight. What about this space do you like? Because I know you like what you do. Elizabeth NietoI think that I had found my purpose. I do believe that it is about the metrics that are being assessed as an employee of the organization, but it's the little and individual examples. Is that out of the blue, unsolicited email that I get saying, because of the work that you're doing, my experience in this company is different? Because of the work that you're doing, the culture of the organization has changed in the last couple of years. I cannot take the full credit. It's not just my work, but it's the influence that we in the D&I team in the Human Capital team do to change the way people lead in the organization under a very committed CEO that wanted to ensure that the legacy was about an inclusive organization where the best talent had the opportunity to emerge and contribute. Ken WhiteWhen you say your D&I team companies all over the world have adopted diversity inclusion, they have teams for those who don't get it. What would that team do? What's the goal of a team committed to really building diversity in an organization? Elizabeth NietoSo we talk a lot about the business case and how do we create a business case for diversity. And some days, I'm a little tired about the business case, but in reality, it's getting people to understand why this is important. I said part of my job is really selling my ideas. Leaders have a lot of responsibilities, and if they see this as an add-on that it's not getting them anything, they would not do it. So for us, for our team, it's how do we make the connection between what your regular job is and what being an inclusive leader can give you? So can you be better at selecting talent? Can you be better at promoting your talent or developing your talent? Can you think about commercial opportunities in a different way? Because now, you have people that may look different than the clients that we served 20 years ago, and they may have ideas on how our products can be better. So that our job is to creating this connection and engaging with leaders that want to take our knowledge on different expertise, cross-cultural communication, or building different products for different audiences and help them do their job in a better way. Ken WhiteWhat are some of the changes, maybe the progress that you've seen throughout your career in this space? Elizabeth NietoYeah, so originally, when we were looking at women not coming up the ladder, the idea 15-20 years ago, let's fix the women. Let's give them the skills that they need to succeed. And I think that where the practice have changed is, yes, there's things that women, men, young generation needs to learn, but if we don't fix the systems, the processes, and the companies, we will find ourselves always in the same place. So when we look at how diversity, inclusion, talent management has changed, it's looking at this as an ecosystem. So, yes, it's great to talk to women about their aspirations and having them understand that if they have aspirations, they need to communicate those they need to declare them. But also having leaders, both men and women, that understand that when someone declares an aspiration, your role is to help them come to the learning plan. To be able to do that, that when we have our promotion system. The system is as unbiased as we can make it. And so a lot of the conversation that we had had is around what bias is and why understanding bias is important because those implicit biases comes in every decision you make, not just around people. So the one way we connected this back to the business is we're going to talk about biases, but even think about when you design or what you decide to go into a market, what are the biases that you have about that market? And then how can you dispel them? And what are the content and knowledge that you need to dispel that? So at the end of the day, you will make a better business decision around that. Ken WhiteAnd then, if you have people from that market. Elizabeth NietoBetter, they can give you that connection. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Elizabeth Nieto, Global Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at MetLife, in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by The Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education helps companies and organizations from all over the world by creating and delivering business and leadership development programs. If your organization is looking to get to the next level, contact The Center for Corporate Education to discuss how we can create and deliver a program that specifically fits your needs and gets results. For more information, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Elizabeth Nieto and diversity and inclusion. Ken WhiteWhat's it like in your space now that the workforce has just changed so dramatically? It almost seems overnight. All these generations, the millennials, the boomers, and people from all various backgrounds, what's that like trying to manage that from a talent management standpoint? Elizabeth NietoSo usually, what you look is what is it your company needs. And different companies need different things based on are they a B2B. Are you B2B or B2B2C? And that really frames the strategy that you want to look into. And then what we usually do is say, what are the different tracks that you are interested in developing in your organization? So it could be around gender, and that's one that you can do globally. It could be around people with different abilities or people with disabilities, LGBT. And then my philosophy is that you cannot create just one strategy. You really need to make that local. So you can have a global strategy, but you have to do the delivery locally because the challenges that women in Poland have are different than are women in the US or different that are women in China or Japan. So while gender is an opportunity for us in all organizations that I had worked in, it's that how you make that relevant to the market. So, where do you find the solutions to that market that may be different from market to market? And as you said, it is an explosion. So we will have jobs for a long time because every time there's a new population that we have not been taken, not care, but taken into consideration, we're missing that talent. Talent really gets distributed, and intelligence gets distributed around every group. So for us, how do we look into this? And, you know, many years ago, we were not talking about veterans. This is one of our opportunities now for many organizations and how we integrate, and I know the school William & Mary has been very progressive in working with the military and bringing veterans into the organization. So the same thing we're looking into that. What is that we need to do? And sometimes it's a simple thing, is how do you translate your military lingo language into what I understand? So when I interview you, we can be talking about the same thing. And I can understand your leadership capabilities, but it may be very different to my leadership capability because of the way I explained it, but may be very similar in the way that we accomplish a shared objective. So that's an area thinking about how we're going to integrate our policies to have support to our transgender employees or people that are going through gender resignation. So those are the kind of things that have evolved. And the companies that have done the most are the ones that are going to get the best talent because they're going to be really the employers of choice. Ken WhiteYou know, it's interesting in my space, the MBA space, back in the day, there was really one career event, and all of the MBA students would go to the National Black MBA Association Career Symposium. It was a few days long initially for African American students, now sponsored by the National Black MBA Association. Now it is amazing the various numbers of career fairs just within a month. You mentioned veterans. There was one for veterans. There was one for LGBT, LGBT allies, and then National Black. There's one for Hispanic. It is amazing how corporate has really jumped onto this and actually focusing program directly related at people who identify in certain ways. And you're nodding as I say that. So you're familiar with it. Is that paying off when companies are doing that kind of recruiting like that? Elizabeth NietoI think that it helps companies represent their brand and show that they care about these different groups and learn more about the different groups. I think that we're now and it's interesting. I'm smiling because we had a meeting in New York a couple of weeks ago, and they are all these conferences. So if you're a corporation and I don't have I have limited dollars, so I have to decide which one is the one. So we went back to ascend National Black MBA and said you have to help me because I don't want to do one conference and not the other one. So I think that that, again, will evolve. And you have participants from really all backgrounds coming to these conferences. So it's more of this multicultural. I do believe that at the end of day, why this is important because if you know that you're coming to a company that, to use an example, cares about the veterans and is doing work around the veterans, that's a company that is doing work around a lot of other tracks. So it does not benefit the veterans. It really benefits everybody, including the people that are the majority. Because it's an organization that cares about inclusion and wants to ensure that people have that alignment between their own values and the organization so they can be better employees and work harder and more productively. Ken WhiteFor those in your space, what would you say is the top challenge that you're facing today? Elizabeth NietoThat sometimes, people reduce D&I to just a representation. So how many X do you have? Ken WhiteRight. Elizabeth NietoUsually, we have to go to the board of directors of our companies and go and present that this idea of moving more to this idea of inclusion and being able to track inclusion. So I'm seeing that crossing and turning the corner on to yes, it's important to have diversity. It's important to have people with different backgrounds and different categories that we decide. But then it's what do you do? Do those people are sitting at the table? Do they have the ability to contribute? Do they feel that they belong to the organization, that their voice is heard? And that's really what's making the big difference around diversity and inclusion. And even some of my colleagues have dropped the word diversity from their titles, and they're just talking about inclusion. Ken WhiteInteresting. Elizabeth NietoSo there's movement to that part. Ken WhiteSo there's still a piece of selling in your job. Elizabeth NietoA lot. Ken WhiteYeah. Elizabeth NietoAnd it's just making the connections, just being able to create the importance. Why would I want to do this? Why would I want to do things differently? Because, in a way, we tend to do what we've done before. If we're successful and there's not an external focus to change, why do it? And what we're asking people is you're changing for the future, not only changing for now. So if you look at graduates from MBAs in the United States, 40% are women. So are we going to disregard that population just because we didn't manage them before? Or you're going to rethink about how we get the best women into our organizations, and we create processes to ensure that they are successful and we retain them. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Elizabeth Nieto. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by The Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at The Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Well, thanks to our guest this week, Elizabeth Nieto, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time, have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Karen Locke](images/karen-locke-57-thumb.jpg)
![The CEO of Your Own Career](images/karen-locke-57-thumb.jpg)
Karen Locke
Episode 57: October 18, 2016
The CEO of Your Own Career
The days of spending an entire career with one employer are long gone. Today, professionals can expect to change employers and career paths multiple times. Managing your career can be a real challenge, but if done correctly can lead to a great career in which you and your employer are happy. Karen Locke is the Pat and Margaret Walsh professor in Leadership and Ethics at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business who works with a range of professionals on, among other things, how to be the CEO of your career.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, the days of spending an entire career with one employer are long gone. Today professionals can expect to change their employers and career paths multiple times. According to CNN Money, millennials will change jobs four times in their first decade out of college. But with that in mind managing your career can be a real challenge. But if done correctly, you can have a great career in which you and your employer are happy. Karen Locke is the Pat and Margaret Walsh professor in leadership and ethics at William & Mary's Mason School of Business. She works with a range of professionals, from MBA students to seasoned executives, on, among other things, how to be the CEO of your career. She joins us on the podcast today. Here's our conversation with Professor Karen Locke. Ken WhiteKaren, thanks for taking the time to be here today. We appreciate it. Karen LockeSure thing. Ken WhiteTell us first off about what you teach the leadership class you teach in the MBA program and what that's all about. Karen LockeSo the way I think about that class, it's not teaching about leadership. It is hopefully helping the students take some steps in their leadership journey, and students will come at it from a number of different places, obviously because they bring a range of experiences. But starting that journey out by really looking from the inside out. So thinking about what it is that they bring to the table not from their own experience of themselves but through a rigorous look at themselves so that they can understand that the way that they are going to move forward and show personal and professional leadership in the roles that they occupy is going to be different from the person sitting next to them. And that's okay. There is no single model. What they need to figure out is, personally and professionally, where are they going to be at their best. When they are at their best, what kinds of things are they doing? How can organizations find those valuable? And then how can they find and place themselves so that if they have, for example, a skill they'd love really intractable problems that have multiple stakeholders challenging them, then they're ripe for dealing with, say, complex problems in government if they want a career in consulting actually if they have that skill there probably isn't anywhere that someone wants to place them because dealing with intractable problems that are politically invested in by a range of different people is something that we're going to encounter anywhere in the organization. Ken WhiteSo looking inside out, someone really can't do that on their own. You do a number of assessments. And what other things do you do to help somebody determine what they can bring to the table? Karen LockeSo we come at it a number of different ways. We do a number of assessments which give them some vocabulary a more refined vocabulary for looking at their behavior and looking at their inclinations. We also spend a lot of time emphasizing the importance of gaining feedback in the MBA experience. The students gain feedback from their MBA teams. We give them assignments where they go out and talk with people with whom they've worked before to give them their perspective, and then through the resource, we have our EPs. Our EPs will observe them and also provide their observations. One of the things though Peter Drucker, who is the touchstone really for this, was talking about this in the early 1970s, really before the notion of leadership development really took off in any large sense, was the idea of doing what our military students would call after action reviews on yourself. So if you are making a decision putting down in writing, he suggests what it is that you are thinking what your expectations are and filing that away and after whatever cycle of time it takes, he says 18 months. But he was thinking about strategic decisions. Whatever time cycle for the event that you've made the decision on his path, come back and look at it and see if it turned out positively. Is it because of the reasons that you believed were operative at the time, or did it turn out positively for something else? And so you can really test how you think about that. So Drucker says we basically feel like we know ourselves, but we really don't. Ken WhiteSure. Karen LockeIt takes work to figure out and to confront ourselves with the consequences of our decisions. It takes work to figure out exactly what kinds of situations we're going to be best in and be able to make our greatest contribution in. Ken WhiteYou mentioned the MBA students dealing with the EPs. For those in our audience who don't know what that is, those are our executive partners here at William & Mary's Mason School of Business. A number of executives who help coach our students and I'm sure provide very good feedback to the students throughout these exercises, don't they? No punches are pulled there. Karen LockeRight. Ken WhiteYeah. Karen LockeAnd we start out by sort of giving the students we give them two phases. In the December, we talk about who shows up when you walk into the room. And the idea is not who shows up for you but who shows up for the other people. So to what extent does who you intend to be actually play out in the experiences of others? And then in, a little bit later on, we ask the students to think about what it's like to be on the receiving end of it. Just to sort of flip their point of view from now from the inside out, flipping it to what the experience of them on the outside is. So again, being rigorous about what it is that they bring to the table not from the story that they're telling themselves but from a range of outside ways of gaining data about themselves. Ken WhiteSeeing what others see and experiencing what others experience, and that's on the MBA side, you do a considerable amount of work with companies and corporations all throughout the world. Is a different when you're working with them, or what do you do differently? Karen LockeIt's not that different. I think one of the things that is increasingly obvious it's true of all of our experiences. We are all more and more busy. Our jobs have all expanded no matter what kind of role, what kind of industry what kind of occupation we're in. And I think the busier we are, the more difficult it is to pull back and really look at what is it that I am bringing to the table and how is the value that I might be able to bring going to translate in this situation versus just trying to get it done. And I think the busier we are, the more the orientation is. Just try to get to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and not take a step back and say, okay, what am I contributing to getting it done? How might I contribute better? How might I get my people and if I know what it is that their strengths and talents are? How can I get them to take a piece of this and, in taking a piece of this, grow and develop themselves so that the whole organization is able to perform at a higher level than all of us just trying to get it done and me if I'm the manager driving to get it done unreflectively? So the personal growth story never stops. Ken WhiteNow companies will come to the Mason School to the Center for Corporate Education and go through this. What if there is a professional listening, an individual? How do I find out how do I assess myself? What are some tools or some references you can share with some of our listeners that maybe a book or some programs that are out there to help assess? Where am I, and where should I be going, kind of? Karen LockeA program that's tremendously popular right now is strength finder. Ken WhiteRight. Karen LockeRight, so strength finder comes from, and it's consistent with this whole sort of positive psychology notion, which we haven't talked that much about the idea that many of us have been brought up focused on a problem-finding mindset so that what we're trying to figure out is what are we not doing well and being able to perform is always looking for where are the holes where are my shortcomings and trying to plug those. Instead of the other way of thinking, which I've been alluding to, which is what are my strengths, and if I focus on those strengths, I'm going to get much more runway, so Strength Finder. It's quite reasonable it's available as a resource. The other thing I hear is an idea is to sit down with your peers and ask them to tell you. Ask them have a conversation on a recent project which is a debrief conversation. What is it that I did that was useful and don't allow them to get away with saying oh, that was fine? No, what in what you did was fine, and how did it help them? So you have your able to build the connection between actions that you take or abilities that you have and outcomes that matter to the organization. And then, similarly, what could you have done differently? What did you omit to do, or what did you perhaps not do in a way which would have helped them more? So sitting down asking for that feedback would be a second useful thing to do. And then the third thing is you can just practice that exercise that Peter Drucker talks about in managing oneself, which is to write down what are you doing, what you're deciding, why you're deciding what your expectations are from this decision is file it away and then resurrect it wherever the timeline is three months six months whichever is your business cycle for that decision and look at it and say well did I get it right. Did I get lucky? Did I mess up? Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Karen Locke in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program. Coming up the last week of this month. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. Each day is devoted to a topic, including communication, leadership, strategy, managerial accounting, and organizational effectiveness. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Professor Karen Locke. Ken WhiteBasically, when you're saying go to your colleagues and so forth, you're basically describing a 360 review. How do those go over? I'm guessing some people do want, in fact, to improve and do want feedback until it's not that great. What's your experience with 360s? I mean, you have to have a thick skin. Karen LockeIt shows up actually the problem-oriented mindset versus the strengths mindset. Right. So a 360 instrument is going to give you information on a range of competencies, and then inside those competencies, they'll be specific behaviors like Karen is a good listener. Right. And then rate the extent to which you agree with that. Not at all, to a significant extent. And when I sit down with clients, and we go through the 360 invariably, they'll have the document in front of them, and I'll see the parts of it that are marked up of all of the places where there are negative comments. Ken WhiteRight, of course. Karen LockeThere is nothing marked up on what they did well. Ken WhiteRight. Karen LockeSo yeah, people are focused on an evaluation of a performance versus what are they learning, what can they learn about themselves, and in what they're interested in learning. We seem to be wired, and this is true from psychology, right? The negative holds our attention much more than the positive does. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Karen LockeAnd so it can be a challenge getting people to understand the negative and say okay, so there is an opportunity for some learning here. But what are people saying about what you do well, and how does that translate into results for your business? And so, don't ignore the negative but understand the larger picture again who shows up when you walk into the room in whatever role that is that you occupy. None of us like to receive news that we're not perfect, amazingly. Ken WhiteOf course. Fifty people can fill out a review all A pluses, but that one that you want to know who that one is right. You talk about being the CEO of your own career, but boy careers are changing so much now. People are going to have multiple jobs multiple areas as professions, as a matter of fact. How does the young person approach being the CEO of their career knowing that they won't be with the same company for 30 years? Karen LockeI think that first assumption. So if I start out with the assumption that I have to find a company to work for that's going to take care of me or basically house me professionally for the rest of my career. That's probably a starting place that is not available. The other mindset which is I'm going to be someone that is a bundle of skills and experiences that I can apply in a number of situations, maybe go and work for a company for a while. Maybe a part of my own organization, so I have quite a varied career path. Then the ownness is on me to be accumulating the experiences to be understanding who I am what I bring to the table, to be looking for where the matches are between what I can contribute and where new opportunities might be opening up. So I think of a model of self as a free agent where I am responsible for understanding what I bring to the table and for making sure that I'm aware of how I'm feeling about the contribution that I'm making and to reshape my career multiple times which I think is what's happening now and which is terrific so that I can have a satisfying career. Now on the other side for, organizations that presents them with enormous challenges. Ken WhiteNo kidding. Karen LockeRight, so all companies are dealing with the reality that what millennials want is a chance to grow and have a sense of purpose in what they're doing. So if they are find themselves in a situation where they don't see a path ahead, they don't see themselves growing, they don't feel that they're learning anything new, they're not going to stay. Ken WhiteRight. Karen LockeAnd that's a challenge for companies today. Ken WhiteRight, so knowing that are they are companies still making the investments in professional development and in teaching employees like they have in the past in your experience. Karen LockeWell, so here we are, seeing companies come to us and expressly talk about that and talk about it in two different ways. One is that they're providing growth opportunities and are helping meeting that need for continuous learning. The other is trying to shift their cultures for some of the companies that have been around here for a longer time, where managers understand that growing their employees is absolutely necessary for the company to survive. So if I'm a manager and I think about my subordinates as lucky to have a job, then that's going to create one kind of relationship versus I see my subordinates as an important resource to grow. And we're lucky to have them then that's going to create a very different kind of a mindset. Ken WhiteAnd the subordinates certainly see that too. We hear all the time our MBA students I want to work for a company that cares about me and wants to help me develop. Karen LockeSo it's finding that sweet spot between what I want what I can contribute, which is all a me story to where that overlaps with what the organization needs. The way I can contribute can make a difference for the company in both of us come out ahead is really what we're looking for. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Karen Locke. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Well, thanks to our guest this week, Professor Karen Locke, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Julien Cayet](images/julien-cayet-56-thumb.jpg)
![Strategy](images/julien-cayet-56-thumb.jpg)
Julien Cayet
Episode 56: September 27, 2016
Strategy
Many organizations invest time in generating their strategic plans, but those plans often don't prove to be successful. Arcadis is a leading international consultancy company in design, management, engineering, and other services. Julien Cayet is Global Leader, Business Advisory at Arcadis. He joins us to talk about strategy, the dynamic nature of strategy, and how it intersects with structure and culture.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, many organizations invest considerable amounts of time, energy, and money generating their strategic plans. Yet those plans don't always prove to be successful in today's constantly changing business environment. Organizations must have the right strategy in order to succeed. Well, one organization that has embraced strategy development is Arcadis, a leading international consultancy design, engineering, and management services company. Arcadis employs 28,000 people in 40 countries. Julien Cayet is global leader business advisory at Arcadis. He has spent much of his career in strategy along with organization, performance improvement, and change leadership. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss strategy, its dynamic nature, and how it intersects with structure and culture. Here's our conversation with Julien Cayet of Arcadis. Ken WhiteJulien, thank you for taking the time to join us today. You've spoken to a number of classes today, and we're not giving you a break at all. Now we're asking you to sit down in front of a microphone. Thank you for taking the time. Julien CayetNo problem. Thanks for having me. Ken WhiteYou've spent a considerable amount of time in the strategy space, and that's what you talked to our students about today. What is the role of a chief strategic officer in a company today? Julien CayetAs you know, there are many ways of defining what the roles should be, but the word that comes to mind is alignment. As someone who needs to align the various bits of your business around one shared vision one shared set of priorities. And the second word that would come to mind is engagement to make sure that people not only receive that strategy. That strategy doesn't land on their laps. They can really own the strategy and continue to drive the standard strategy not as a static object but as a real living animal. Ken WhiteSo the engagement is very people-oriented. Is the alignment more business unit related, or is that product or people when you say align? Julien CayetNo, the alignment, you get to align time horizons first with some issues or slow-moving issues or slow-moving opportunities, and you start to pave the way to capture those opportunities that are you know down the road. You've got medium-term issues and short-term issues, and especially in the case of listed companies like my company Arcadis you better consider long, short, and medium-term. So that's one level of alignment and alignment across the portfolio and industry by industry. But in our case, we've got very many different blends and breed of engineering, and they have different challenges, different opportunities, different competitors even, different degree of market maturity. So when you need to align, not as in one size fits all but as in you find something that brings all the parts together to make more than the sum of the parts. Ken WhiteFor a position such as someone who does strategic planning or leads the strategy for an organization. What type of person and what kind of qualifications and background would someone have? Julien CayetIt depends on what a company needs because there are different ways to fill the role. In my case, it was a new job creation new position within the company, so there was a bit of a need for someone that could create institution, create function. As if you would want to create a finance function or the HR function from scratch. So you need someone that has a bit of an entrepreneurial, a bit of a resourceful type of mindset to get things done starting from nothing without any blueprint or without anything to build on. It depends also on where the company is. You've got Chief Strategy Officers that are innovators because the company needs to drive fast innovation, so that there is a role for a Chief Strategy Officer to be an innovator. You get companies that are driving value by having a very disciplined capital allocation. So you need a chief strategy officer that will be very rigorous in the way he or she chooses to allocate capital and drive priorities from there. And in my case, there was a bit of all of the above. And is this challenge of reinventing the priority model reinventing the business model, and the sources grows of the company, so it's very a reinvention part of the strategy role? Ken WhiteInteresting. Julien CayetYou can add them up. I mean, it's not mutually exclusive. Ken WhiteYou drew on the board for the students this morning three circles that intersected, and one was strategy. The second circle was operation slash organization, and the third was people and culture. Can you explain how those intersect and why those three are important? Julien CayetThree, yeah, so strategy, structure, and culture. Well, I was relating to my own experience, as you recall. I came to become chief strategy officer, having been a strategy consultant for many, many years. So I had an inflated perception of the role of strategy in the success of the company. My strategy bubble was really big in my structure, and then culture bubble, especially the culture one where very, very small. Ken WhiteInteresting. Julien CayetNow having the benefit of a few years of experience and a bit of gray hair, I appreciate that it's all about balance. You need a clear direction of travel grounded in facts. Facts about market, competitors, technologies, and everything. And I'm not discounting the value of having a clear direction of travel. Then you need to ensure that your structure supports your direction of travel. So the structures should support the strategy. As mentioned this morning, you would be surprised how many companies have a disconnect between the strategic intent and the structure. Sounds like obvious, but it's a typical pitfall. And then the last one, and probably the most important one, I think it is Jim Collins in his book Good to Great who says that much better than him, I am going to say it. If you get the right people on the bus, you will go places. Ken WhiteRight. Julien CayetThat's such a simple tagline, but if get the right culture to strategy might be okay. The structure never is never going to be perfect. If you get the right culture, you can go a long way and that's third bubble I recognized was a blind spot of mine, and I think it's a blind spot many top executives. Ken WhiteYeah, because if the people aren't on board, it's just not going to go anywhere. Julien CayetYeah, or yeah, people on board, and you know it's more than on board. They need to be ready. They need to understand the direction of travel. They need to be willing to take the direction that has been set, and they need to be able to take direction of travel. And if you don't check all three boxes, something's going to stick along the road, and you will need maybe different people, or you will need to maybe a bit of a wakeup call with your existing people. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Julien Cayet in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up in late October. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. Each day is devoted to one topic, including communication, leadership, strategy, managerial accounting, and organizational effectiveness. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Julien Cayet on strategy. Ken WhiteI can't think of too many organizations and businesses that don't have a strategic plan and spend considerable time talking about strategy in the future but yet still so many fail. What is it that you've seen? What is it that causes that after all that effort and time? Julien CayetWell I mean it can be external and internal factors. Sometimes the assumption that you took at some point in time either change or prove to be wrong. So it can be in section on the track to the market. The assumption on the role of a new technology, an assumption on what competitors would do in reaction to your move in the marketplace. So you might find that your assumptions might be wrong, and then your strategy doesn't work because you took the wrong assumptions. Like, try again. Ken WhiteRight. Julien CayetBut I think it's probably. I would suspect I don't have any stats on that. Ken WhiteRight. Julien CayetI would suspect that the issue comes from a different place in relation with the point which was discussed about strategy, structure, and culture. I think that the challenges come from having structured and all misaligned with a strategy and a culture that doesn't support the structure and strategy of the company. So that's I think that's where I see most of the implementation challenges. Having the wrong strategy that happens sometimes, but it's more the exception than the rule. It's not that difficult to the right strategy. It's very difficult to get it done. Ken WhiteThe people and the culture with today's organizations pretty much everyone's global. But so many companies have many cultures within their own culture. What are some of the lessons you've learned? Because you certainly have global experience in terms of strategy and so many cultures within an organization. Julien CayetYeah, it's very difficult. It changes very very slowly. I remember the former chief executive of Arcadis. He told me yeah I make a decision and then the ship doesn't move for months or years. It's like a supertanker. The culture is very much a supertanker-type challenge but the good news and it has been one of my insights to the past few years that there are interventions that can accelerate the cultural transformation and they are expensive and rare interventions, but they can be extremely effective. In Arcadis's experience, exactly a year ago, day to day today, 24 September, we rebranded the company globally. So which sounds like a bit of a cosmetic intervention, new logo, new colors, different tag lines. But the impact on clients, the impact on the staff, the impact on the culture eventually, and the way we project ourselves to the market has been a lot deeper and a lot faster than it was expecting. Of course, you can not rebrand every year. Ken WhiteRight. Julien CayetIt's expensive, very confusing as well, but if you have this opportunity if the time is right. That's a very, very effective cultural intervention. And then the other one, which is maybe less effective but quite remarkable as well, is to rotate your top leadership. Every organization has a support role. You know, country role, product role, client-facing roles. And the more you rotate your leaders, the more you create like a collective understanding of the common good within the company. Ken WhiteRight. Julien CayetAnd more a deeper appreciation of what it takes to play the other role. But at the end of the day, we need to work together as a team. Ken WhiteAnd it makes so much sense, and Arcadis really believes in that. Right. Moving people in various roles. Julien CayetI think a lot of companies do that. It needs to be organized. It needs to it does involve some risk-taking as well. Sometimes you will move someone that does very well on the culture side to a market-facing role which might not be her or his cup of tea. But it is the right thing to grow a leader. Grow a real global leader that will take the company perspective, not only one slice of the company. Ken WhiteSpeaking of leaders, you mentioned the word leader or leadership a number of times when you were discussing strategy with the students today. What is the role of the leader in the strategy? I think there's many. How does a good leader embrace it? Julien CayetI think there are common features of good leaders, but also a good leader for you get specific attributes that you need in specific situations as well. So I think a good leader has to be a good communicator. That goes without saying. Ken WhiteSure. Julien CayetBeing able to say a lot with words. Good leaders is to be able to engage someone that can truly engage with people. Can truly look at who you're speaking to in the eyes, really listen deeply inside the words. Real engagement. It is someone that is able to set a clear direction of travel, and the leader say where we go. That's the job. And finally, someone that can really hold his team and his company accountable for performance. Can make the tough calls when performance is not where it should be. Not shy of addressing issues. He's not, or she's not mincing his or her words. Ken WhiteRight. You shared a look at long-term strategy earlier this morning. Some companies might go three years out. Arcadis doesn't believe that it believes on going way out, but your model was somewhat flipped and that you look at long term first and then work your way back. Can you tell us about that? Julien CayetWell, Arcadis doesn't really go way out because a ten-year time horizon, I would say middle of the road. Time horizon a resource company would look 20 to 30 years down the road. So it's like really extreme, and consumer companies in a fast-moving consumer environment they would likely look at two to three years down the road less potential, and it's even shrinking. So Arcadis is somewhere in between these two extremes. And yeah, we look at long-term and medium-term, and first thing you're referring to is the approach of the strategy planning process two three years ago. I think it's fairly logical. It was fairly logical three years ago. Keeping in mind that we had to take a huge step back in terms of what the new wave of value creation would be for a company. So there was a need to take that step back first to redefine a bit what would be the new rules of the game. The new keys of success for the company and having redefined this framework discovered framework we could do the usual gig of finding the source of growth and then implementing those rules by allocating resources in a logical way. Ken WhiteCan the strategic planning leader go too far? Is there a line they cross, and then they become a micro-manager? Have you ever experienced that? Julien CayetIt's a planted question. Yes, I do because, as a company, we went from not having any position of strategy officers to having an official position of Strategy Officer, which had been the first one to fulfill. To may be dictated by market condition, disappointing performance, a position where there was too many hands-on intervention of the strategy function. To a point that you would basically that would become detrimental in terms of people engagement, leadership engagement, and just leaving enough room to maneuver to the business lines all the operating units of the company. So it's always a fine balance because sometimes micromanagement is required by performance. And you have to accept you, step in and roll up your sleeves and join the fight. But it should remain the exception. Ken WhiteLast question for advice for an organization getting ready to head into a new phase of strategic planning. What advice would you give them to help them succeed? Julien CayetYou never spend enough time thinking of the why. Why do we need to review, and what are the what? And then, beyond the why, what are the key issues? What are the right questions and you always have the usual set of questions that you can find in the textbooks, but every company is very or should have very specific question? And sometimes, the list is very long, but there are one or two questions that are I value questions. It takes time to learn those I value questions. And once you have the, I value question on the table. I would say half of the work is done because you know what problems need to be solved. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Julien Cayet. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Julien Cayet, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Keith Sullivan](images/keith-sullivan-55-thumb.jpg)
![Coolsculpting's Road to Success](images/keith-sullivan-55-thumb.jpg)
Keith Sullivan
Episode 55: September 6, 2016
Coolsculpting's Road to Success
Millions of people turn to cosmetic surgery every year. In 2010 a new noninvasive alternative was introduced into the market and become a success story. Keith Sullivan is the Chief Commercial Officer of the company that created Coolsculpting, a method for burning fat that is noninvasive. He chats with us about the lessons learned along the way and how the road to success was not as smooth as it seemed.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. A weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Millions of Americans turn to cosmetic surgery each year. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, sixteen million cosmetic procedures were performed in the U.S. last year. That's double the number performed 15 years ago. That includes surgical procedures like breast augmentation and liposuction as well as minimally invasive procedures like Botox injections and chemical peels. Well, in 2010, a new non-invasive alternative to eliminate fat was introduced, and it has become a popular choice in the industry. Coolsculpting uses controlled cooling to target and kill fat cells. Coolsculptings popularity with patients and physicians continues to grow rapidly. At first glance, it appears as though the road to success for coolsculpting was smooth and easy. However, that was not the case. There were some bumps and detours on the journey. Keith Sullivan is the Chief Commercial Officer and President North America for ZELTIQ Aesthetics, the medical technology company that created coolsculpting. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss the coolsculpting journey. The lessons learned along the way and how you might apply those lessons to your business. Here's our conversation with Keith Sullivan. Ken WhiteKeith, welcome back to the College of William & Mary and to Miller Hall. Nice to see you again. Keith SullivanYeah, great to see you, Ken. Ken WhiteWhat an interesting product, coolsculpting. Many people do know about it but for those who don't. Could you tell us about it? Keith SullivanCoolsculpting is a device that controlled delivers controlled cold to fat non-invasively to get rid of pockets of unwanted fat that are. I'll refer to it as exercise resistant. So a woman who's had a couple of babies and has a pouch and runs every day and can't get rid of that little fat on her belly or a guy in his 40s or 50s that have love handles and exercises religiously and can't get rid of those. So that's what it helps. Ken WhiteAnd where do your clients find the service? Keith SullivanPrivate Physicians own coolsculpting. So they buy the the the box from us. So it's dermatologists, plastic surgeons, and aesthetic physicians all around the world. Ken WhiteWhere did it start when you first launched? How did you roll it out? Keith SullivanSo the product the company is based in Pleasanton, California. We started selling it in North America. The aesthetic industry globally really looks to North America as sort of if it's accepted here, if it's approved by the FDA, then it's good enough for us. And so they look to the United States as sort of that guidance. So we went to the thought leaders in the North America plastic surgery and dermatology world. Many of those are on our medical advisory board. So they knew the product was coming. They had been talking about it from the podium for quite some time, and it worked down the physician ladder from there. Ken WhiteFor something like that, you're dealing with FDA, I assume, and quite a few hurdles, and that takes a while right to bring it to market. Keith SullivanSo, the product itself is considered a class 2 device which means it still needs physician oversight and it still needs clearance through the FDA for the various body parts you want to treat. Ken WhiteAnd that takes what kind of a process. How long does that take? Keith SullivanThe initial approval will take sometimes a couple of years to get, and you know, anywhere from 60 to 200 patients. The FDA works with the various companies to determine you know how many patients they need to see, how long the follow-up will be, what the treatment parameters will be. So all of those things are scripted between the company and the FDA. And then there's a follow-up period at the end. Then there's a collection of data period, and then it's submitted. The subsequent clearances for the different body parts may take less time with less body parts, but it's the first one that's the hardest. Ken WhiteYou mentioned body parts. Is it everywhere, all over the body? Are there certain places you're focusing? Keith SullivanSo our first clearance was for flanks. Our second clearance was for abdomen. We then received a clearance for outer thighs followed by inner thighs. And today, we have double chin and the bra area. So there's bra fat front and back that people are concerned about. Ken WhiteInteresting non-invasive. I'm guessing when a customer or a person hears that, their first reaction is oh, that can't work. Did you run into that, and if so, how did you deal with that? Keith SullivanWe are six and a half years of having this product in the market, and I run into it every day. Ken WhiteStill. Keith SullivanStill. Ken WhiteWow. Keith SullivanWe have 60 plus clinical peer-reviewed journals, articles that have been written that included over 5,000 patients. We have three and a half million treatments that have been done and thousands and thousands of before and after photographs. And we still get asked it every day. Ken WhiteStill got to bang the drum. Keith SullivanYes. Ken WhiteWow. Keith SullivanSo there is a belief that if it doesn't hurt and it's not surgery, it doesn't work. In this case, we have to prove it to them, but when they see it, they see the results. Ken WhiteThis is such a great idea and so interesting and it's, and the cost is reasonable people can do it like you say. It's just almost hard to believe. It's been so successful. What was it like bringing it to market? Because there are a lot of great ideas that never quite make it or actually never get off the launchpad. How did this? Was it smooth sailing? What was it like to bring it to market? Keith SullivanSo when it was first introduced when they did the clinical studies and then introduced it into the marketplace in 2010, I was not part of that team at the time I wasn't with the company. There was a lot of pent-up demand in the physician community. There was buzz in the magazines about this new non-invasive treatment that was going to, in their words was going to replace liposuction. So there was a fair amount of buzz. When the product first was introduced into the market, the company was a venture capital-backed startup company. It went from zero to 25 million dollars in its first year. If you are a venture capitalist invested in coolsculpting, that was a home run for you. Ken WhiteYou bet. Keith SullivanIn our second year, it went from 25 million to 68 million. And again, that is a double homerun for them. Unfortunately, they went public in September of 2011, and they had told Wall Street leading up to their IPO that they were going to hit 73 million. So when they came in at 68 with only one quarter to go in the year. Wall Street had no sense of humor about that 5 million dollar shortfall. So the stock had come out at 13. It went to 1750. When they missed their first quarter, it went to eleven. They then missed their second quarter. It went to three. Ken WhiteWow. Keith SullivanAnd as a result, the board decided they needed to make a change at the top. So they replaced the CEO. They also did away with the first layer of management. And then one layer below that. So we really started new I was fortunate enough to come in with the new CEO and a new CFO to see if there was so much pent-up demand in the physician community and in the consumers. Why had this company sort of fallen flat on its face? Ken WhiteYeah. Keith SullivanSo it wasn't easy. Ken WhiteIt never is. Right. It is never an overnight success, but interesting, so retooled, go back at it again. What were some of the things you changed when you went back to make it a success and to get people interested? Keith SullivanI think there were really two things that we changed. And it may sound simple, but we focused on the patient. We focused on the outcome rather than focusing on the revenue. We then focused on how to train to get those outcomes. So our real two changes in the company was looking at the patient. And if I get them a great outcome, the physicians happy, and we get our revenue. Ken WhiteRight. Keith SullivanIf we focus on how to train them properly to get those outcomes, then everybody wins along the way. Those were really the two sort of turning points in the business. And so everything we have done since then has focused around those outcomes and those that training. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Keith Sullivan in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up in late October. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA, has been out of the classroom for some time or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. Each day of the program is devoted to one topic, including communication, leadership, strategy, managerial accounting, and organizational effectiveness. For more information on the certificate in business program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Keith Sullivan of ZELTIQ Aesthetics and coolsculpting. Ken WhiteBut two different directions. I mean, the patient is one person and the physician getting the training is very different. Keith SullivanBut that physician is going to get that outcome for that patient. So if we, if I train the physician properly and we created, we call it coolsculpting University. It's a two-day class where we ask physicians or their estheticians or nurses who is ever going to do the treatment. Originally it was to come out to California. So we were asking them to fly right. Take it a day out to fly to California sit through a two-day class, and then fly a day home. The class had to be worthwhile. So we focused on the agenda. We focused on making sure that when those attendees walked out of that class, they could look at all the various body shapes that you see walking down the street and know exactly how to get the best result with those patients. So we built this place for over four hundred thousand dollars had no idea if anybody would ever show up. And today, it is the most popular thing we do. I have. We now do three classes a month on the West Coast. We opened one in Reston, Virginia. So we do three classes a month there. We have a 90-day waiting list at each facility. And we now take them globally. So we do mobile classes all around the world. Ken WhiteInteresting. And what kind of feedback? Obviously, it's very positive. Keith SullivanThe feedback from the attendees is outstanding. You know, we give each one of them a survey, and we average even after doing, I think we're at, 120 classes. We get out of a one to five. We get a four point eight five every time. Ken WhiteYeah. Keith SullivanAnd where they complain is we didn't give them enough warning that they got into the class. Ken WhiteRight right. Keith SullivanIt's not the class. It's the free material. Ken WhiteYeah. Those other things. Keith SullivanSo it's worked, and we can see through the data that we collect that if somebody comes to coolsculpting University immediately, their business goes up 90 percent. Ken WhiteWow. Wow. Marketing. How did that roll out? What was the idea? Who were you trying to reach? Keith SullivanSo, our first attempt back in I joined in 2012 October of 2012, our first focus on marketing was really to the physicians to gain their acceptance and their belief that the product worked. We went from having in 2012. We had about 600 systems in the field around the world. Today we have a little over 5,000. Ken WhiteWow. Keith SullivanIn North America, we have a little over 4,000. So a year ago, we believe that we reached the critical mass to enable us to do a direct-to-consumer campaign. It's it was an iffy proposition for us. There's only been one other product in the aesthetic space that has ever tried it, which was Botox. Ken WhiteInteresting. Keith SullivanAnd they did it very successfully but nobody else that does tattoo removal, vascular treatment, skin rejuvenation. Any of those things have done a direct-to-consumer campaign at all. So we convinced our Board to allow us to try it. We did it in four cities in the beginning of last year. Wildly successful. We did it in seven additional cities in the fall. And it the results were exactly the same. So they authorized us to do a direct-to-consumer campaign this year and we spent 20 million dollars in the first half of the year doing T.V., radio, billboards, malls, digital in all forms and we have tripled our web hits. We have tripled are our activity online, and our business has gone up roughly 26 percent per account. So it's a home run for both our patients, the physicians, and us. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. You mentioned North America. So you're outside North America, that brings that whole global component to it. Where what other countries seem to be interested? You mentioned they're watching us in this space. Who is that? Who's watching, and who wants to get in on this? Keith SullivanWe're in 73 countries around the world. So it's everywhere. Ken WhiteSo everybody. Yeah. Keith SullivanI would say the major countries that are focused on aesthetics are the major ones in Europe: U.K., France, Spain, Germany those are the main ones. And Russia, surprisingly, is very aesthetic-oriented. In Asia, it's Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, and Australia. Ken WhiteIn terms of marketing, was it very similar your marketing mix, T.V., radio, online, billboard from country to country, or did that changed a little bit? Keith SullivanSo we've done a small controlled test in markets in Europe. We haven't rolled a direct-to-consumer globally yet. That would be a big step. We had to prove it in North America first. Ken WhiteRight, right. But it's catching on without it being in other countries. Keith SullivanYes. Ken WhiteYeah. So what lessons have you learned that you can share with someone who's got a great idea that maybe didn't fly that first time or they're having trouble getting it to catch on? Keith SullivanI think we need to focus on the end result. If you most people try to focus on the fastest way to generate revenue. We were focusing on the patient and getting that end result. And it's easy to say it's a it is a great way to focus your business. The benefit that coolsculpting had was that we had money. We had just gone public. So we had this war chest of money that we could we had the luxury of testing things. And fortunately, most of them paid out. Other venture-backed companies don't have that luxury. So it's hard not to not to generate the revenue as quickly as possible. But if you do focus on your end result and get that patient happy, you're going to win in the long run. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Keith Sullivan, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with a business and leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Keith Sullivan, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Bob Williams](images/bob-williams-54-thumb.jpg)
![Pillars of Leadership](images/bob-williams-54-thumb.jpg)
Bob Williams
Episode 54: August 30, 2016
Pillars of Leadership
For some professionals, the ultimate goal is to serve as a leader that makes an impact on the world, customers, and people within their company. Recent graduates of the Part-Time MBA program at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at William & Mary heard from Bob Williams, a clinical lecturer at the school. He teaches leadership and we sat down with him to talk about what it means to be a leader today.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Leadership. For some professionals, that's the goal to serve as a leader who makes an impact on the world, the organization, its people, and its customers. Well, a couple of weeks ago, a number of leaders and aspiring leaders graduated from the Flex MBA program at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Bob Williams, a clinical lecturer at the school, was asked to speak to the graduates at the diploma ceremony. His comments resonated with those in attendance, and afterward, many of those individuals encouraged us to invite Bob to be on the podcast to share with you what he shared with the new graduates. Williams brings a wealth of experience to the Mason School. A graduate of the Wharton School's MBA program, he spent the bulk of his career with DuPont serving in a number of roles, including Vice President for Marketing and Communications. He teaches leadership and other classes at the Mason School and at the school's Center for Corporate Education. Here's our conversation on leadership with Bob Williams. Ken WhiteBob, thank you for taking the time to join us. We're asking you at the at the probably the worst time of the school year, right? Classes just began, and a exciting time of the year, though. Bob WilliamsIt is very exciting it's great to see the students come back. It really enlivens the building and really gives the faculty some really meaningful work to do to spend some time with these folks, which is what we're all about. Ken WhiteYeah, it sure does. And actually, right before the students arrive, there was a ceremony for the graduates in the Flex MBA program, which is a working professionals program and you talked to that group, and you shared some thoughts, and after that, after you did that a number of people said boy you've got to ask Bob to be on the podcast to share that with our listeners, and you had a few points that you shared about success and about leadership. And so that's why we're here to ask you to share those with us today, and one of the first you shared with the group was principled achievement. Can you tell us about that? Bob WilliamsYeah, I spent some time thinking about preparation for what I wanted to say to the students in the Flex program. And Larry Pulley, our dean, spends a great deal of time emphasizing those two words in commencement addresses to our full-time and to our undergraduates that are graduating, and I thought that'd be very appropriate to share with the flex students because I'm not sure that the ones that we were talking to that particular day when I was speaking at heard it. So I thought I would make some sense, and the power of it, I thought, was that the two words at least get they're like thought starters. They get you going into other words and other questions. So they're like catalysts. They make you think about other things because you take those two words apart, and it makes you ask questions. And so what I shared with the students was some of those questions included things like what do you believe. What do you believe about other people? Do you think they're basically good? Do you think they have some bad tendencies, and if so, whatever you think will really make a big difference in terms of how you behave with them and how they behave with you? Another one might be what principles do you really live by. I mean, what makes your attitudes develop, which will change your behavior? So you need to spend some time on that. What do I want to be remembered for was the third one? You work hard, spend a great deal of your time every day at work influencing the actions of other people. When you step back at the end of the day or at the end of your work life, what do you really want to be remembered for? We don't spend a time on those kinds of questions. Ken WhiteSure. Bob WilliamsHow will the decisions that I make as a leader in a business impact other people and, most importantly, if you think about the last one? Are those decisions that I'm making because some of them can be very difficult? Some of them are really rewarding, but the difficult ones that you have to ask is, am I being fair? And so it all started with principled achievement. Ken WhiteRight. Bob WilliamsAnd so you start taking those things apart, and that's really raising a lot of other issues. Ken WhiteIn your interaction with executives and leaders, are they thinking about leading a life of principled achievement? Is it in the back of their mind? Where is it in your interactions? Bob WilliamsWell, I would sure hope they are. I mean, in my experience, the answer's yes. But you know what makes it really, I think, relevant today is you can't pick up the Wall Street Journal and not see somebody that got sideways with the regulatory authorities or who tried to cut corners in their product or in their relationships with Wall Street. It becomes an ethical issue. So I think principled achievement lives. It's never going to go away. People that are leaders have a great deal of power. How they exercise that should be with the highest ethical standards, not just because it's right but because it'll keep you out of a world of hurt. Ken WhiteYeah. Bob WilliamsYou know, I actually, Ken, I think about the Olympics that just played out here in Ryan Lochte, the swimmer. Ken WhiteRight. Bob WilliamsSecond only in capability and talent to Michael Phelps. Ken WhiteIncredible. Bob WilliamsHere's a guy that had all the package. I mean, he was a good-looking guy, an accomplished athlete, personable, and with one ethical misstep, it all blew up. He did not live principled achievement. He did not think before he acted. Ken WhiteRight. Bob WilliamsAll those questions make you think before you act, and that's the power of it, I think. Ken WhiteExcellent. Yeah. And it really resonated. You could see as you were talking to the to the group they were nodding. They were actually whispering to one another from time to time. So it's certainly a topic that was resonating. You talked about leadership in general, and you gave some guidance in terms of leadership and how to approach that because people with MBAs will lead if they're not already leading. Bob WilliamsYeah, I think that's true. I mean, we're actually teaching them that at this school. I mean, one of the powerful things I think that we accomplish that you hear from students that come back to us after they're out in the world of work is, boy, there were times when I thought this leadership thing was a little soft. I was really interested in the quantitative analysis of everything, and I was really taught well about that at school. But when you touched on subjects that were seemingly soft, like leadership issues, I wasn't sure they were relevant. Boy, they're relevant. Interpersonal skills count. Communication skills count. Sensitivity counts. Ken WhiteWhen you talked about leadership, you shared a story about Elvis Presley, of all people. Bob WilliamsYeah, that was really had an effect on me. I'm a fan obviously of his music and sometimes not necessarily of him, but my wife and I toured Graceland, and as we walked around and as you go on this tour at Graceland, you inevitably walked by his office and what caught my eye was a plaque. It was actually a framed ad that was on his wall in his office, and it was called the penalty of leadership. Now I couldn't read it on the tour. So I went home, and I googled it, and I shared it with the students. Ken WhiteAnd this is a newspaper or magazine ad? Bob WilliamsIt's an ad for Cadillac motor cars is considered by many in the marketing business that it probably one of the best pieces of copy ever written, but it's all about the penalty of leadership and the fact that you get all these trappings that go along with leadership all the splendor and all the perks, but there are times when you're very isolated especially if you're trying to change things because people just by their nature resist getting out of that comfort zone. You know what? It reminds me of what I was doing my classes. I can close my eyes after about three sessions in my classes and tell you who's sitting where. They all return to the same seat. And it's they don't want to move out of that comfort zone. Well, Presley, I think, identified that this ad had a great impact on him because he was a change agent. Ken WhiteRight. Bob WilliamsYou know he was the devil to a lot of people that he had those swinging hips and the ducktail and the peg pants, and by golly, he's leading our kids to hell. Ken WhiteThat's right. Bob WilliamsAnd yet what he accomplished is obviously in the history of what's happened to music and musicology. Ken WhiteAnd he knew it. He saw himself as a leader, and interesting that he finds an ad for a car and likes the way it talks about leadership. Bob WilliamsYeah, and here's one of the things I shared with the students, and it's just an excerpt. Quote long after greater good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious continue to cry out that it can't be done. The old world continues to protest or continued to protest when Fulton could never build a steamboat. While the new world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by the leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him or her is merely added proof of that leadership close quote. Change isn't easy. Leaders have to make decisions. Decisions are choices. It's not unanimity. The result is going to be that you're going to have to persevere. You're going to have to have the grit that Angela Duckworth talks about in her latest book. That's one of the key characteristics of great leaders is they persevere and have grit, and so I shared that with the students. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion on leadership with Bob Williams in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up in late October. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA, has been out of the classroom for some time, or wants to improve on a critical business and leadership skills. Each day is devoted to one topic, including communication, leadership, strategy, managerial accounting, and organizational effectiveness. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Bob Williams on leadership. Ken WhiteTough gig. I mean, there is a lot of responsibility, and it's not always fun. Why do people pursue it, and why are some so good at it in your experience? Bob WilliamsI think there's a couple reasons, some of which are wrong. One of them that I don't think is necessarily the right reason is money. I mean, they're going after the salary, and they're going after the power in the position, and sometimes they, and that's nice but they sometimes forget that there's a great deal of responsibility that goes along with that. They're responsible for other people's lives. They're responsible for taking companies into the future, which means that's the unknowable. The thing that I think leaders have to have is an overriding drive if they want those positions is they have to get a kick out of watching people develop under them because, whether they like it or not, they are identified as role models. That comes with a great deal of responsibility. What you're driving in the MBA program is really important when you say own it. You talk about appearance, that that's really a part of it. You talk about three other things which you're more familiar with. Ken WhiteInitiative. Bob WilliamsInitiative. Ken WhiteSubstance. Communication. Bob WilliamsThose are all important. Ken WhiteVery much so. Bob WilliamsAnd you know what. You can't go to a balance sheet or income statement, or cash flow statement and find those. But when you're in a leadership position, everybody that reports to you knows how to do all those things. What they look to you for is ethics. They want to follow you into the future, and you're their role model on how you get there. But it isn't easy. You have to make some decisions sometimes that aren't so good. It's a penalty of leadership. Ken WhiteYou told a story about a speech you had heard years ago about balance in terms of life and leadership. Can you share that with us? Bob WilliamsYeah. And I really don't remember where I heard it, but I do remember who said it was the CEO of Coca-Cola at the time that was giving a commencement address. And it really rang true with me, so I shared that with the Flex MBAs. His comment was that you should think of life as having to juggle five balls and those five balls have names. One is work. One is family. One is health. A fourth is friends. And the fifth is spirit. And the point that I thought was really telling that he made was, you know, you should think of work as being a rubber ball. If you dropped something at work, i.e., something doesn't go exactly right. It bounces, but if you drop things like family, health, friends, and spirit, then what you really have are balls that are made of glass there. And when they drop, they are marked in some way or, worse yet, shattered. You don't put them back together, so it kind of helps you with your priorities. If you think about the five balls and what's important, which I think we probably, regardless of what level you are in a business, you need to revisit that. Why am I doing what I'm doing, and am I doing the most important things, and when things go bad, what's rubber and what's glass? Ken WhiteRight. And what's interesting is that's not new. I mean, you had heard that years ago, and yet we're talking so much about work-life balance now. It's not new. It's just a different term. Bob WilliamsNo, and it's getting more intense because a lot of families, both parents, work. It's really incredibly important. I think that we refocus on why we do what we do, and those five balls help you do that. Ken WhiteAnd in your talk, you finally wound up with and summarize with seven principles, and you said you know, consider these, think about these. It'll help you stay on the right path. What were some of those? Bob WilliamsWell, the thing that got me about the seven principles is that they integrate principled achievement, and they make the five balls work. So they are kind of like a recipe that causes them all to come together as ingredients. And the principles I talked about these. One, don't take for granted those people and things that are closest to your heart. Without them, life loses a lot of meaning. Second, don't spend all your time living in the past or even in the future, for that matter. The past is done, and the future is really unknowable full of assumptions. Live in the present you'll enjoy every day. Third, don't give up while you still have something to give. Nothing's really over until you stop trying. And I talked about taking reasonable risks. The idea that risk that isn't crazy but reasonable is really what helps make you brave and courageous because it pushes your envelope a little bit. You're going to places where there is risk and uncertainty, but it doesn't frighten you. I talked about knowledge being weightless has some to do with, I guess, adult education and continuing to add to your inventory of learning because knowledge is weightless. It's easy to carry, and I made the point never stop learning because it is easy to carry and it just makes you better. Ken WhiteYeah, and it's so much easier to learn today. Bob WilliamsOh yeah. Ken WhiteBooks on tape, podcasts, web. Bob WilliamsYeah, everything's changing. I mean, nothing lasts very long. So you better stay current, or you're gonna be in a world of hurt. Ken WhiteYeah, and enjoy staying current. Bob WilliamsYeah, exactly. Have a good time with it. I made two other points. You shouldn't use time carelessly. Time is finite. We all have 24/7. I often tell my students you know if you if your idle is Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. Think about it this way how do they use their 24/7 relative to the way you use it? Because they've got that same resource no more or no less, but the thing that you really want to focus on as students is don't waste your time. And then I quoted Steve Jobs in the address, and I said quote live every day as if it was your last because one of these days you know you're gonna be right close quote. Ken WhiteThat's right. Bob WilliamsAnd then, finally, it was about worry because people are worrying about a lot of things, and the comment I made in closing this portion of what I had to say to them was worry is like a rocking chair, really. It gives you something to do, but it really doesn't do anything in terms of moving it forward. So if you use those principles and combine them with principled achievement and the five balls, you least have a recipe or a roadmap for how you can make all this stuff work. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Bob Williams, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with a business and leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Bob Williams and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Chris Smith](images/chris-smith-53-thumb.jpg)
![The Craft Brewery Business](images/chris-smith-53-thumb.jpg)
Chris Smith
Episode 53: August 24, 2016
The Craft Brewery Business
Craft Breweries have grown dramatically in the last few years—over 12% of all beer purchases in the U.S. is now produced and sold by local craft breweries. Chris Smith is the co-owner of The Virginia Beer Company, a craft brewery in Williamsburg, Virginia. He joins us on this episode to discuss the challenges of the craft brewing industry and what the future holds for the beer industry in the U.S.
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Chris Smith: The Craft Brewery Business TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well back in the day, when beer drinkers visited their favorite bars or restaurants, their choices were limited to a few national brands and maybe a regional brand. But times have changed. In 2008 craft breweries made up about 3 percent of total beer sales. Today the number of local craft breweries around the country has grown dramatically. And these small breweries are taking a bigger share of the market. Last year over 12 percent of all the beer purchased in the United States was produced and sold by local craft breweries. It's a 106 billion dollar market that's not only changed market share and sales but also the way people think about and consume beer in America. Chris Smith is the co-owner of the Virginia Beer Company, a craft brewery in Williamsburg, Virginia. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss the ins and outs of the craft brewery, the challenges of the business, and what lies ahead as America's taste for beer grows and changes. Here's our conversation with Chris Smith of the Virginia Beer Company. Ken WhiteChris, thank you for taking the time to join us. Chris SmithThanks for having me, Ken. Appreciate it. Ken WhiteI really wish we had a camera. This is the first time we've done podcasts in the past year that I said wow, because we're right here in the middle of Virginia Beer. Our audience might be able to hear the echo. You've got a tall ceiling in here and right through the glass. Tell us what we see actually through the glass. Chris SmithOkay, so we're looking through the windows in the taproom. We're looking into our production brewery. We're looking at a lot of stainless steel. We have 19 different stainless steel vessels. We're looking at a bunch of pallets of kegs. We do all the manufacturing work back there for all the beer we serve here and at restaurants. Ken WhiteWow. And this is the tap room where you and I are sitting, meaning more or less the bar area, right? Chris SmithIt is, yeah. We have a 25 hundred-square-foot tap room, lots of tables, a bar. We serve eight beers here, have rotating food trucks. The days we're open live music a lot of different activities. Ken WhiteSo tell us about craft breweries. What is it? How do you define it? Chris SmithSo craft breweries first came about in the 1970s. At that point in the U.S., we'd gotten down to very few open breweries, independent breweries about 25. And it started on the West Coast and grew pretty steadily. They're small, independently owned have the highest standards in terms of the ingredients that they use and the processes in the manufacturing. And today, we're actually at forty-five hundred breweries in United States craft breweries which is in pretty incredible number. It's the most breweries we've ever had in the United States. And so we all pride ourselves on all those things I mentioned. Ken WhiteYeah. Chris SmithReally working hard at what we do and being local and independent. Ken WhiteHow did you get into the field? Chris SmithSo this was not my first career. Ken WhiteRight. Chris SmithI worked at JP Morgan in New York City after graduating from William & Mary. I spent six years there, and my first day was on July 13th, 2007, and that was the day I knew I wanted to open a brewery. So I did a lot of research. I'd been talking about it with my co-founder here, Robby Willey, also a William & Mary alum. And it was kind of a vague idea, but at that, by that time, we really decided it was something we wanted to do. Did a lot of research, many, many years of research, and finally, in 2012, we decided that this was definitely going to happen, and it was going to happen in Williamsburg. Ken WhiteAnd it looks it's just a fascinating place. It's really fun. Right before we started to record, we were talking about the customers you serve. It's not a millennial-only business. It's not a boomer-only business. You're seeing everybody here. Chris SmithYeah, we see a very wide range of people from all different walks of life, all different ages, and something we're really happy about. We envisioned our space here as a community gathering spot, something we have some in Williamsburg. We didn't think we had enough. We thought we could be that kind of place, and we see families. We have tons of kids that run through here. We see couples, we see, we literally see everybody. We could set up a playground. I'm sure we have kids all the time. Ken WhiteSo you said in the taproom in the bar, you've got eight different beers going, so how does it work? That's a lot of different types of beers coming out of a relatively small brewery compared to a major facility. How do you decide what's on tap and what you sell? Chris SmithYes, it is a little bit different. It's a lot of beers. We have a we have somewhat of a unique model. We decided that we would invest in two brewing systems of two different sizes. So the way to grow your brewery over time is have a big brewery system and produce a lot of beer. We wanted that for our brewery, but we also wanted to present a lot of variety to our customers. So we bought a smaller brewing system, and that gives us the ability to have a new beer on tap in the tap room almost every single week. It is a little different. We were always doing new recipes new things for people to try. It keeps people coming back to our tap room over and over and over instead of just having the same four beers on tap, and people getting bored of those over time. Ken WhiteYeah, people really appreciate the variety, don't they? Chris SmithThey do. I think it's what they really come for. We make a big deal of releasing each new beer because it gets the same people back in the door every single time. People love seeing we have a sampler of all eight beers. People love looking at the different colors and tasting all the different beers. Ken WhiteWhat happens when you brew something and it is a major hit? People just love it, and you were intending to have a short run. Chris SmithYeah, so we're obviously very happy about it at first and then and then we just scale it up to our bigger brewing system. It's the perfect R&D lab, that little system that we have in the back. The little system produces about ten kegs at a time. On the bigger system, we can do 60. So it's easy for us to scale it up and bring it back, and a lot of people already excited for it. Ken WhiteAnd you have a brewmaster. Chris SmithWe do. Yeah. Robby and I are both home brewers. One thing I'll give us credit for we are smart enough to know that no one would actually want to pay for our homebrew. Not that it was terrible, but it's probably not worth that much money. So we, one of the first things we did when we decided to open the brewery was go out and look for a brewmaster, and we found someone very qualified to do this. He brewed at Sweetwater brewing in Atlanta before he joined us. So he's had a lot of experience large production. His name is Jonathan Newman, and we're very lucky to have him here. Ken WhiteWhat about ingredients? How do you choose that? How does that work? Chris SmithSo we order a lot of different ingredients. It depends on the recipe, and everything changes. But we basically have four main components of all of our beers. Standard for everybody a cereal grain, so usually barley we use wheat, we use rye as well. A few other grains, spelt, hops which are the hardest ingredients to get your hands on and sort of the most complicated. Yeast which we source locally from a yeast lab up in Richmond, RVA yeast labs, and then water which we're lucky to get from the city of Williamsburg. Ken WhiteYeah, so much of it is local and regional in terms of the ingredients. Chris SmithWe try to do as much as we can. Most of our barley comes from Canada. Just you know where it's grown. We do get some local malts. Actually, we have a new distillery here in town called Copper Fox distillery. They're less than a mile up the road from us, and they malt their own barley and wheat and rye. So we actually really enjoy starting to use some of their Virginia-grown crop, and then our hops are grown in Virginia. It's definitely coming on pretty strong, a lot of farms planting, but the vast majority of hops are grown in the Pacific Northwest. So that's where we get most of our hops. Ken WhiteSure before we started to record, you were talking about some of the unique qualities of the business. This is not a retail outlet. It's not a manufacturing. It's not wholesale. It's everything. Can you talk us through that process? Chris SmithYeah. So we do all three, and I think, as I mentioned, I didn't appreciate the complexity of how they all are interwoven until we actually got into this business and started running it. So we have our entire manufacturing business, and we have our own staff that works in the brewery. We have all the ordering, all the inventory, all the packaging that goes along with that process. We have a tap room up here, which is our retail operation. We have a staff that runs our tap room. We're open five days a week right now. There's a lot to do up here. We run a lot of events here. We do charity events. We do live music. We schedule food trucks for every single day. So there's a lot that goes into managing up here as well. And then some of the beer we make in the back. If it's not sold through our tap room, we sell it to local restaurants and bars, and that's obviously an entire sales operation. Ken WhiteRight. Chris SmithSo we don't have a sales team yet, but Robby and I are out on the street from Williamsburg to Virginia Beach as often as we can be, hand-selling our product. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Chris Smith in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up in late October. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA, has been out of the classroom for some time or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. Each day is devoted to one topic, including communication, leadership, strategy, managerial accounting, and organizational effectiveness. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Chris Smith on the craft brewery landscape. Ken WhiteIn terms of selling directly to restaurants to grocery stores, there are some regulations and issues that you have to be aware of and deal with. Can you tell us about that? Chris SmithSo distribution across the country is actually challenging. It's different state by state, but in Virginia, the way it works is that you're required to sell your beer to a restaurant bar through a wholesaler. It's basically a middleman. So you have to sign a contract with that wholesaler. And once you sign that contract, you're in it for life. You're never getting out of that contract. They're called franchise laws, and they're very strong in Virginia. And I don't think single brewery's ever actually gotten out of one of those contracts. So it presents a challenge for us. It does for us on to doing good work here because we have to make great beer. We need to make sure that that wholesaler wants to sell it, and we'll make them money. Ken WhiteRight. Chris SmithSo in some ways, you can look at it as a positive, and other ways, you can look at it as a negative. Ken WhiteWhat about regulations in addition to the franchise laws? Are there other regulations? Chris SmithYes, we're very highly regulated. Within Virginia, we're regulated by the Virginia ABC. They oversee everything we do on the retail side, on the wholesale side, on the production side. We submit a lot of reports to them. On the federal level, we are regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. They also have a lot of oversight. The FDA is also involved with us. So we're dealing with a lot of agencies. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. I can imagine you didn't even know what you didn't know when you first started. Chris SmithNo, I'm happy we didn't cause I'm not sure we'd be sitting here today. Ken WhiteYeah. So it has been a tremendous growth, as you said earlier in the last, maybe even less than the decade where up to forty-five hundred craft breweries. What's the future looking like? How is it competitive-wise and just the marketplace? Chris SmithIt's changing very rapidly. Where last year, they're about two new breweries open every single week of the year, and only 70 closed in the entire country. So you can see kind of what's happening right now. This year we're on pace for about three every single week. So its breweries are becoming more localized. That's one thing that's definitely happening. Most of these new breweries that are opening are very small. In terms of startups, we're actually on the bigger side. We have beers measured in barrels. Thirty-one gallons is a barrel. We have sixty-five hundred barrels of annual capacity here. Most startups are below a thousand. Ken WhiteWhere are the growth opportunities? Chris SmithSo the growth opportunities are first within your home market. That's a big thing for us. We're really working hard to make sure that we are the brewery for Williamsburg and the Tidewater area. But beyond that, it's getting harder all the time to sell your beer. Especially with the localization happening when we go to Maryland, we're not a local brewery in Maryland. Whereas ten years ago, we might have been considered a local brewery. So one of the things we're looking at and strongly considering its kind of direction we want to go is export. There are great growth opportunities outside the United States. Canada is a very big market. Western Europe, a lot of Asia, a lot of craft beer exported in that direction but only 200 of those 4,500 breweries export. So hopefully us, in the future, for the Virginia Beer Company. Ken WhiteWhen anyone listening to the podcast has traveled abroad, beer is very different. So do you change it, or is it your recipe? Is it sort of an American craft beer from Virginia going over to whatever happened to be that country? Chris SmithThe appeal for the consumers in those areas is that it's our beer. Those countries are also changing their beers changing but slowly, and they're well behind the curve based on what's happening in America. So Germany is seeing new craft breweries where it has been very traditional in the past. Same in England. Same in Italy. So they have this. The consumers there have this craving for what they perceive as the craziness of American craft beer, all these new recipes, and new ways of producing great beers. So we'll definitely be sending what we make here. Ken WhiteYeah, it seems. And please correct me if I'm wrong. A great way to promote is through festivals. Chris SmithYes. Ken WhiteRight. Tell us about those. Chris SmithWe're always at festivals. We have one this weekend. So beer festivals have kind of sprung up everywhere in the last few years, typically anywhere from 10 to 100 breweries in one spot. Ken WhiteWow. Chris SmithAnd you know you buy your ticket, you come and sample everything people like variety. That's really what we see from our research. The numbers that we look at here in the brewery people will always want something new. So they'll come to that festival, they get to try 50 beers in one place, and it's a great way for us to tell our story to people face to face people we can't necessarily get to our tap room. That's the best way for us to sell our business and how we do business. Ken WhiteYou know, back in the day, I tended bar in college, and nobody wanted different. Right. That they had their brand, and that was it. And God forbid you didn't have it and have it cold that night, or you were going to hear about it. So now the customer wants variety they want to what is it. What happened? What is it about the customer? Chris SmithI think it's just the changing tastes of America in general. A lot of what we're seeing in the alcoholic beverage sphere is also being applied to food. It's presenting a huge challenge actually for us because talking going back to the distribution side when we're trying to sell to a restaurant or bar, it used to be that there were eight beers on tap, and there were always the same eight, and if you happen to have one of those draft lines it's a great account for you. Ken WhiteYup. Chris SmithNow it's all rotation. So we can go into a bar. We can taste the beer with them. They can buy it. Two weeks later, we go back. They ran through that keg, and there's a different brewery on tap because people want something new. Ken WhiteYeah. Chris SmithSo definitely presents a huge challenge. Ken WhiteAwards. How important is that? You just won one would you tell us about that? Chris SmithWe did. Yes. Thank you. We received a Silver Medal for one of our Belgian-style Saisons at the Virginia craft brewers cup awards earlier this week. We're open five months, and we're pretty pleased that we nabbed one in the first year. They're a big deal. Probably more so within the industry and with the people who are really loving craft beer and are really involved. We love being able to say it. So we're very pleased. The big awards are in October every year. There's great American beer festival is held in Denver every single year, and those are the major awards. So we're hopeful that we'll get one then. Ken WhiteIf someone has not been to a craft brewery which is kind of hard to believe because they are so popular. What do you tell them? Why should they experience it? Chris SmithMost breweries try to create a different experience from the bars and restaurants that you might frequent. That was a big goal for us. We focused entirely on the experience of the consumer that walks into our brewery. We want it to feel like we get a lot of feedback that it feels like a big house party, especially when we have live music and there are people everywhere and that people do seem to have a great time. It's familiar. They run into people they know. It's not intimidating. We do hear that people think craft beer is intimidating. It's really not meant to be. We try to create a very welcoming place for people that love craft beer have been drinking it for 20 years and for people who have never had anything but a Bud Light. Ken WhiteFor people for craft breweries who would like to expand bottling, canning are those options for those? Chris SmithThose that are draft beers are virtuous on-premise, and cans and bottles are virtuous off-premise. Off-premise is 80 percent of the beer market. So that's really where the growth is. We'll never know with the rotation happening in bars, and restaurants will never be able to sell enough draft beer to grow our business. So we'll be canning in hopefully early October. We have four year-round core brands those will all be in cans, and we'll distribute those through the area. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Chris Smith. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with a business and leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Chris Smith, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![David Long](images/david-long-52-thumb.jpg)
![Impression Management at Work](images/david-long-52-thumb.jpg)
David Long
Episode 52: August 16, 2016
Impression Management at Work
When we change jobs, ingratiation plays a significant role on how we create relationships with our new colleagues. How can you build a new relationship as a new employee? David Long is conducting new research on impression management at work—he's a professor at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Long teaches organizational behavior and conducted a series of studies on this subject and how it affects leaders as well. Listen in to learn about new employees, making an impression, and how it affects the rest of the team.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Ingratiation establishing oneself in the favor or good graces of someone, especially by deliberate effort. When we change jobs and join a new company or organization, ingratiation plays a significant role in how we create relationships with our new colleagues and superiors. In many cases, it goes beyond that and moves into office politics. How new employees build relationships through ingratiation and impression management and how that affects leaders is the topic of new research by Professor David Long of the College of William & Mary's Mason School of Business and his colleague Trevor Foulk of the University of Florida. Their research will be published in The Journal of Psychology later this year. Long, who teaches organizational behavior, completed a series of studies on ingratiation at work. He joins us today on the podcast to talk about new employees, kissing up, and how it affects the rest of the team. Here's our conversation with Professor David Long. Ken WhiteDavid, thanks for taking the time to talk about your research. It's great to have you here. Thanks for being here. David LongThanks for having me, Ken. Ken WhiteSo you've done some recent research on impression management. Tell us about the specific research piece you did. David LongSo impression management is almost self-describing, but it's the behaviors that we employ in the workplace to control or at least try and control how others perceive and evaluate us. And for instance, if you want to be liked. Well, there's some things that you can do to be liked. You can compliment someone. You can praise them. You can even do them a favor. Let me grab you a cup of coffee. And what research shows is that when you do things like that, the person reciprocates by liking you more. If I want to self-promote and be seen as more competent, I may volunteer to work overtime or come in on the weekend or pick up an extra assignment or two again to try to prove my competence to others. Ken WhiteAre we, as people in an organizational setting, doing this purposely? Is it sort of subconsciously? Where does it fit? David LongBoth typically, it arguably is the most pervasive social phenomenon that exists in and out of the workplace. We're always trying to control how others view us, and we're always passing judgments on others. So yes, it's both. We're doing it subconsciously all the time. We purposefully don't belt. We don't realize it, but we don't, for instance, burp when we're around others because we don't want them to think poorly of us, but at times we do say, okay, this is an important moment where I need to make the right impression. Like a job interview. And so you switch from subconscious to conscious, and you're very deliberate about what you say or do again to control how you're perceived. Ken WhiteOne of my favorite cartoons is in Harvard Business Review, and there's a Millennial in the interview chair. And then there's a baby boomer doing the interviewing, and the baby boomer says if you take one more selfie, this interview's over. David LongExactly. And so the millennial not recognizing how they're being perceived. The interviewer is saying I'm judging you. Exactly what you're doing. Ken WhiteSo tell us about your study. What did you do? David LongSo I was my colleague and I were really interested in when you're new to your organization, you are desperate to try to form an impression of your boss because think about your boss. Your boss controls your destiny. Your boss dictates how much you're going to make. Are you going to get promoted? What are your job responsibilities and job duties going to be? So this is an important person. And when you're new, you really want to figure out if that is someone who you can trust because your fate is in their hands. So what we know is that the quick and easy way to form an impression of someone is just observe them or interact with them, and that's what we call a direct way to form an impression. So I may observe how you act towards me, what you're wearing, things you're saying again, and I'm as you're doing these things, I'm forming an impression, and a newcomer again is very hungry to kind of fill that bucket to say who is this person. Can I trust them? Is this somebody who is good? Ken WhiteYeah. David LongThe problem is when you're new, a lot of times, you don't get that direct face-to-face interaction with a supervisor. You have to rely on other social cues. Well, because, as we know, ingratiation, which is a form of impression management where people are trying to be liked, is so common in the workplace. As a newcomer, it just so might be that when you observe your co-workers interacting around the supervisor and the boss, you might just actually see them ingratiating that person. So instead of making a direct observation of the boss, you now or watching someone else interact directly with the boss, and that's an indirect way to form an impression. Well, we don't know how a newcomer will interpret that interaction. What will that interaction do in shaping their evaluation of their new supervisor, or even will it shape it? So that was our ultimate research question. Ken WhiteInteresting. So how did you go about you had an experiment, really? David LongWe did several. We ran several experiments, which is pretty typical in experimental research. What we wanted to find out is A does the phenomenon even exist if a participant acting the role of a new employee observes this type of interaction where a co-worker who is in the organization ingratiates the supervisor. Does it impact their evaluation of the supervisor, and how. So we did a series of studies with students, with full-time workers, where we had them watch videos and in the video. And again, as a newcomer, you really wouldn't have much background knowledge of your co-workers or your supervisor, so when you watch a video of alleged co-worker interacting with your new supervisor, it's kind of like it's what we call realism. It has the realism of being new to an organization. And so the co-worker would ingratiate the supervisor, hey, can I get you a coffee? I really like what you said at that meeting the other day. I thought it was excellent. You're so smart. You know, it seems like everything that you bring to the table is always a win. You know some of the typical overtures that you may hear in the workplace. And then, we ask the participant what do you think of the supervisor based on that interaction. Well, two schools of thought about how this may turn out. On the one hand, a lot of people think when they a lot of observers of impression management find it unsavory because it's manipulation. When they see somebody purposefully trying to elicit attributions and shape how they're perceived, they see it as maybe slightly deceitful. Again it's manipulation, and so to them, it's unsavory and unsettling. However, we don't really know how they will judge the targets of that behavior. We know how they will judge the person performing the behaviors what we call the actor. But again, the target that we don't really know. So we could see that it might that unsavory impression may transfer to the target or because this person is spending so much time trying to impress their boss. That might signal something more positive, like, wow, this is somebody who really is worth someone's attention and effort. So what we speculated and found is that when a newcomer sees their boss their supervisor being ingratiated by a co-worker, they actually think more favorably of them. They like them better. Ken WhiteHuh. Is that just on an engagement? Are they making assumptions? I guess is my question. David LongYeah absolutely. So the way that we measured liking when we call it warmth is through adjectives like is this person nice? Is this someone you trust? Is this someone you like? Is this someone that you think positively of? And when they were the target of ingratiation, they were saying yes, they were, and what that tells us is that they trust that person. They see them not only as likable, but as somebody who is warm and that they can be comfortable that is somebody who is a good person to work for. So it's a little bit of a paradox. They think more negatively of the ingratiator and more positively of the ingratiated. Ken WhiteInteresting. David LongA really unique finding. Ken WhiteYeah. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with David Long in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up in late October. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA, has been out of the classroom for some time or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. Each day the program is devoted to one topic, including communication, leadership, strategy, managerial accounting, and organizational effectiveness. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Professor David Long on ingratiation at work. Ken WhiteThis has an incredible impact on a leader. David LongWell, so I completely agree with you, and one of the things that we surmised based on the findings is that most leaders know one thing and that it's important how I'm perceived by the people who work for me. I really want to make a good impression on these. I want to be the type of leader that I want to be. I want to be trusted. I want to be seen as competent. And so it's important that I communicate that image in the right way. What the new finding, of course, is it's not always what you do, but it's what others do around you and toward you, that can communicate that message. Ken WhiteWow. David LongSo it's important to observe how others are interacting with you and to recognize that this interaction is actually helping me shape my own reputation and image. And so I need to be cognizant of that. Are people how are people treating me, and what are they doing to me? Because it's an important message that's being communicated. Ken WhiteAnd it could negatively affect a leader. An interaction such as the one you explained. David LongAbsolutely absolutely. We even changed the experiments a little bit because, again, we wanted to make sure that our data wasn't there wasn't some alternative explanation for our findings. So we did a couple of different experiments just to confirm that our findings were pretty sound. For instance, we gave in another experiment in another study. We gave some of the newcomers some background information, and we said things like this is somebody who you have heard. This boss is somebody who you've heard is a good boss, and we gave another group some information that said this is a boss that you've heard is not a very good boss. So we almost prime them with some positive and negative information, and we wanted to see if that priming with an override the social cues they gained from the information, and it didn't. Even when they were primed with either positive or negative information, they still formed a more positive impression of the ingratiated boss. So it was the ingratiation that was driving the impression. Ken WhiteSo any recommendations from your research for that newcomer who is and they're observing, and they're watching relationships people interact with the boss? What should they keep in mind? David LongOkay, well, two things. If I'm the newcomer, my recommendation would be do two things. When you're forming, an impression of somebody is important as a supervisor. Observe social cues that are indirect, like how the co-workers interacting with the boss but also find time to directly interact with the boss because what you don't want to do is base your because first impressions are lasting. Don't solely base first impressions on what others are doing because it may just be that you are observing a lot of people who are willing to say yes to a boss. Who just want to go with the flow and please the supervisor. Go talk to that person directly to form a more holistic impression. Ken WhiteWhich can be difficult to do as a newcomer, especially if you're young. David LongAs a newcomer or then be aware that your first impression may be based solely on indirect information and maybe hold off on me on kind of making that concrete dry. Just say okay. He seems like a good person. She seems like a great supervisor. Let me just wait a little longer before I really may form this lasting impression. Ken WhiteYeah, and any recommendations for the leaders? David LongAbsolutely so as a leader, just be wary of what others are doing around you. We ran one additional study because your question about anything for the leaders we really wanted to address, and so in the second study, we had the leaders then react to the ingratiation. We had some leaders like it by saying I really like you and other leaders kind of be a little colder to the ingratiation. Ken WhiteWow, interesting. David LongAnd we wanted to say, okay, what happens here, and what we found is that leaders, by being positive and affirming and receptive to ingratiation, can also elicit a positive impression from the newcomer. Leaders who are more standoffish and cold. They also elicit a more positive impression. So the key takeaway there is that ingratiation from a co-worker can help a supervisor look good, but the supervisor also can control his or her own destiny by how they perform. If they show liking, then they can still be seen as a good supervisor. Ken WhiteWow, very interesting. Your field is, as we call it OB, organizational behavior. For those who don't have an MBA because that's really where you hear that term and run into researchers and scholars, and teachers. What is OB? David LongOB is it's a field where we study human performance in the workplace, and there's a couple of anecdotes that really, I think, hammer home what it is. The two most important outcomes or things topics that we study are job performance and organizational commitment. We are consistently trying to find ways to improve employees' job performance and their loyalty to their organization because job performance drives productivity and organizational commitment drives turnover. And if you can increase productivity and reduce turnover, that's a recipe for success for an organization. Ken WhiteYeah. David LongSo prior to academia, I worked in retail. I worked for home depot. Ken WhiteRight. David LongAnd I was a newly minted store manager. I was running a big box, and my trusty old district manager first day that I was a new store manager, came into my store to walk me, the proverbial walk, which is you do a walk around the store with the district manager. So I prepared hard for this. Knew it was coming. District manager shows up in the store. Dave, let's go for a walk. So we're walking around the store, and we're looking at hardware. We're looking in garden. We're looking in lumber, and he stops me about halfway through the walk, and he goes okay, what's the most important thing inside the store? And I was like, okay, I got this. I was like, well, I know in the springtime it's garden because we sell so many bags of mulch and lawnmowers and fertilizer and garden hoses. At Christmas time hardware, everybody's buying power tools and saws. But maybe that's not it. But oh, wait a minute, lumber and building materials. That's year-round. I know it's low margin and a commodity, but the contractors come in and buy truckloads and truckloads of sticks and concrete. I'm like, okay, it's going to be one of these, and I want to make sure I get it right. So I'm what I'm talking aloud and articulated all this. And he's just got this huge grin on his face, and he goes you're way off. Ken WhiteYeah. David LongAnd I go what and he goes most important thing inside the store is your people. He goes let me tell you something, as a store manager, if you can figure out how to make the people in here happy and satisfied with their job, they're going to sell garden stuff in the spring. They're gonna sell power tools at Christmas time, and they're gonna sell lumber and building materials to the contractors. They will do that stuff for you. You take care of them, and they'll take care of the rest. And I was just like, oh my goodness. Ken WhiteThere it is. David LongAnd so that's it. This is the people side of business. Ken WhiteVery interesting. Research-wise, what's up next for you? Is there something you'd like to kind of focus on? An area you'd like to look at? David LongYeah, absolutely. I'm going to keep parsing back the impression management side. Ken WhiteSure. David LongImpression management is synonymous with things like political skill or politics and reputation, branding, and those are all really important for leaders to make sure that their reputation is not only the right one but it's sound and intact. I'm doing some recent work on authenticity, informing, and impressions. So what I have found, at least my preliminary findings, are that impressions that are perceived as genuine and authentic are longer lasting than ones that are a little, maybe less authentic or genuine. So if you can form, if you can build the right impression, and you can do so in a way that people perceive as genuine, it's rock solid. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with David Long, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with a business in leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com or go to the William & Mary site, click on the Mason School of Business and then go to corporate education. Thanks to our guest this week David Long and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Hamilton Perkins](images/hamilton-perkins-51-thumb.jpg)
![Turning Plastic Bottles into Designer Bags](images/hamilton-perkins-51-thumb.jpg)
Hamilton Perkins
Episode 51: August 2, 2016
Turning Plastic Bottles into Designer Bags
The average American throws away 181 pounds of plastic each year, much of it from water bottles. Hamilton Perkins has decided to do something about that; he's taking discarded water bottles and turning them into affordable designer travel bags. His story has caught on, and he's reached thousands of supporters and customers on social media. We speak with Hamiton about today's new economy, environmental sustainability, social media, and his story.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. The average American throws away one hundred and eighty pounds of plastic each year. Much of that from water bottles. Well, Hamilton Perkins has decided to do something about that. He's taking those discarded water bottles along with recycled vinyl from billboards, and he's created an affordable designer travel bag that can be used as a duffel bag or backpack. His story has caught on, especially online, where thanks to YouTube, Instagram, blogs, and Twitter, he's reached thousands of supporters and customers. The Hamilton Perkins collection has all the elements of a new business in today's new economy. One that includes environmental sustainability, social media, and customers who become advocates. Well, last week, we sat down with Perkins, who gave us an update on his company and his story. Here's our conversation with Hamilton Perkins of the Hamilton Perkins collection. Ken WhiteWell, Hamilton, thank you for taking the time to meet. We're in the Slover Library in downtown Norfolk. This is an incredible facility. Thanks for joining us. Hamilton PerkinsThank you so much for having me. Ken WhiteSo you have gotten so much press it seems every time I turn around, there's another story about you and your business. Where did it all start? How did you get on this path? Hamilton PerkinsYeah, it started for me with a personal problem. You know, I really wanted a bag that I could be proud to carry. Essentially I was looking for socially responsible goods and then kind of marry that with style and function. My path led me to do my research, and you know I just it didn't sit well with me that I could go and try to shop at a department store and every bag in the store was gonna be 50 percent off or 75 percent off and you know I just kept asking the question why is it. Why is that the case? And I did research. I had, you know, access to tools to kind of figure out a little bit more about the industry and, you know, the market share of the key players. All that kind of led me to some prototyping and putting together a bag for myself and kind of my friends. And after that, we just started building an online presence so that we could go direct to consumer with the bag and, you know, try to stand out in a really crowded market but do that by being unique and by doing good. Ken WhiteThe learning curve had to be incredibly steep. I mean, you don't do this for a living, and now you're creating a bag. You know this industry inside and out. What was the learning curve like? Hamilton PerkinsSo the learning curve was fairly steep even though I had a retail background. I interned at a luggage good at a luggage company, and I got kind of the foundation thereof like you know how to sell, finance. I worked in boutiques, luxury big box retail, you know, mom and pop like I kind of did a lot of things here and in between that helped me kind of figure out that end of the business. But you know, the online part is really the that's the part that's so dynamic, at least for me. I had to really kind of hone in on, you know, basically, where is everybody, you know. You know everybody's on their phone, everybody's on mobile, but how to create this like experience for our customers, our backers? And that really was the learning curve for me was transitioning what I kind of envisioned was going to be an offline idea and then transitioning that into being online. Ken WhiteGot it. So you're finding the majority of your audience is online. Hamilton PerkinsCorrect. We're right now with crowdfunding on Kickstarter. You know, we basically started out with our email list, which, you know, that was just kind of us going out and saying, you know, we're going to do this project. Are you interested? And if so, may we add to the list when we launch? That allowed us to kind of start our preliminary campaign. You know, we spent some time sort of just thinking about where would we have the best chance to kind of reach people and just kind of make it be a cool experience whether we're giving tips or, you know, just kind of showing the bag in a new way. You know, our product is a definitely like a storytelling-friendly product. You know, you have a lot of impact that sort of comes from the products. For example, you know we're saving water with every bag that we sell. We're cutting carbon emissions with every bag that we sell, and then we're creating jobs in less developed nations with every bag we sell, and you know, really kind of diving deep on a lot of those topics and kind of introducing new customers to our brand. You know, all of those things kind of they came together online for us. Ken WhiteSo I read one of the blog posts that I believe you wrote or were either quoted, and you said, you know, in this process, you become a media company. You really had to learn how to become an advertising agency, didn't you? Hamilton PerkinsAbsolutely. You know, right now there's so much, you know, there's so many messages that we get in a day, and you know, finding out the happy medium or finding out the way to, you know, again just kind of meet people where they are, and you know if that's on mobile then you know finding the right app you know if it's Snapchat then you know we want to find ways to create stories that you know will you know have some entertainment value have some information value, and you know just introducing you know the product and letting people kind of get a chance to engage with us. So whether it's Instagram, you know, posting new photos there. Having captions that kind of educate and, you know, using the right hashtags, you know, all these things kind of come together to, you know, basically allow us to contain and build our community which right now we've had a lot of success with Kickstarter. Ken WhiteYeah. Tell us about that. First of all, for those who don't know Kickstarter. Can you describe and explain that? Hamilton PerkinsSo Kickstarter is a place to bring a creative project to life. It's not a store, technically. It's a place where you can show up, and you can pledge to help bring a project into the world. And you know everyone that basically goes on there is a backer of a project, and you know you have creators and backers. So we created a project where you know our feature product was our Earthbag. And you know it's a bag that's made out of recycled plastic bottles. It's lined with vinyl from repurposed billboards. And we kind of told that whole story throughout the whole video and through the campaign page, and you know Kickstarter is a great place because it's for early adopters. You know, it's normally for kind of how a market fit. Testing an idea, even you know creative design, you can include that as something that Kickstarter is really good at helping companies achieve. So for us, we hit the goal that we set, which was a 10,000 dollar goal. We hit that goal in under a week. We were also selected as a Kickstarter project we love, which is really a way to get organic traffic from the platform and to get backers and serial backers, so people that go on Kickstarter and they're already looking for projects to back, and they're looking for new companies, new products, exciting ideas. And so you know that momentum that also carried us into their newsletter, which was huge. We were able to kind of, you know, we were sent out in a newsletter maybe halfway through or something like that. And you know, the momentum from there that attracted more press, you know. So, for example, getting featured in The Washington Post was huge. You know, Fast Company was, you know, that was amazing as well, and you know, ultimately, that kind of led to me doing some blogging for The Huffington Post. So you know, we started the process kind of like really early. You know, the best thing I could probably say about crowdfunding, you know, advice is just, you know, it's never really too early to start. You know, start making those relationships. Start finding the influencers that are in your niche and try to start there because you know it's going to help you in the long run when you're live and the clocks kind of ticking. Ken WhiteRight. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Hamilton Perkins in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up in late October. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. Each day is devoted to a topic including leadership, strategy, managerial accounting, communication, and organizational effectiveness. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Hamilton Perkins. Ken WhiteYou know you've had a lot of success with media. Media hits, media relations, whether it's to the traditional media like you were saying the Washington Post or Fast Company but also online. And I think that, you know, when people talk about it, it has a lot to do with the product because it is an interesting product. Can you tell us about it? Hamilton PerkinsYeah absolutely. So our feature product is a duffel bag. It's made out of recycled plastic bottles, and then it's lined with vinyl from repurposed billboards. That makes each bag different, and each bag is unique. So the inside is basically using a billboard or vinyl from a print shop, and we're repurposing that. So it makes it personal, makes it custom, and there's a bit of a discovery element there that you can't necessarily find with, you know, another bag company, and then the recycle plastic bottles, you know, that's basically a big project because for every thousand bags we sell we'll divert about 16,000 plastic bottles from landfills. We'll kind of reduce the water consumption by about 80 percent compared to a project, maybe with, you know, another textile. We also will create direct revenue in low-income populations in the developing world, which we've partnered up with another certified B corporation. We're a certified B corporation named Thread, so they help us source the recycled plastic bottles and basically bring that fabric here to the US, where we have a cut-and-sew factory that helps us actually manufacture the bags and products and then we kind of use fulfillment on the back end depending on our kind of volume with this first project. It will kind of solidify all of our partners in that regard, but you know it's gonna be a direct-to-consumer. Ken WhiteYeah, you're not in stores. So go to the website, basically, right? Hamilton PerkinsJust go in direct to consumer, and you know you get to build a, you know, that's when I'm most authentic relationships that you kind of build as a new company. You know you're really trying to learn more about your customer. I mean, in our case, we really want to do more for our customer than any other company that's in our space. Going direct is one of the best ways to kind of achieve that. So you know it really it's like you know when I guess when Apple was getting started or you know even if it was you know Tesla or one of these companies it's like you would have never probably had a chance to kind of interact directly with the founder and it was never like a like a necessary crowdfunding situation but you know that's something that's really unique about Kickstarter is like you can you know you never know who your backers are and you know the backers are gonna reach out and they're going to ask questions and you can interact and you know there's a lot of value there that you know we really saw the platform is a great place to to launch and you know for now I'm really I'm just really excited that we had the response that we've had and you know and I know that it's a great way to continue that momentum and kind of iterate in a way because you know you're always going to be testing you're always going to be iterating if you're going to have some success kind of introducing you know a product direct to consumer online. Ken WhiteSure. Well, you mentioned the website. What is the website? Hamilton PerkinsSo our website is hamiltonperkins.com, and that is kind of our main landing page. That will take you to Kickstarter, which is where you can find our project. You can always search it in Kickstarter. Our social you can find us on Instagram. We're at Hamilton Perkins. The Snapchat for us, our user name is Hamilton Perkins, and that's probably where we spend most of our time doing kind of behind-the-scenes exclusive offers. We're using Instagram, you know, kind of showing more product shots, you know, showing you know the product in use, and then there's still Facebook, you know Facebook is great for you know, kind of linking all of our you know updates, and you know kind of a mix of all the things that we're up to. So we're on Pinterest as well, Hamilton Perkins. Ken WhiteYou've learned so much throughout this process, and you work for a living to boot. Right. So, what are some of the lessons you've learned that maybe there were surprising or lessons that you'd like to share with others who might follow in your footsteps? Hamilton PerkinsI think one of the biggest lessons, and it's probably because it's a physical product, you know, just that direct-to-consumer relationship. I mean, when we got started, I really wanted to talk to as many people as possible, you know, and I had a conference space kind of, you know, kind of like this where I had ideas, and I brought people into this conference room, and I interviewed them, and I set up focus groups, and I found a lot of value in that in the really early days. And that was something that you know probably would have never happened if you know there's parts of our product that would have never been created or designed if we wouldn't have gotten those early, you know, points to design from. So I'd say, you know, start as early as possible. You know that relationship-building process with your customers or potential customers? You know they will let you know what you need to do, or you know what they want to see from you. And you know, I would also, you know, looking back, I mean, you know, I didn't really. I was kind of again not against the Internet, but I just didn't really understand like what to do on the Internet. You know, I didn't understand you need an email list. You know, I didn't understand, you know, how to, you know, kind of just create a presence, and all that kind of took time and research and just, you know, just learning. But you know the principles, like the business principles, are still there, you know, and I think that's probably, you know, if I could sum it all up, is that you know everything you're going to find whether you stay in like strategic marketing or you know you're learning about advertising, PR like all the I guess the concepts are still there it's just how you connect with your customers that's different. So you have to find, you know, kind of a unique way to kind of appeal and at the same time, you know, you're still kind of staying true to the concept that you know it's been working for hundreds and hundreds of years for businesses. So I learned I learned that kind of by working on the Internet, and you know, it changed my perception, I guess, of the Internet. Once I started doing it because, you know, it looks totally different, like when you're just kind of when you're a consumer. Ken WhiteYeah sure. Sure yeah. What about advice you might have for someone who's got a great job, full-time job, but man, they've got an idea, and they really want to run with it? How do you pull all that off? How do you balance that? What's your advice? Hamilton PerkinsYeah, I would say if you've got an idea, you know, just use the constraints that you may have, whether they are capital or time to your advantage, and use that as a way to foster this sense of creativity. You know, if you, if you know you've only got, you know, two hours a day for, you know, four weeks, then that's fine. Or if you know that you only have weekends or nights to do something, make that be your time and really maximize what you can do because you know you'd be surprised there's some quote, and I'm probably gonna tear it all up, but it's like you know if you give someone a task and you give them some time you know the task will fill that time. So if you can kind of just keep that in mind and say, I've only got this amount of time, I've got this amount of resource, you know I'm going to use this to be better than my competition, you know, and I'm going to find ways to kind of outmaneuver them you know like for us we know we don't we have a tiny ad budget we have a very tiny marketing budget we just can't compete there. But you know we can definitely care for the backers and customers of the product, and you know we can do that in a very social way. So what do we do? We send out handwritten thank-you notes. Then we also thank our customers on our social media platforms. So we use Snapchat. We use Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all together to, you know, just kind of show our appreciation which, you know, there's no other company that's kind of using and leveraging that part of a kind of service model. So you know I would say fine. And even if you could find two or three things that you can just do, you know, find those things that you can be best at. Find the things that you can be great at and that you know, maybe your competitors are, you know, they're just overlooking it. And that's going to be an inevitable if you're kind of getting started, you know, for us, we're offering a bag, you know, it's just kind of tough for a bigger company to care as much about the one bag that we care about. We can care about it, you know, with you know if we had a heart as a company that the company cares about that product with all their heart and the you know competitor if it is one of 400 or 2000 products it's just not going to get the same attention. It's not going to be as quick to maneuver, so use all that to your advantage. The small companies want to be big companies. The big companies, you know, they want to be small companies on things, so you know, just remember, and that's my advice is probably just remember that those are the forces at play, you know, it may seem like you got your back against the wall, but you know you can definitely do it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Hamilton Perkins, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Well, thanks to our guest this week, Hamilton Perkins, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Andrew Smith](images/andrew-smith-50-thumb.jpg)
![The Evolution of Advertising](images/andrew-smith-50-thumb.jpg)
Andrew Smith
Episode 50: July 26, 2016
The Evolution of Advertising
Social media continues to rise—over 1 billion people use YouTube, and almost 60% of American adults have a Facebook account. Social media has changed the way businesses build their brands and reach customers. Advertising agencies have changed to adapt to the new landscape, and one such company at the forefront of that change is Initiate-It, an advertising firm in Virginia. On this episode, we chat with Initiate-It's CEO Andrew Smith about how social media has changed advertising.
Podcast (audio)
Andrew Smith: The Evolution of Advertising TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, the number of people of all ages using social media continues to rise. In fact, the numbers are staggering. According to Brandwatch, over 1 billion people use YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter, each have over 300 million subscribers. Pinterest and Snapchat each have one hundred million subscribers, and almost 60 percent of American adults have a Facebook account. Well, while the digital world has transformed the way we interact with one another, it's also changed the way businesses build their brands and connect with customers. Today thanks to social media, even the smallest business can effectively target and reach customers in a cost-effective way. And that's had a considerable effect on the advertising landscape in America. Some advertising agencies are taking a digital-first approach to ad campaigns. One such agency is Initiate-It in Richmond, Virginia. We spoke with the CEO of Initiate-It, Andrew Smith, about the impact social media is having on the way businesses advertise. Ken WhiteWell, Andrew, thank you for taking the time and thanks for inviting us to your new facility. Andrew SmithSure. Ken WhiteThis is really a cool layout and a great office. People look really happy to be working here. Andrew SmithThey do. That's one of our objectives here is to have good culture. Ken WhiteYeah. No doubt. Andrew SmithAnd so having it right above a production facility doesn't hurt either, you know, so we've got rock bands down there doing television commercials, and so it's got a creative vibe for sure. Ken WhiteNo doubt, the vibe is the first word that hit me as I walked in. You've been in advertising, marketing for a long time. Say, 15 years ago, what did the ad agency look like back then? Andrew SmithYou know, it was a lot simpler. I wish we could go back to those days because the media planning process was a lot simpler. You know, it was like, okay, we have television, we have radio, we have print, we have outdoor, you know, that was pretty much it. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew SmithAnd you go into media planning meetings, it would be like okay, 60 percent is going to go on television, 30 percent print, and 5 percent is going to go to radio, and we walk out of the meeting. And historically, too creative was always on the penthouse because it was always the creative would come and say hey, media planner, we're going to run television, you know, so don't recommend to the client that we're gonna run print because we want to do TV ads. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew SmithAnd as media planning became more complicated, the media planners and buyers went from the basement to the penthouse because the media planners and buyers were now leading the conversation with clients. Instead of being about the creative message, it was about, hey, what's our strategy? And so I think you've seen a flip in the agency world because it's about strategy now and not so much about, hey, we want to produce, you know, great television commercials. Ken WhiteRight. What was how did you prove your worth, your results back in the day? Andrew SmithIt was hard. You know, if you think about it, it took us months and months and months to figure out if a campaign was successful and that was typically or historically done by either research or, obviously, sales revenue. So we wouldn't be able to tell. We'd run a campaign in first quarter, and we wouldn't know until the middle of the second quarter if it was actually efficient or not or if it was successful. In today's day and age, we can run campaigns and within hours know if they're working, you know, because of the digital opportunities that are out there. We can run a campaign, and we can optimize it, and we can A-B test creative to see what creative is actually pulling more. So it's in today's age, the results are quick and fast whereas historically, you know, we'd have to do unaided or aided research studies. It was expensive for clients. We can throw something in the marketplace tomorrow and then within hours or days if it's successful or not. Ken WhiteAnd when you talk about that, you're talking the digital space online and social media. Tell us about Initiate-It. What is it you do for your clients? Andrew SmithWe are a digital-first ad agency, you know because the conversations I've seen or I've had with clients over the past five years no longer shifts to, hey, we want to do a television campaign. Hey, we want to do a print campaign. Hey, we need to do some new print creative. The conversations always digital first. It's how can we utilize digital to either give us more leads, sell more product, you know, grow our brand, and you know, that's why our roots are in traditional advertising, but the conversation the past ten years has obviously shifted to more of the digital environment whether it's you know website was once created you know as an online brochure, right. Ken WhiteYeah, sure. Andrew SmithYou have five-six pages. We have a home page, we're gonna have about us page, we're going to have a contact page, and now the website has become a generator for actual leads or product sales through e-commerce and through analytics, we can tell who's coming to our websites, when how long they're staying on our websites, which pages are relevant for them or not. We know how many leads are being generated through social media. We know how many customer acquisitions we are we are getting or how many leads if your business to business, so it's evolved so much, and it's made it a lot harder. And I think on top that, I'm sorry, I'm talking so much. But the marketing, the typical marketing director or marketing executive in an organization is probably 45 to 60 years old, and it's hard for them to grasp the whole digital, you know, digital idea because one, they don't understand it, two they very you know they might have a Facebook account you know but so they don't even understand the successes that they can have or how they can use digital to actually grow their business. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew SmithSo you see a lot of them. I've actually sat in meetings before where the marketing director has been afraid to suggest digital because they just don't know it. Ken WhiteSure. Andrew SmithAnd they don't want to look bad in front of the upper management of the company. Ken WhiteI can remember when blogs first started, I was fascinated by them, and I thought, but I don't get it. I need to start one. And I just try one. And it was about the outdoors. It had nothing to do with career or anything, but I figured it out, and then you realize it's not so frightening out there. This is actually kind of fun, and you can connect. Andrew SmithSure. Ken WhiteYou say digital first. Do the vast majority of businesses and executives you meet are they putting digital first? Andrew SmithWe are having conversations. The conversation always transitions to digital because, you know, let's face it, the client come in here with a specific problem or an issue. For the most part, you know, hey, we're trying to increase our sales, or we are trying to do this. We're trying to do this, and lots of our clients have specific target demographics that they're after, you know. So we're able to use digital to kind of pinpoint, and you know, for example, LinkedIn, you know, I think, is a prime example. You know, we've had a IT consulting firm that has roughly 500 employees nationally came in saying we need to target a specific type of engineer, software engineer. And we knew that this position had to be in DC. We were able to target specifically on LinkedIn, the type of software engineer within a three zip code radius. You know, and obviously, that in the old days of direct mail. I mean, that's taken direct mail to the tenth degree. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew SmithBecause we can run the ad, we can run it. We can drive candidates to a landing page where they can apply, and within 48 hours, I think they had seven interviews lined up. Ken WhiteWow. Andrew SmithYeah. So I mean, it's the client didn't know they could do that. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew SmithI mean, they didn't. We walked in, and they were like we need help in recruiting employees in DC. The conversation quickly shifted in the old days. It would be, hey, we got run a classified ad. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Andrew SmithWe need to run an ad and maybe some industry-specific publications, but we need to go some job fairs in DC. Now that would have costed how much? We'll say 20,000. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Andrew SmithBecause if by the time you make the investment in staff and all that kind of stuff and we were able to do an ad campaign for roughly 200 dollars in 48 hours and have seven candidates that were viable. Ken WhiteYeah, and if not, you're able to pull it much quicker than in the past. Andrew SmithRight. Ken WhiteWhere you may have bought for a quarter or so on and so forth. Andrew SmithSo let's assume we ran an ad in an industry publication. Well, if we wanted to be in the August issue, we would have had have gotten the materials to them by July 1st. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew SmithAnd then the ad would have had to run for August, and then we would have to field candidates, you know, in September. So that's a three-month process, you know when we were able to go and run an ad in 48 hours. But that's the type of targeting but see, clients don't even understand that. So a lot of it will start with the problem, and then the conversation shifts to how we can, you know, best solve their problem and for the small to midsize business who doesn't have a lot of money. It is a digital-first strategy. There is no way around it. Ken WhiteStarting with the problem that seems to be the answer. Because you and I were talking before we started to record, so many people don't get it but say I need to be there. I need to be on Facebook. We need to be here. They don't really know why but that start with the problem is an interesting strategy, isn't it? Andrew SmithIt is. I mean, it's, you know, as we're having the conversation, you know, people, okay, we need to be on Facebook. Okay, we need to be on Instagram. Okay, we need to be on Snapchat. And it's kind of like starting with the problem. What are you trying to achieve? You know what's your goals there, and you know it's a long-term effort. We were having the conversation we were meeting with a new business client who's a who sells product online, and developing content is such a necessary evil for a lot of companies. I mean and content is hard to generate, but content is a long-term or long-tail type of strategy for SEO optimization. You know, for you know, the growth of your website and being that authoritative brand who knows, you know, whatever industry they are in to be the expert and so you know content development companies, the most successful companies I've seen who are pretty successful around social and digital had been at it for years, and they've invested in it. They've invested in blog writing. They've invested in Twitter because you know you've got to develop content to be active there. If you're not going to be active, why do it? Ken WhiteAnd relevant content, right? Andrew SmithYeah, relevant content, you know, and so it's and some of the best, you know. You and I, we were having a conversation about, you know, Oreo, the social campaign around Oreo when the lights went out at the Super Bowl, you know, and it's they. That wasn't a mistake. They had a team in New York that was sitting around waiting to see how they could leverage a live sporting event to their benefit. And they hit it out of the park. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew SmithSo you know, that's an investment that companies didn't have to pay for, you know, 15 years ago. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Andrew Smith in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up in late October. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. Each day is devoted to a topic, including communication, leadership, strategy, managerial accounting, and organizational effectiveness. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Andrew Smith and the role social media is playing in advertising. Ken WhiteYou mentioned SEO search engine optimization. Some people listening have no idea what that means. Andrew SmithRight. Ken WhiteHow do you explain that to them? The strategy behind having a solid SEO strategy. Andrew SmithYeah, well, it used to be SEO is obviously how your search ranks for organic search, and it's controlled heavily by Google, and back in the early days, there was a lot of black hat type of tips and tricks that people would do to try to increase or search engine optimization and their rankings. But it's extremely important, and the strategy is really several different things. One, it's kind of how your website is built and designed and set up because there's gonna be certain specifications that Google you were going to make sure that you have the keywords that you need to have and the site is built the correct way. Secondarily is producing content. Content around industry-specific or whatever your topic is, whether it's cancer awareness, whether it's leadership training, whether it's executive coaching, and that type of thing, but you have to develop content. Knowing that your content has to be shared because you become irrelevant. So let's say, for example, in your blog, if somebody referenced if you're referenced on the Wall Street Journal for your blog and somebody you know that that's a linking strategy. So there's several strategies that you have to execute from an SEO standpoint to keep keep your rankings relevant, and it's amazing. We had a client we really started to focus on SEO for a client roughly four years ago, and they had rough. It was a national company with 250 offices around the country. They went from roughly six to nine thousand visits a month to we just did the analytics report this month. They have over 60,000 visitors a month because we developed what we're doing. We started doing 26 blog articles for them year around specific content to share of their industry, and we doubled that to 52. So we're doing one blog entry a week. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew SmithAnd their traffic, what's that percentage is huge. Ken WhiteYes, that's absolutely amazing. Andrew SmithYeah, like 60 over 60,000. Ken WhiteSo again, it's relevant content that's posted on a regular basis. And when you're talking about the rankings for those who aren't too familiar, it means when you go to search something. You are on that front page right up top because people don't tend to scroll, and let me see page 4 in my search results. What about in terms of money? What kind of percentage are you seeing organizations spend on digital versus the old days? I mean, I remember when it first came right, maybe 10 percent. Everything else was traditional. What do you see now? Andrew SmithIf you look at the digital spending, I mean if you look at a lot of stats and a lot of different reports, I mean it's going to be roughly, well, it's going to overtake TV within the next several years. And if you think about print, you know print, we've all seen the downfall of newspapers, you know, and we've seen the mergers and cutting circulation, and you know now you pick up a newspaper, and it's thin. Remember the days? I mean, it was just that was your only opportunity, but I would contend that clients are shifting large portions of their budget to the digital environment. I think you're going to see that trend and that shift continue. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew SmithI mean, it's going to. I mean, even if you look at like original content now, I mean the advertising opportunities from Netflix to Hulu to YouTube channels, you know people are creating their own content, even original programming. Ken WhiteYeah. Andrew SmithYou know, if you look at how the cable networks are being formed now, you know it's you control your own media environment now. It used to be okay. We're either going to be on ABC, CBS, or NBC, and now the viewing options, and you know that on-demand options, it's just phenomenal. Ken WhiteYeah, it's turned TV upside down. Andrew SmithOh gosh, yes. Ken WhiteYeah, yeah. Andrew SmithI think that's going to be the next media that is really going to struggle is you're going to see the local affiliates, I think, struggle the most because and they're trying to beef up their digital. You know, share their website's digital presence because now they're not. You used to go out and buy a TV. You wouldn't even talk about digital, but now advertisers or, excuse me, media outlets like television stations are coming in packaging the buy. To where it's okay, we're going to give you this many spots on television. We get this many GRPs which are gross rating points, and also, we're going to give you this many digital impressions and you're going to be able to sponsor our website in these different ways. So they're willing to come to the table and negotiate and barter a little better than they were historically because they used to have an attitude, hey, I'm the top-rated station in this market. You know, if you want to reach this many people, you know this is what our rate is. Ken WhiteTake it or leave it, right? Andrew SmithNow it's like a dogfight. I mean, they're coming in, they're losing share, they're losing advertising spend to digital, and now they're going to have to come to the tables as more of a player or a partner. Ken WhiteIt seems social media has gotten very visual. YouTube, of course, and we hear it's all about video. It's what it's going to be soon. Facebook will be all video, video, video. What are you seeing in that respect? Andrew SmithYeah, video content is king, you know. We have seen clients who have entered into the YouTube market with video content early on have a lot of success as far as impressions, you know because we can pull analytics specifically on your corporate YouTube channel now, and so I know how many millions of people are coming and watching and how long they're watching on average I know what they're doing because now we can put in your videos clicks at the end of the video for an action whether it's download a free report, get a free book, sign up for a free lesson, and we're seeing that people are willing or less willing to read you know they I'd rather watch a video for three to four minutes get what I need to know and then get out. So a lot of clients are coming to us, and it's funny because they're trying to figure out how to do it or to implement a content strategy. A video content strategy and that's a costly. You know it's a production crew, it's coming up with the content, it's the interviews, it's the cutting, it's the editing, and then what do you do with it once you create that video content? How do you distribute it? Where do you put it? Where do you place it? You know, so that is growing, you know, I think that you're going to see that continue to grow, and the people in companies who are not embracing digital at this point, you know, I can't imagine sitting in some of the meetings if you're not embracing what you're going to do digitally for your company. It's going to be a hard road ahead of you, you know. Ken WhiteAnd if you're in one of those organizations and you've got some influence, and you're just not there, you won't be around very long. What kind of advice do you give to somebody like? Say there's six of us at the table. We don't get it. We just don't know it. Andrew SmithRight. Ken WhiteWhat do we do? Andrew SmithWell, that's we have a very our mindset at Initiate-It is really a test strategy. So, for example, one of the e-commerce retailers that we're working with now it's, let's do a three-month test, and this is what we're going to, you know, we're going to put together a plan. Let's allocate this amount of dollars and budget towards it, and then we're going to go back, and we are going to compare to your traditional, and then we're going to also, you know, we're going compare it from a cost per acquisition cost. You know, we'll look at the analytical data, and we should be able to show after the three-month test that, you know, if the test cost 30 or 40 or 50 thousand dollars that the revenue generated was X, then obviously there's gonna have to be a positive return. So our sales strategy in the clients is give us that window, and once we give you that window, you're gonna have to buckle up. You're going to have to trust us. But once you open up that gate, you know, telling the clients like if you go to an ATM machine and you put in a dollar, and you get five dollars back, wouldn't you go back to that ATM? Yeah, that's not a bad return. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew SmithSo if we can prove that out to you, which you know we're going to tell you that we can, and we're going to execute, and you have to execute, and if you're willing to say I'm willing to commit for three months we're going to show you the results. The proof is in the pudding, and that's why I love this industry so much more than I did 15 years ago. Cause have to walk into meetings, and I really have to sell to CEOs or buy them. I think you got that question what's the return on investment, and so we run television advertising three months would go by, six months would go by, and then you know we were like, well, we think this kind of happened. I mean, we saw a spike in sales, but now we can walk in, and paper it's on the paper. Here it is. So you're either going to think we're a rock star, or you can say it didn't work. You know, so if you're willing to go in and have a test budget, and it could be for one client we were talking about, just give us three thousand dollars a month, and we'll start small, and we'll prove it to you. And for a company to say, hey, we're going invest nine thousand dollars or fourteen thousand dollars, whatever, that is a pretty minimal, it's a minimal commitment. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew SmithYou know, from a financial standpoint, so they feel at ease that I don't, you know, we need to start talking about doing a television campaign right. The first thing is the average television spot in United States is not on the local level but on the national level is 150 to 250 thousand dollars. That's a huge chunk of money. And so clients would be hesitant to actually have to cause you're committing a half million dollars. Ken WhiteRight. Andrew SmithRight there, you know, we can go in and commit twenty thousand dollars, and if it's working, then we can expand it out. So our intent would be to show you that it's going to work by proof of concept, and then let's keep on going and pushing it and see how far we go. There will be, you know, we'll level out, you know, in regards to you're going to have spikes, you know. But you know you're going to see it flatten. But at the end of the day, we're gonna be able to know, hey, our average cost per click was ten dollars, our average cost per acquisition was four, and we generated X number of dollars of sales. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Andrew Smith, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Andrew Smith, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Deborah Hewitt](images/deborah-hewitt-49-thumb.jpg)
![The Ramifications of Brexit](images/deborah-hewitt-49-thumb.jpg)
Deborah Hewitt
Episode 49: July 19, 2016
The Ramifications of Brexit
Brexit has been a topic of political and economic decisions for months, and now the reality of a British exit from the European Union is reshaping global markets and politics in Europe. Deborah Hewitt is a Clinical Professor of Economics and Finance at William & Mary, and she joins us to answer all of our questions about Brexit.
Podcast (audio)
Deborah Hewitt: The Ramifications of Brexit TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. It's been the topic of discussion in political and economic circles around the world for the past several months. Then a few weeks ago, it came to a head when British citizens cast their votes, and Brexit became a reality. Great Britain's exit from the European Union, the 28-nation economic and political alliance. Well, since the vote, the British prime minister resigned. Stock prices were affected, and people in Europe and around the world wonder about the effects Brexit will have on business, the economy, and Britain's social identity. To get the answers to those questions, we invited Deborah Hewitt, Clinical Professor of Economics and Finance at the College of William & Mary, to join us on the podcast. Before teaching, Hewitt spent much of her career abroad. Today, in addition to teaching at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business, she leads global immersion experiences for executive MBA students. She's written a number of academic and business articles on international trade and business, and she joins us on the podcast to discuss Brexit and what it means to the United States, Great Britain, and Europe. Here's our conversation with Professor Deborah Hewitt. Ken WhiteDeborah, thank you for joining us. Just a couple of weeks ago, you and your colleague Dr. Bud Robeson met with a number of our executive MBA students and hot topics and this came up and it was really fun just to listen to that conversation, and I thought, wow, we've got to have you on for the podcast. So thanks for taking the time to join us. Deborah HewittAbsolutely my pleasure. Ken WhiteYeah. So Great Britain leaving the EU. What were the reasons what started all of this in the first place? Deborah HewittYou know, there's really two reasons, and I think you can get down to fundamental human self-preservation as the most basic reason. We could put it in economic terms of, one being migration. Because of being a member of the EU, there are four principles there all having to do with free flow of goods free flow of capital, and one of them is free flow of people. So once you're in the EU, you can go anywhere, you can work anywhere. And because of its strong economy, Great Britain was one of the major recipients of migrants. Ken WhiteRight. Deborah HewittApproximately two hundred thousand a year. Ken WhiteWow. Deborah HewittAnd so, in a country that size. So people, of course, were concerned about not just their jobs but that's key. Ken WhiteSure. Deborah HewittIs my job going to be taken? What is it going to do to our culture? Because people were coming from all over the place and so, that was really a key reason. Concern over what that was doing to the country. And another one is that you know Great Britain has remained a little on the outside of the EU although they're a member of that trade block. Ken WhiteRight. Deborah HewittThey've kept their own currency. They are pretty independent. They've got that channel between them in England and they like that. And so I think as economics and the whole European debt thing have developed since the Great Recession and the payments that the wealthier countries are having to make with Germany and France to pay off Greek and Spanish debt and that. They just finally said you know, we just really don't want to be a part of this. It's not in our best interest. Ken WhiteWere you surprised by the outcome? Deborah HewittWell, gee, I think you have to say everybody was surprised, but it's always interesting looking back, isn't it? You say, why were we surprised? Because even leading up to it, the polls were suggesting something like a 60/40, and really, if you think of probabilities, that's pretty close. You know it wasn't like 90/10 or something probability of passing. So it was 60/40, and so really, we shouldn't have been as surprised as, of course, polls are always off. Ken WhiteSure. Deborah HewittAnd we shouldn't have been that surprised, but yes, I think everyone in the world was. Ken WhiteWhat will the effect on this have on the United States and the United States economy? Deborah HewittTruth is very little. It's not something that is going to rock our boat. I looked into the size of our trading relationship with Great Britain, and you know you can always put things. Either way, you want to which side you want to support, right? So, on the one hand, it is true that they are our fifth largest trading partner but they only represent 4 percent of our exports. Ken WhiteWow. Deborah HewittBecause our major trading partners are our contiguous countries, Canada and Mexico, each of which is 20 percent, then we have China. So you see, even though they are the fifth largest is, only 4 percent of our exports. Ken WhiteWhat about stock prices? What do you think? Deborah HewittWell, the biggest thing there is just uncertainty. Stocks don't like uncertainty. That's why you saw that major tank. One of the best buying opportunities of the summer, right? Ken WhiteNo doubt. Deborah HewittBecause look, all of the markets now have rebounded very smartly, but it just shows back to your other question about, you know, was I surprised? It shows that everyone was surprised because that vote was not built into the markets, and that's why they tanked so severely once it went the other way. But of course, now it's come back as people have had a chance to just sort out what does this really mean. Ken WhiteRight. Deborah HewittHow strong an impact, but I'll say this. On the US, impacts will be minimal, but for Great Britain, the uncertainty is going to continue for a number of years. If they really stick with this. There are so many agreements that had previously fallen under just EU auspice that they now have to negotiate and work out independently. That it's going to really hurt them in terms of capital coming into the country. A number of companies have already said well we were going to build our headquarters there. But no, it's too risky now. So it will impact them for a number of years until they really get this sorted out. Ken WhiteI mean, it's a big piece. I was reading in The New York Times not long ago there was a professor who said you know, in Great Britain, leaving is like Florida and California being lopped off the United States. It's a pretty, pretty big piece. So the other members of the EU, what's going through their minds at this point in time? Deborah HewittI think one of the things going through their mind, and really through the minds of many countries that are in trade blocks because there are numerous trade blocks around the world, is this going to start a trend. Who else might leave? Who else just like Quebec, right? You know who else is going to think they want to be off on their own? And that is a concern that we should all follow and analyze because globalization benefits everyone. Free trade benefits both sides. Now it's without question that certain parties may come out worse in a free trade deal. Ken WhiteSure. Deborah HewittBut the countries as a whole benefit. That's been proven over many hundreds of years. So there are two ways this could go. Other trade blocks may start falling apart, and that would be that. It may be because this proves so upsetting that the lesson will be learned. Another trade block will say no, we don't want to mess with it. We better stay together and just work out our differences. Ken WhiteRight. Deborah HewittThat's my hope. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Professor Deborah Hewitt in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up in late October. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. Each day is devoted to a topic, including communication, leadership, strategy, managerial accounting, and organizational effectiveness. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Deborah Hewitt on the effects of Great Britain's exit from the European Union. Ken WhiteThe pound, what's it looking like? Where is it going? Deborah HewittWell, again, the pound is down pretty smartly. It was 10 or 12 percent last time I looked, and that is probably not going to change anytime soon because of the effect I mentioned, the uncertainty. Capital is not going to flow into a country where you don't even know what their trade deals are. They don't even have any a tariff schedule now. They don't even have one. So until things start happening, the pound is going to be weak. Ken WhiteSo the big word is unknown uncertainty, it seems like at this stage. What do you think is going to happen over the next months, year? Deborah HewittIt's my experience that markets overreact, and I really agree with George Soros, who said the time to buy is when there's blood in the streets, and it can be figurative blood. It doesn't have to be literal blood. This was figurative blood, and it still is. I think their new prime minister has a good head on her shoulders and, of course, a woman with great leadership in times of crisis. And I think she can. She's already talking about steps she's going to take. And I think as that starts to happen, the uncertainty begins to subside, and things begin to normalize again. So but I do think we're looking at a couple of year workout to get here. It'll it'll resolve. Ken WhiteFrom a leadership standpoint, what an interesting place to be in at this point, isn't it? Some opportunities are there. You can make history. Deborah HewittYeah, I'll tell you this. Her stepping into that role reminds me of a quote from one of our MBA alumni, as a matter of fact, who was in a position in a company that was involved in putting security people in the Middle East at a very tough time and unfortunately a lot of members of his firm were caught in an ambush and he wound up being literally the last person standing and took over the firm. And I remember him saying to our students he was addressing our students, and he said you never know when you will be the last one standing. Be ready to lead at any time. Ken WhiteYeah. Deborah HewittAnd that's what has happened to Great Britain, and now she has emerged out of who was not really considered a candidate, but everyone else really sort of got knocked out. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Deborah HewittAnd she was the last one standing. Ken WhiteIt is it's going to be so interesting to watch that as we move forward. What are some lessons? What are the business lessons that we can learn from Brexit? Deborah HewittThis, to me, was the great scenario that got away. That's one of the things that we teach here is scenario analysis that. You need to be thinking about things that could happen even if they have a 5 percent likelihood. Have a plan. At least think about it. What is the impact going to be on my company if this does happen, and particularly what's valuable is what are some strategies I can take now that would protect me, you know, if this even seemingly unlikely scenario does come true. Well, this is the one that got away because, as we said, it was actually pretty likely. I mean, the polls were sort of 60/40. You know, but nobody had a plan. No one had a plan. So to me, that is one of the greatest business lessons here is look always be looking scanning the entire global environment for things that may not seem directly related to you, but because the global economy is so interrelated now, it's all related to you. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Deborah HewittIn one way or another, it could affect a supplier or a customer, or a competitor somebody. So be scanning and always look for what are some steps I can take now that will protect me. That's low cost if this thing happens. Ken WhiteWhat are you? I'm going to ask you to look through your crystal ball what do you think will happen in terms of Great Britain. You mentioned the new leadership mentioned that it'll probably just work itself out, but anything specific you want to predict moving forward? Deborah HewittWell, I think it probably will be concluded, even after they work things out, that this was a mistake. Now, will the EU ever accept them back in? I don't know. They're playing pretty much hardball now, but I think it will it will show as a mistake because you can look at all kinds of indicators, and they actually benefited by being a member of that union. As I said, free trade benefits everyone, and I think that will become clear that it was a mistake. So that's going to be a tough lesson of history, but maybe it will benefit other countries and other trade unions. Ken WhiteThat's a big player to lose for the EU. What are they doing? What's the leadership of the EU doing to rebound and to think ahead? Deborah HewittYeah, I think they're on again. They're playing hardball, and I think they need to because the last thing they've made it clear to Great Britain that they will not allow them to cherry-pick. Don't say you want free trade in goods and capital with us, but you don't want free flow of people. You know it's all or none. And I think they're smart to do that because otherwise, literally, every member could start renegotiating right. Well, we want this part of it and not that part of it. So I think they're doing the right thing. They're sticking with the basic charter as it stands, and you know, take it or leave it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Deborah Hewitt. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Deborah Hewitt, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dan Webber](images/dan-webber-48-thumb.jpg)
![Crisis Communication in the Digital Age](images/dan-webber-48-thumb.jpg)
Dan Webber
Episode 48: July 2, 2016
Crisis Communication in the Digital Age
Due to the digital age, new challenges arise when it comes to crisis management and reputation management. Innovative companies turn to consulting firms like Edelman when crises happen and develop strategies for dealing with them before they happen. Our guest Dan Webber is Executive Vice President and Director of Operations for Edelman DC's Digital Team. He joins us to talk about the changing landscape of crisis communication and what leaders need to know to positively position themselves.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Organizations and companies have been dealing with crises and crisis communication from the very beginning. But today, due to the digital age, there are new realities when it comes to crisis communication and reputation management. Now when an organization or its leader makes a mistake or a questionable decision, it has the potential to take on a life of its own on social media. And when that happens, not only is the company's reputation at risk, but so is its bottom line and possibly its future. Some of the world's top businesses rely on communication and marketing consultants like Edelman to develop their online communication strategies. Our guest on the podcast today is Executive Vice President and Director of Operations for Edelman DC's digital team. A group of 80 professionals in Washington tasked with reputation management in the digital space. Dan Webber joins us to talk about the changing landscape of crisis communication and what businesses, organizations, and leaders need to know to positively position themselves. Here's our conversation with Dan Webber of Edelman. Ken WhiteDan, welcome back to your alma mater. It's great to see you. You do come back and really contribute to the students and to the school, so thanks again for being back. It's nice to have you in Williamsburg. Dan WebberIt's good to be here. Ken WhiteYou are a communication expert, especially crisis communication and, in particular, in the digital space. Can you tell us what it is you do for Edelman? Dan WebberYes, that's exactly right. I in our DC office, and I specialize in digital crisis management. And what that really means is, you know, as we've explored, we've always had a crisis communications team, and I think that's something that's pretty standard with PR companies, communications marketing companies. But in the last seven or eight years, we started recognizing that with the advent of an explosion of social media that, there would not be ever be a crisis without an online component. And so, about seven or eight years ago, my boss said, you know, you need to start getting in there and working with this social media stuff, quote unquote. And you know you could see it one after another each new crisis, whether was the BP oil spill that the online reaction in itself became almost a bigger crisis than the actual catalyst event. Ken WhiteYeah. Dan WebberAnd so that's where I, from the digital team, partner with the crisis team and really think about how are things unfolding online. Who's driving conversation? Where is it going? Where the agendas. How do we measure our response? You know, with digital tools, we're able to try things in real time and optimize and track our results. Unlike we've ever been able to do before. So there's a lot of really cool opportunities, but there's a lot of also a lot of challenges that come with the digital component to this. Ken WhiteDo people, executives professionals, for the most part, do they understand the incredible impact this can have? Social media on a crisis. Dan WebberSome do some don't. I think you're seeing, obviously, with millennials and what we call native adopters of social media and digital, this is just how they communicate, and they get it, and they don't only get the potential impact and the significance of it, but they also know how to put things in context. Oh, that's not really a big deal. You know, if people are posting on Facebook, it doesn't mean it's a big deal. Now juxtapose that with executives who are new to social media. They may freak out when they get something on Google, or they'll say you know, what's this thing that's happening on my face or Twitter, or you know, it's kind of fun, you know, I just got a Google alert. We need to turn off Google Alerts, and I don't mean to be poking fun. Well, you know, sometimes that happens, and so they will overreact when they see something online. And so a lot of my job is actually translating what's happening both for the digital natives, you know to give you know to allow them to navigate in the way they need to but also for executives who are just trying to understand, you know, why is Wikipedia appearing so high in search results and why can't I just go in and change things. Why are we getting this huge influx of comments, and how do we respond to that? Why is there a Google alert being triggered, and what does that mean for the organization? And so we push them. Half of our job is just kind of sifting through all the noise and being able to find the gem, the intelligence that allows them to inform the strategy of how they react to respond to a crisis. And you know, another part of this is trying to help them have a measured approach so that they don't create more problems for themselves and overreact in social media. Ken WhiteA measured approach in a couple of ways. You're also measuring the data, right? Dan WebberThat's right. Ken WhiteSo you can actually see results. And so it's not so artsy. Dan WebberThat's right Ken WhiteIt's pretty scientific. Dan WebberThere is, I think, a lot of crisis practitioners for a long time, especially in the political arena. A lot of it was an art form. And there were some really good practitioners. These are the advance guys who go out there and stage something, you know, staging. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Really great stagecraft. Now you can marry it with amazing amounts of data and analytics that allow you to micro-target audiences and understand what they're saying how they're saying when they're saying it. You can even time when you put a statement out or what you put a piece of content out, knowing that that's the time when most of your audience is going to consume that content. If you're trying to reach an audience of 18 to 25-year-olds who eat at a fast food chain, you probably are going to you can actually look at data and say, well, if I want to communicate to them, if I look at just the behavior I may I might want to communicate to them between the hours of 11:00 pm and 2:00 am rather than you know 2 o'clock in the afternoon. And so there's a lot of interesting pieces of data in science that we can now apply to crisis response. We could put out a message and optimize it in real-time. Sounds like a lot of buzzwords, but it's really quite powerful in terms of the science that you can now bring to the art form. You still have to have the art form, and there's still a vital importance of telling a good story, being compelling, bringing human emotion to your response in your reaction. But now we can add a new level of science to this, which is really quite powerful. Ken WhiteYeah, and that art and science together makes it absolutely fascinating. Dan WebberIt's pretty cool. Ken WhiteThere are a couple of strategies you've talked about in terms of crisis that there's the reactive strategy and the proactive strategy. What does that mean? What are those? Dan WebberYeah. I think most people, when they think of a crisis response, they think of, you know, the big boom happens, and now we're all reacting and responding to that actual catalyst. And I would say if that's your strategy, you're in store for some really tough times. The meaningful impact that you can have on crisis preparedness and your ability to actually navigate risk is it's all the homework that you've done in advance. Professional athletes call it muscle memory. The military talks about operational readiness. It's about identifying your risks in advance, creating some kind of process protocol governance structure, training, practicing, getting it down so that you have the reps under your belt and you understand what might come at you and how do you react to it. So that you can then get to the bigger questions, the more important pieces, which what is our strategy for then going forward so that we can actually move out of the crisis and move into recovery and then restitution within a situation. If you're caught flat-footed though you could be, you can have the best instincts in the world, and that will be a really challenging series of events. So we look at crisis management as actually front-ending almost 80 to 90 percent of your ability to respond well in a crisis is that the homework that you've done in advance. And I think one of the things that is interesting to think about is you could be a really great executive, a really great practitioner of selling widgets offering a service. Very few people are spend their day, you know, dealing with crises. Outside of their normal business. Ken WhiteRight, right. Dan WebberAnd so when you throw at them a whole new issue that they would have never even thought of beyond again, just a customer service issue or something like that. That can challenge the enterprise and challenge your ability to actually do business as usual, and that's what we're talking about. Not just the normal issues management. We're talking about things that challenge your ability to do business as usual and perhaps even challenge your license to operate and exist as a company or organization. And those are the things that we're thinking about. You have to take time. You have to be as deliberate as you are with your business strategy as you are with crisis prep and recovery. Ken WhiteAnd not having that strategy is like trying to play a football game without a playbook. Dan WebberAbsolutely. Ken WhiteYou're just going in totally blind, but yet many organizations have nothing. Dan WebberYeah and if you take that same analogy if they play without a playbook they actually may show up with like you know instead of eleven people on the field that are you know filling out all the positions you might show up with eleven tight ends and you know because that's one of the biggest questions we ask is where does the buck stop who's making the call who's the quarterback. And that's something that many companies and organizations don't spend time thinking about who's the core crisis team. I once went into a situation where you had 32 people making the decision. They were reviewing press statements. And you can think about how grueling that is even if they're all in the same room, let alone virtually how much time it takes, and you know the moment something happens, you're on the clock. The comments on Twitter, the posts on Facebook they're all adding up. The media's assembling outside. And if it takes you six hours to even decide on an issue, you're in trouble. That's why at the very least, you need to know who's on first who's making the call. Where does the buck stop? Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Dan Webber in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up in October. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Dan Webber on crisis communication in the online space. Ken WhiteSo you have to have that team, and then again, the next step is if there is a spokesman to be determined. How do you coach organizations on that? Is there a set game plan, or do you wait and you've got to do a little reacting, I would suppose? Dan WebberSure. And that's a question we get a lot, and it's a really good one to analyze. And I think there's some very smart people who've spent a lot of hours studying this. At Edelman, we do a thing called the Trust Barometer. It's a study on trust every year. Tens of thousands of people from around the world, and the questions are, who do you trust? Who do you trust to deliver good news? Who do you trust to deliver bad news? And I don't you know, I think that each year we see some really interesting findings. But one of the obvious ones is that people don't trust executives. They don't have a relationship with them. Celebrity executives are a little bit different. They have to have some affinity towards them. But people don't trust executives. People don't trust politicians. They trust people like you and I. And so if you add that to the equation of okay, really bad news, and you're going to put someone out there in front of the audience to, you know, to talk about what you're doing to recover from the situation, and they don't trust you. What do you do? Well, it's very difficult just to put Joe Schmo employee out there, right? I'm not saying that, but you have to really be deliberate about who the spokesperson is and who your audiences are. Do they react better to a man or a woman? Do you need an academic credential? Do you need some kind of, you know, how do you stage the interviews or the or the press conferences and so again, if you're winging it, then you're probably open yourself up for some more risk. But if you practice the discipline of it, you have someone who's very, very well trained. Then I think they can be an ace in the hole that you can bring out. And let me be very clear. It's almost impossible just to talk your way out of a crisis to PR or spin as many people look at the PR industry and say well, you're just spinsters. No, the truth will come out eventually. But if you have a good spokesperson, it makes it that much easier to convey your messaging and to reach the audiences with the messages that they need to hear in order for you to be able to move forward. Ken WhiteAnd the messages what has worked what hasn't worked in terms of this is what we're going to say. Dan WebberSure. Ken WhiteLet's see if it flies. What's a good strategy? There probably isn't a one size fits all, of course, right? Dan WebberThere is not a one size fits all, but I think the thing that I counsel clients on, and we really emphasize with our clients, is if you're in a crisis and there's just bad stuff happening, you need to take a step back or breath and address it first as a human being and to understand that it's okay to express regret and to be clear it's you're not taking on liability because the lawyers would just jump all over it. Ken WhiteSure. Dan WebberIt's okay. And you need to be mindful of the legal obligations and maintaining your protection from those legal risks. But from a reputational piece of this, you need to connect as a human being. If things are happening really bad, you need to show some of that humanity, and I think there's some really good examples that are popping up all over the place with, whether it be shootings or whether you know if anyone passes away or dies if it impacts human life in any way you need to know that there are people grieving and if you're not sincere with that you're going to lose them from the moment you start talking. And so that's one of the things that we really try and coach executives and spokespeople as they're going into a crisis situation is just to be mindful of the humanity of the situation first and foremost and then be able to go into the messaging in terms of answer the questions. What are people? What are rational people asking, and some of them are, you know, what's actually happening? What did you do when you found out about the situation? More importantly, what are you doing to make sure this doesn't happen again? Those things those principles haven't changed. Digital though it's social media, I think, have made them even more difficult to navigate because there's so much noise. But you have to really kind of think about it. What's the humanity of the situation? Express the regret and then go into answering the questions that rational people are really trying to get from you. And if you dodge them too much, I think they're going to see right through you, and they might suggest, or even kind of think that you are you're slippery, that you're slimy, that you're just trying to dodge the situation. You need to accept responsibility and go into it as much as you can. Ken WhiteCrisis was never easy. But now, looking back the good old days of just a few TV cameras and a couple of print reporters, wow, that would have been great. But now there's so much going on in that digital space, so much talk, often a lot of fiction that social media subscribers are seeing as fact. How do you manage that? I mean the crisis is happening. You've got the messages and so forth. But Twitter is going like crazy. Facebook is going nuts. Everything is going berserk, and you're trying to manage that. How do you deal with all that? Dan WebberYeah, you know I've I refer to them as digital, a digital wildfire. It starts to spread and take over, and if you don't do anything to address the flame, it just gets bigger and bigger. And you know, there are a couple of ways to think about addressing this, and the first thing I think about is, of course, monitoring. Understanding what is happening what's not. Is it you know where is it spreading? Who's pushing that information? Do they have an agenda? You know is it coming from a competitor, or is it coming from a critic? What's in it for them? And then once you're able to kind of identify what the actual situation is, and sometimes you may not. The facts may be kind of coming at you faster than you can handle, or they may just maybe a lot of noise, and you really don't know the truth. You then have to use that to inform your strategy and then be able to respond. And one of the things that we think about is are you actually establishing your own factual record online. Because if you're not establishing a factual record, then you're leaving it up to Google to do it for you, or you're leaving it up to the media or you're leaving it up to whomever to fill that vacuum. And people want to. They want more information. They're going to trying to devour it. And so if you're not, if you're not establishing it, then you're really handing over some of the cards that are the most important to you and the ones that you have the most control over. And I think that can put you on your back feet really really fast. Stephen Colbert, the comedian, talks about this is truthiness and how truth gets negotiated online through sensationalism and, just you know, agendas. You see it play out in the political arena all the time. You see it play out in crisis situations where there's people are looking for a villain. They want to find a villain. They want to find a hero. And so you have to establish your version of the facts, your version of the truthful record, as best as you can. And you know, sometimes it's just as simple as saying here's what we know, here's what we don't know, and here's what we're doing in the next X amount of time to figure out the next piece of this. And then we will get back to you, and I think rational people are okay with that. Ken WhiteRight. Dan WebberAnd I keep using the word rational because, in the online world, you can hide behind anonymity and be completely irrational and just throw potshots, and that's that creates noise that you just need to figure out ways to kind of navigate and not let yourself get over emotional and defensive about it. Ken WhiteSo if I'm just I'm a part of an organization, it's a pretty good-sized organization. I don't necessarily have a relationship with the communication office or the CEO or legal what can I, as a professional, do about crisis communication for my organization? What kind of advice do you give to professionals? Dan WebberI think many people think that a crisis response or management of a reputation is owned by the CEO, the president, the legal team, or even like the spokesperson communications office. And I would say there's some truth to that. They have a lot of responsibilities, but I think the organizations that do really well are the ones that recognize that everybody has a stake in the game. And so you may be a line manager, you might be a fundraiser for a nonprofit, you might be a waiter at a restaurant. You know you're interacting with stakeholders, and you need to be thinking about how am I maintaining, building, growing, and then protecting the reputation at all times. If you really buy into the enterprise. If you buy into the mission and I think that's one thing that leadership should be thinking about is, how are we empowering employees to navigate both a crisis response so when there's bad things happening. We often forget about our internal family first. Ken WhiteYeah, we do. Dan WebberAnd we need to give them something because they're going to they're gonna be asked about it at a barbecue or a cocktail party. Ken WhiteRight. Dan WebberAnd if you just let them go, which they're free to do anyway, you don't control them. But if you don't give them anything then they're going to fill the space with what they think. Now on the flip side of it, you know when you're preparing. You need to make sure that they also feel empowered to identify risk into when they see the risk action around it that they're not living in a culture of fear where if they see something and you hear in the airport, now see something, say something. There are many organizations that have command and control based off of fear that if they would have said something earlier and allowed employees to kind of speak their mind, then I think they could have navigated that risk before it became a crisis. And there's a lot of really good case studies about did BP turn into an organization that focused on safety and excellence that only looked at the numbers and didn't actually empower people to think about risk. VW and some of these other recent big crisis situations is, did the organization and the culture allow for and encourage every employee to be a steward of the reputation and protect against risk? Ken WhiteLast question if I'm leading an organization and there is no plan, there's nothing. We are not addressing this. What's step one? What should I be doing? Dan WebberYeah, that's a really great question. I think step one is to acknowledge that you know you need to start moving forward towards a culture of preparedness and risk management. And I would say the first thing is to get a team together and identify your risks. And the team itself, it doesn't really matter who they are, but I think once you have a better understanding of your risk profile, then you can start taking steps like who is the core team that would respond to this. What's the playbook? What are the things we're doing now to mitigate that risk? But if you don't have an understanding, you're not acknowledging that there's a problem, you're not acknowledging that there's a risk portfolio that exists that whatever you want to call it the you know, the list of things that we thou shall not mention, whatever. If you don't have an understanding of that, then chances are you're probably not sleeping so well at night. You're probably worrying about things that rightfully so. But I would say that's the first place we typically start is let's organize kind of a scenario, you know what are all the different risks out there and start mapping that and having a better understanding of what what what we need to think about. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dan Webber, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Dan Webber, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Cris Wineinger](images/cris-wineinger-47-thumb.jpg)
![Summer Look Back: Leadership in the Non Profit Space](images/cris-wineinger-47-thumb.jpg)
Cris Wineinger
Episode 47: July 5, 2016
Summer Look Back: Leadership in the Non Profit Space
As part of our Summer Look Back Series, we bring you a popular episode with Cris Wineinger. Most professionals spend some time in the non profit space during their careers, fundraising for organizations or helping to manage them. Cris Wineinger has been helping non profits function at a high level for 25 years, and she joins us on the podcast to discuss the ins and outs of fundraising, and how to lead in the non profit space.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. We launched our weekly podcast series in September of last year, and since then, we've had a range of professionals join us as guests to talk about a variety of subjects. Our podcast has featured CEOs of companies such as the Hollywood Reporter, Red Lobster, Gateway, Universal Health, Honeywell, and others. Professionals, executives, and professors from a variety of backgrounds have talked with us on the podcast. They've shared their expertise pertaining to leadership, communication, career management, social media, marketing, innovation, and many other topics. Well, now that summer is upon us, we thought we would look back at our series and repost and replay the top four episodes based on number of downloads and feedback we received from you and other listeners. This week in our fourth and final installment of our summer look back series. We feature an episode with Cris Wineinger, who spent her career helping non-profit organizations succeed. She talked to us, among other things, about fundraising and how most executives and professionals will be asked at some point to raise funds for an organization or cause. Here's our conversation with Cris Wineinger. Ken WhiteCris, thank you for joining us. You're busy. You're going all over the world, it seems. But thank you for spending some time with us today here on the podcast. Cris WineingerThank you. It's great to be here. Ken WhiteTell us about your background in terms of what you're doing these days and how you got there. Cris WineingerWell, I am a consultant to non-profit organizations. I've done this for goodness. I haven't counted it in a while, about 25 years, and I got started doing this in this field despite the fact that I have an MBA, but I came out of graduate school and was living in Bermuda. So like so many of us, Bermudians went into banking and realized two things very quickly. One, I really don't like banking, and two, more importantly, I was really bad at banking. Really bad at banking. Ken WhiteThose are two signs, then, aren't they? Cris WineingerYeah, it was kind of telling me something. So I was actually approached by some investors who were getting ready to build Bermuda's very first National Gallery of Art. A gentleman had passed away and had left a magnificent collection of art with the proviso that they build a museum. And so my first non-profit gig was to help fund and build the Bermuda National Gallery. And from there, I went on to be the executive director of a few non-profits and then, from there, went into consulting. Ken WhiteAnd you've spent considerable amount of time with capital campaigns and putting those together for organizations. When you're getting ready to do that, what are some of the first steps because so many executives and listeners to our podcast will be involved in fundraising at some point in their career? So how do you start off that campaign? Cris WineingerWell, I think before you even call somebody like me. The first thing you really need to have is what we call a compelling case for support, a really good reason to do this. And what I mean by that is, let's say you're contemplating a new building. You need to be able to answer pretty much one key question. What will that building allow us to do that we can't do now? If you can answer that in a compelling way, then you have a really good reason to do a capital campaign. Ken WhiteCompelling in terms of the organization or others. Cris WineingerOh, good question. No compelling in its ability to change lives. Ken WhiteOh, very interesting. Cris WineingerSo it isn't just that we need this building in order to offer this program. It's we need this program in order to change lives. Ken WhiteSo this is pretty big stuff. It's got to be big in order for you to even attempt to take that step. Cris WineingerIt doesn't necessarily have to be big, dollar-wise. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerBut it needs to be compelling in its ability to change lives. Yes. Ken WhiteSo when you're out fundraising, I think one of the things when I talk to people about fundraising who haven't done it, they tend to think it's almost begging. How do you? What would you say to folks who see it that way? What is it really like? Cris WineingerWell, let me put it this way if you're begging, you're asking really badly. Would be the first thing I would tell you. But really good successful fundraising is focused on the donor. We always talk about donor-centered fundraising, and what that means is before you even ask a donor for his support, you spend a lot of time having conversations with him when the ask is not in the room. And the reason you have those conversations is so you can understand what is important to that donor. Every donor has their own philanthropic priorities. Those things they want to see happen in the world. And so you want to be in a position where you are actually inviting the donor to do something that's already very important to him. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerThat's a successful ask. And that's not begging. Ken WhiteRight. And the donor knows, I mean, they know why you're there. Cris WineingerYeah. The best part about that is when the donor makes his gift. He feels really good about what he's just done. He doesn't feel like he's had his arm twisted and that he's trying to find a gracious way of getting you out of the room. And by the same token, you feel really good about having made an ask that was comfortable and successful. And if you do it that way, chances are he's going to support you again. Ken WhiteRight. So good fundraising is a win-win situation. You just hit on something that I hear from fundraisers in higher education and other places that once someone gives, the likelihood of them giving again increases. Is that fairly standard? Cris WineingerWell, that depends on how well you engage them in your organization between gifts. So one of the biggest mistakes I see fundraisers make is the only time their donors ever hear from them is when they want something. So if instead, you report back to the donor on a regular basis about what his investment is helping you to do, then you are more likely not only to get a second gift but to get a larger gift. Ken WhiteYou hear the term donor fatigue. How how does that come in? Cris WineingerI do hear that a lot from non-profits, and my thought on that is this, I don't I think we do have a lot of donor fatigue out there. I don't disagree with that, but I don't think we have donor fatigue because people have been asked too much. I think we have donor fatigue because people have been asked badly. Because we do have situations where the only time a donor hears from a non-profit is when they want something. Because we're not having conversations with donors when the ask is not in the room because we're not engaging them in the work that we do, and we're not in those situations. We're not reporting back on what their money is helping us to accomplish. Ken WhiteThat's interesting because I'll often hear people say, especially in a higher ed space, alumni. That's the only time I hear from the organization is when they want money, and that's not true. The organization is trying to communicate, but they're not connecting. Have you run into situations like that? Cris WineingerYes, and I tell you what perception is everything. So you may think that you have communicated with them, but if they don't remember it, then you didn't. Ken WhiteOh, that's a great point. Cris WineingerAnd so you need to rethink how you're communicating with them. One thing I'm always teaching non-profits to do is when you have a new donor ask him how and when he'd like to hear from you. What's the best way to communicate with you? Do you prefer that we communicate with you through email? Do you prefer the written letter? Would you like a visit from us once a year? Let the donor be in charge. Ken WhiteHow simple. I mean, that's other-centric communication. That's perfect. Cris WineingerYes. Ken WhiteYou and I mentioned before we recorded or you mentioned the investor versus the donor. What do you mean by that? Cris WineingerWell, I think it's important that we think of our donors as investors, and if they're investors, a good investor, a successful investor is looking to determine what's my return on investment, so if I've given you one hundred thousand dollars what have you done with that hundred thousand dollars. What has been your return on investment? And there's actually a formula you can use, and instead of ROI return on investment, we talk about SROI, the social return on investment. And so if when you think that way, you're really able to demonstrate to the donors how his dollars are making a difference. How his dollars are helping to solve a social problem that's very important to him. That's treating someone like an investor. If you treat them like a donor, you're simply trying to determine how many times can I ask successfully. Ken WhiteSo you have to make the case, as you said right up front. You've got to have the right case for support. Cris WineingerYes, you do. Ken WhiteThen you're making the connection which is cultivating the donor. We often hear that. Then you get the gift, and it's not even close to being done, then it's all the communication back. Cris WineingerOh, well yeah. Because once the donor makes a gift, that's not the end. That's the beginning of your relationship with that donor. And so how well you continue to engage him in the work that you're doing and how much you continue to learn about what's important to him, that's going to make for a lifelong relationship with that donor. And if you really do it well when he passes on, he'll remember you. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerAnd definitely in his will. Ken WhiteWe'll return to our conversation with Cris Wineinger in just a minute. Today's episode is part of our Summer Look Back series, where we're reposting and replaying the top four episodes from our Leadership & Business podcast series. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level by designing a leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. To learn more, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Cris Wineinger. Ken WhiteIn those various steps, is there a certain place where some or most organizations seem to sort of fall off the track? Is there one they don't quite get as good as the others? Cris WineingerI think one area that they sometimes do forget is recognizing that in fundraising, and I have never ever seen a campaign that breaks this rule in all the years I've done this. And I got a lot of gray hair. But every campaign I've ever done, I would say that 90 percent of the dollars they receive come from 10 to 15 percent of the donors, period. And so it is vitally important that you know who those 10 to 15 percent of those people are and that you know what's important to them and that they've heard from you on a regular basis not as an ask but on you reporting back to them. And on you asking for their feedback and their input and their advice. That's the part that so many non-profits lose sight of. Ken WhiteWhat about the other 15 percent or so? Do you still try to communicate with them? Cris WineingerYou mean the other 85 percent. Ken WhiteOr 85 percent, right, yeah. Cris WineingerIt's okay, my math. I'm lousy with numbers. It makes me a great fundraiser. I'm also really bad with names. Ken WhiteWhat about the bulk? I mean, you're looking at all these thousands of people, but so many organizations are pummeling away trying to reach them with messages too. Is that worth the time and the energy to do that? Cris WineingerThe short answer to the question is yes. Of course, it's always worth engaging the broader base of your donors because that broader base of donors that's where you're going to find your major donors. So you always want to be working on that broader base of donors. But the thing to recognize is that if you're looking for a return on your investment as a fundraiser, it's going to be at the top of that gift chart. So that's where you're really going to make your money. Ken WhiteYou told me a story earlier about legacy and leadership. Could you share that story with us? Cris WineingerOh yeah. That was a good story. This was a few years back, and I was working on a non-profit with their capital campaign, and we were looking for a chairman of the campaign, and we knew exactly who we wanted to chair that campaign. And he was a very successful, very high-level executive who was actually getting close to retirement. And so I went to see him with the chairman of the board, and we had a great conversation, and he was trying to decide if he was going to chair this campaign or not. And so I asked this gentleman if I could be frank for a moment, and he said okay. And I really took a great risk because I said to him you've had an incredible career in this company. But I would say to you that two weeks after you walk out of this door, not very many people, not the broader base of people, are going to remember the CEO of this company. They're going to know who the new CEO is for sure but what they will remember is that you built that new hospital. What they will remember is that you brought a new level of healthcare to this community that's been desperately needed for some time. Luckily for me, he agreed with that. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerAnd but that was really a conversation about leadership versus legacy. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerAnd when we were doing the campaign with him, I remember him often saying to people, to fellow executives, he would say like you, we're the busiest people on the planet. He said, but healthcare is really important to me, and so I make time in my schedule for that. He was a great chairman had a very, very successful campaign. Ken WhiteWow. What is it you like about fundraising? Cris WineingerI like that fundraising, or maybe I may broaden your question if I can. Ken WhiteSure. Cris WineingerI like for me working with non-profits. I feel like I have the ability to watch the world change. Ken WhiteWow. Cris WineingerIn a good way. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerAnd I get to see direct results. And for me, that's very motivating. I love it. Ken WhiteIf someone you mentioned, you know you call on folks CEOs and other people if one of our aspiring leaders is listening to the podcast and has not been approached about a role in a fundraising effort but now suddenly is being approached what should they expect. What should they ask? Because this is this could be a considerable amount of time that they don't always have. If they're being asked to give to this effort. Cris WineingerI think the first thing they should ask themselves is, is this something that's very important to me? Is it very important to me to see this change happen in the world? And do I believe that this project is going to make that change a reality? So he's really got to ask that very high-level gut question first. I think the second thing he should ask himself is it's actually a question that many donors ask themselves but do I believe that that organization can do what they say they're going to do? So if their goal is to raise 20 or 30 million dollars to build a new facility. The second thing he should ask himself is, do I believe they can do that? Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerSo he's going into a campaign that is realistic. And then finally my third piece of advice would be make if you do decide that you would like to do this and I hope you do by the way. If you're listening to this and you're contemplating, I really hope you do it. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerBut make it very clear to the organization how you like to work. So I've worked with chairmen of campaigns who can only give me three hours a month. But I'll tell you what, if I know they can give me three hours a month, I'm going to make those three hours count. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerI have worked with other campaign chairman who prefer to meet with me every single Monday morning and go over where we are in the campaign and how it's doing. Done. So what's really important is that they let the non-profit know how they like to work, and it's up to that non-profit to use their time efficiently and effectively. However much they can give. Ken WhiteIt can really be fun when you get into a campaign as a volunteer, can't it? Cris WineingerOh it, it is. It is a lot of fun, and it is incredibly rewarding. And as you know, as you watch the money come in, and you watch yourself get closer and closer to the goal, it is so so motivating. And the best part is when you actually take over that goal. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. Cris WineingerIt's a high you get addicted to it. Ken WhiteDo you have a good fundraising story that you can share with us that was turned out to be a positive outcome? Cris WineingerI got 25 years in this business. I have enough stories to write a book, and that should never be published until long after I'm gone. Well, how about some fun ones? I think one that was really quite startling to me. I was a young fundraiser, very new in the business, and I was doing a campaign for an organization, and a donor called me and said I understand you're doing a campaign for x, y, z organization. I'd like to talk to you about that. Will you come to my office? Now I knew this gentleman to be a very wealthy person. And so I'm a young fundraiser. Let me tell you, I was in his office in a nanosecond. I dropped everything. I should have had three speeding tickets. I was at his office. Now I walk into his office, and he said tell me a little bit about the project. So I started to tell him about the project, and after about three minutes, he stopped. He says okay, I've heard enough. I'm going to make a gift. This gentleman wrote me a check for something in excess of a quarter of a million dollars. Ken WhiteWow. Cris WineingerI was, for once in my life, speechless. Ken WhiteYes. Cris WineingerBut I couldn't resist asking him. This is an extraordinary gift. I know you're not a donor to this organization. What compelled you to do this? I'm thinking of my book. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerI got to write this down. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerAnd he looked at me, and he said well, as it turns out, I'm in the middle of a rather sticky divorce, and I don't want my wife to have the money. My first thought was should I take this check? And I thought, yes, we're going to do a lot of good with this. Ken WhiteTake it and run. Cris WineingerAnd I was still speechless. Ken WhiteWow. My favorite story is I know a fundraiser in the higher education space who is a guru in higher education fundraising, and in his first job, he wasn't getting it done. And the President of the institution said if you don't raise a million by the end of summer, we're gonna have to let you go, and it was the next to the last day of the summer, and he hadn't done it. And there was one donor capable and he called him. And when the gentleman picked up the phone, the stress and the pressure hit the fundraiser, and he just started to cry. And the guy and the donor's on the phone what's wrong, what's wrong. He goes I'm going to lose my job. I get a million dollars. He's fine. I'll give you a pledge the million you got it. And he saved his job, and he went on to have an unbelievable career in higher education. So I'm sure there are all kinds of really fun stories out there what's up next for you. What are some of the projects you're working on, and what's ahead for the new year? Cris WineingerWell, oh my goodness, we have a lot going on. One thing that I have found very interesting is that the landscape of fundraising has changed dramatically as a result of the recession. And I don't believe it will ever be the same again. But I think a lot of good has come out of it. So I find myself these days working with many non-profits, not necessarily to do big capital campaigns but teaching them how to engage major donors. And how to build a foundation of support that they can count on for years to come as opposed to the one-off projects. The other thing I find myself working on these days is perhaps the other side of the table, and that is helping foundations to build strategic plans so that they're giving. They like to think giving strategically as opposed to responding to the requests that come in. And I have found myself facilitating some really fascinating discussions with foundation board members and helping them to answer the most basic question, which is what do you care about. And then building giving strategies around that, I thoroughly enjoyed that. But I will tell you when all said and done, I'm a fundraiser at heart. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Cris Wineinger, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Cris Wineinger, and thanks to you for joining us these past four weeks as we replayed our top episodes from the past year. We'll be back next week with a new episode of Leadership & Business. Thanks for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dave Cote](images/dave-cote-46-thumb.jpg)
![Summer Look Back: Advice From a World Class CEO](images/dave-cote-46-thumb.jpg)
Dave Cote
Episode 46: June 28, 2016
Advice from a World Class CEO
As part of our Summer Look Back Series, we bring you a popular episode with CEO Dave Cote. Dave Cote is the chairman and CEO of Honeywell International Inc. Dave became chairman of the board in 2002 and is now one of the highest-paid executives in America.
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Dave Cote: Summer Look Back: Advice from a World Class CEO TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. We launched our weekly podcast series in September of last year, and since then, we've had a range of professionals join us as guests to talk about a variety of subjects. Our podcast has featured CEOs of companies such as the Hollywood Reporter, Red Lobster, Gateway, Universal Health Services, and others. Professionals, executives, and professors from a variety of backgrounds have talked with us on the podcast. They've shared their expertise pertaining to leadership, communication, career management, marketing, innovation, and many other topics. Well, now that summer is upon us, we thought we'd take a look back at our series and repost and replay the top four episodes based on number of downloads and feedback we received from you and other listeners. This week in the third installment of our Summer Look Back series, we feature a conversation with one of the world's top CEOs Dave Cote of Honeywell. Recorded last September Cote talked with us about his CEO journey as well as advice for those seeking to lead organizations. Here's our conversation with the CEO of Honeywell, Dave Cote. Ken WhiteThank you for taking the time. What we're looking for, and I know in a couple minutes after we're done, you'll be talking to the students at William & Mary. They're looking forward to it, and they love to see leaders and hear from leaders because they're aspiring leaders, as is our audience. What advice do you have for the aspiring leader who's listening? Dave CoteWell, I guess a couple of items. The first one, especially for a bunch of kids go into a school where everybody smart. Is it takes more than just being smart, and there's a I see plenty of smart people get beaten every day by others who are either more hungry and ambitious, have more common sense and good judgment, have better interpersonal skills, and an ability to work with others, and they beat smart people all the time. So it takes that combination of things. It's not like you can be not smart Ken WhiteRight. Dave Coteand you are fine, but it takes more than just being smart. The second one I think I'd point to is that when I talk about good leadership and I have this discussion with my own folks is that it takes three things. Only one of which is really visible and is the one that everybody talks about. The first one is the ability to motivate a large group of people, and I have to say, for most of the stuff that I ever see on leadership, that's what it focuses on. How do you motivate a large group but in reality, I have always thought that was 5 percent of the job, and you can do it with a rousing speech. Some people do it that way. Others do it through quiet example. There's a bunch of ways to motivate people. Ken WhiteSure. Dave CoteThe second one, though, that I don't think gets as much attention and that's that good leadership requires being able to pick the right direction. If you can motivate a bunch of people, but you spend 40 years wandering in the desert, you're not a good leader. You might be able to motivate them, but you picked the wrong direction. And being able to pick that direction ends up being important, and I see too many leaders do something that I love the phrase. I didn't coin it, but I love it. But I refer to it as fad surfing. Where whatever the hot thing is you can find that leader talking about it. Analysts will like it. Their people will like it because it's the hot thing. But fad surfing is a good way to lose money and get burned, and you just need to be really thoughtful about what direction you pick. And it is not as visible as that first item, but it is a heck of a lot more important. Then the third item I point to on leadership is okay. You've motivated everybody. You've picked the right direction. Can you now get everybody moving step by step in that direction? And the bigger the organization you have, the tougher that is to do because they all have different motivations themselves, no matter how motivated you think you've got them or how good the direction. You can't just devolve that to a bunch of others and say okay now make everybody move. You have to be involved in how do you step by step move everybody in that right direction. And I've always thought those are the three big principles of leadership I actually covered in my share owners letter one year. That first one is 5 percent of the job, but it gets, I swear, 90 percent of the attention when people talk about good leadership. Ken WhiteRight. So in order to get them moving what kind of a role does the CEO have to play? You've got a lot of things to do. How do you do that? Dave CoteI've learned that the big thing is to get out there. So I travel a lot in this job. I've been to over 100 countries and what I do is actually meet with my people, meet with customers, and I just ask them how things are going. If there's something that I'm trying to get going in the company. I'll go out there and just say so what do you think of this. And the response you get is pretty interesting sometimes when people say um gee I don't know what is it. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave CoteYou get a sense, oh, okay. Whatever I'm doing is not working right now, or when I go out there, I'll ask a group so what do you think I should be doing. What's hot on your agenda, and what do you wish I would do? What do you talk about when you get amongst yourselves and start to talk about things? What do you say, gee, you know what I wish Dave knew, or you know what I wish Dave would do is what are those things? Ken WhiteYeah. Dave CoteIt's remarkable the stuff that you end up learning. I also, of course also, try to set up metrics because I like to get some sense of movement, but I'm very cautious on metrics, and I always tell them again my own training classes, and this is kind of a takeoff on something. But I'd say if you measure something, the metric will get better. It doesn't mean anything actually gets better. Ken WhiteGood point. Dave CoteThe metric, though, will get better because everybody understands the metric is what's going to drive it, and if that's what you're going to look at by golly, organizations have learned to make metrics look better. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave CoteSo you have to be very careful what you pick and always try to make sure that you have like a counterbalancing measure if you're going to get the right things done. Ken WhiteSo it sounds like you're out a lot. I was going to ask you what your day is like what percentage of your day is spent on this and that. What percentage is spent being out there? It sounds like you're listening even more than you're talking when you're out there. Dave CoteWell, I try to it's an interchange because they want to hear from me. Ken WhiteSure, sure. Dave CoteWhen I have like country dinners where I go to a country and get all the leaders are as many people as I can have dinner, and I break it up into two pieces. The first piece is a business review where they go through their businesses, and I ask them questions, and then for the second half, when we actually go to dinner, I say, okay, your turn, open season. What do you want to know? So I try to have it go back and forth and try to get a sense for what the politics of the country are like in terms of how my people view it versus others. So I spend about 50 percent of my time on the road would be I guess. I can't say I have a standard day, but I do have what I would call standard work during the course of the year. So I have the strategic planning reviews, the operating plan reviews, the people reviews, which I do three and four times a year. I have set aside growth days, board days, operations days to focus on specific topics I'm interested in. Then the rest of it, I do all kinds of stuff, whether it's operations, strategy, people, analysts and investors, government folks. It's really all over the place, and it's one of things I like about my job. Is I always said maybe a slight bit of ADD is not a bad thing because I have a tough time doing anything for more than two hours so? Ken WhiteYeah, perfect. You're in the right role. Dave CoteIt seems to appeal to my personality. Ken WhiteYeah. Ken WhiteWe'll return to our conversation with Dave Cote, the CEO of Honeywell, in just a minute. Today's episode is part of our Summer Look Back series, where we're reposting and replaying the four top episodes from our Leadership & Business podcast series. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William and Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level by designing a leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. To learn more, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the CEO of Honeywell, Dave Cote. Ken WhiteYou're talking about you teach a lot of leadership to the folks in your company. I do a lot of that here through our Center for Corporate Education. The thing that the topic that comes up over and over and over again is I wake up and I'm behind because of technology, and you're with a global company, so the emails are coming in 24 hours a day. How do you handle that or how do you coach others to handle this being inundated? Dave CoteThe onslaught. Ken WhiteIt's something, isn't it? Dave CoteI'd say I changed the way I work about 20 years ago because I used to, so email I hadn't even started yet, but I used to take two weeks off in the summer, and I would say no mail, no nothing for two weeks. And I came back after two weeks, and it took me a full day and a half to get through the entire stack of mail and phone calls and all that. And I said this is horrible. I don't want to do this again. So instead I've come to basically well I guess it's 16 hours a day in touch. So first thing I do in the morning is email. I do it all during the course of the day traveling with my iPhone so that I can do it on the way back to the airport. I do it at night before I go to bed to make sure that I'm caught up with people in China and Europe and others who are starting, and I just stay absolutely religious about keeping up with that. I also try do my mail every day. I get it shipped to me if I'm going to be anyplace for any period of time. And I just try to make absolutely certain I keep up with everything and respond as quickly as I can because I'm always scared to death that the organization is held up somehow because they're waiting for me for a decision. Ken WhiteRight. Dave CoteAnd I do not want to be the impediment to decision-making in the company. Ken WhiteCommunication is a big part of what you do. And also it's not hard to find you in the media. The media like you. They like to interview you. Dave CoteThat's a nice change from where things started 13 years ago. Ken WhiteTell me about that. You really interact with the media. You do a great job. Why? Fun, useful. Why? Why do you do that? Dave CoteActually, I stayed away from the media for the first seven years. I think that I was in the company, and it was because we were in so much trouble that I always said I gotta have develop a story before I start talking to the media. I'm going to work on the so I basically didn't talk to anybody. So I refused interviews from magazines. Occasionally I'd do one if it had to do with earnings on one of the TV networks, but I basically just stayed away from everything. That's changed in the past four or five years because I was on Simpson-Bowles, which added a lot of visibility, and then people noticed that we'd been doing pretty well for about seven or eight years at that point, and it started to build upon itself. So I just kept doing it. Ken WhiteDid you prepare any differently, whether it's a radio or a print, or a TV interview? Dave CoteNo, actually, I don't know that that's one of the things. In fact, my communications guy can probably reinforce that with you, but I usually I say this is one of the nice things about having your internal story be the same thing as your external story. Is that there's not a lot of adjusting you have to do? So I don't have to do. I don't do any prepping before I go somewhere to do something because I generally know what it is I want to say. Ken WhiteAnd you probably know what they're going to ask. Dave CoteWell, generally, I mean generally, they say this is what we're interested in. Ken WhiteRight. Dave CoteSo you have some sense of the topic. Every once in a while, you get a ambush question which happened to me about seven months ago, and it was kind of funny because that was, I won't say, the network, but they were aware of the that I was coming on and they didn't give me a heads up that there was going to be an ambush question. But I looked over, and it was on the teleprompter. Ken WhiteOh, that's beautiful. Dave CoteSo I got like a 60-second head start because I just happened to like I do I have this distracting habit of looking around while I'm thinking. So I'm talking. Looking around, I saw the teleprompter. Ha. Well, that's a good one to know. So the ambush question happened and my response to the guy was I come all this way to talk about this. This is the thing you want to talk about. Ken WhiteVery good. Dave CoteHe blushed and said I'm sorry, but you know they put it on. The producer put it on. I had to ask. Ken WhiteBlame the producer, right? Yeah. Dave CoteIt was pretty funny. Ken WhiteYou're obviously very good at what you do. The numbers speak for themselves, the culture, the brand. It's all there, and you it seems like you have fun. You really enjoy it. Dave CoteI actually do. I like my job. Ken WhiteYeah. How did you get here? Was it your what prepared you for this? Upbringing? Education? Personality? What was it that prepped you for this role? Dave CoteWow. That's an interesting one because I'm not sure what because my path to getting here is not typical. It took me six years to get through college, and if my wife at the time hadn't gotten pregnant not had to work, I'd probably still be an hourly employee somewhere because I hated school. It took me six years to finish, and then early on, I was just driven by I needed money. I had a family support, and I didn't have any money. So I just did whatever would pay better next. There was no career planning, nothing. Whatever would pay better, I was willing to do and I just kind of started to grow and I ended up I started manufacturing ended up in finance. Then realized after a while that, geez, you know, I kind of seen with general managers do. I think I could do that. So I pushed to get into general management and did and then went from GE to TRW and then to Honeywell and just kind of grew into it. I'd say I was 40. I'd say before it even occurred to me that, gee, maybe I could be a CEO. As I start looking at all this, I think I could probably do this. I would say one of the things that I do think has helped me is because it took me six years to get through school, and I worked the last couple of years of school. I was an hourly employee for two and a half years working in a factory, and I'd say that gave me even though it wasn't a fun job, it gave me a lot of insights into how an organization thinks about things, and just because you're at the top thinking, this is a wonderful thing that's not necessarily how people in the organization are going to view it. And if you make it too complicated, they're not going to spend the time to learn it and their motivations are different than yours. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave CoteI end up learning that whenever I go to a town hall in a new plant or something and or a existing plant, and I'm ready to talk about the stock price and what are all the things we're doing to stay competitive and what they really want to know is is this plant still going to be here ten years from now. Am I still going to have a job? That's what's relevant to them, not my grand strategy, and yeah, it's nice their 401k's going to do better because the Honeywell stock is in it but what they really want to know is, am I gonna have a job here ten years from now? And you need to be able to recognize that just because you think you have a hundred thousand person organization aligned. They're like 40 percent aligned. So that's why getting everybody to move in the same direction is tougher than people think sometimes. Ken WhiteNo doubt. So for those who would like to be a CEO, they figured it out, and they think that this is something they'd like they want to lead. They want to make a difference. What advice do you have? Dave CoteWell, I'd go back to the stuff we talked about at the beginning, and that's make sure you recognize it takes more than being smart and on the leadership side that it takes those three things, and it's more than just being able to give a good speech or a good presentation, and it takes those other things also because you've got to be able to interact with people. They aren't always going to agree with you and how do you get all the opinions and make a good decision? It's not as easy as the books make it sound when you read leadership books. Ken WhiteGreatly appreciate your time. This was wonderful. Dave CoteHappy to do it. It's fun. Ken WhiteThank you very much. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Dave Cote and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education check out our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Dave Cote and thanks to you for joining us. We'll be back next week as we continue our Summer Look Back series replaying one of the top four episodes from our Leadership & Business podcast. I'm Ken White. Thanks for joining us. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Margaret Liptay](images/margaret-liptay-45-thumb.jpg)
![Summer Look Back: Leadership Presence](images/margaret-liptay-45-thumb.jpg)
Margaret Liptay
Episode 45: June 21, 2016
Summer Look Back: Leadership Presence
As part of our Summer Look Back Series, we bring you a popular episode with leadership coach Margaret Liptay. Margaret Liptay is a certified leadership coach and CEO of MLC Consulting. She works with leaders to help them with "leadership presence," something she believes is vital to success as a leader. Learn what leadership presence is in this episode and why it is so important.
Podcast (audio)
Margaret Liptay: Summer Look Back: Leadership Presence TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. We launched our weekly podcast series in September of last year, and since then, we've had a range of professionals join us as guests to talk about a variety of subjects. Our podcast has featured CEOs of companies such as the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard magazine, Red Lobster, Gateway, Universal Health Services, Honeywell, and others. Professionals, executives, and professors from a variety of backgrounds have talked with us on the podcast. They've shared their expertise pertaining to leadership, communication, career management, social media, marketing, and personal branding, innovation, company culture, and many other topics. Well, now that summer is upon us, we thought we would look back at our series and repost and replay the top four episodes based on number of downloads and feedback we received from you and other listeners. This week in the second installment of our Summer Look Back series, we feature an episode with one of our most popular guests, leadership coach Margaret Liptay. Recorded in November, Liptay talked with us about leadership presence and the leadership trilogy. Here's our conversation with leadership coach Margaret Liptay on leadership presence. Ken WhiteMargaret, why don't we start by talking about what a leadership coach is and does? I'm not so sure people really understand that. Margaret LiptaySure, Ken. The way I look at leadership coaching, I view it as opening up possibilities for the clients that I have. I look at it as them taking them from a place of I can't to I can or I won't, but I will. Now you might ask how do I do that. That's done through, of course, lots of engagement conversations. It's through assessments. It's through practice. And let me give you an example, and I use this with my clients all the time. When I want my clients to really improve around something, I usually use a sports analogy such as golf, and I say to them you know, most golf bags have 14 clubs in it for a reason. You need to use all the tools at your disposal. So what I try to do is introduce them to those tools. I try to say to them, listen. You can't putt with your driver. You can't drive with your putter so let's figure out what you need and how you're going to go about improving your behavior. Now that's not always that easy. And it takes a lot of practice. It takes rigor, but we do it, and we do it together. But it's not about me. It's about them. And that's very clear from the beginning. This is your responsibility to look after your own future, and that's what they do. Ken WhiteAnd when you and I were talking before we recorded, we talked about you mentioned the term leadership presence, and that's something that you discuss with clients. What is that? Margaret LiptayWell, leadership presence there is a formal definition, and we can get back to that in a moment. But what I like to say the definition of leadership presence is it's once again having people step into possibilities so you can have a leader who is not present, and it's obvious. A leader who is present, is engaged, is empathetic, is self-aware, is interested in your story is helping you with your story. A leader who is engaged and who is present is with you in every way through their voice, through their expressions, through their body. So that opens up possibilities for both of you. You're allowed to be vulnerable. You're allowed to be courageous because you're also allowed to be curious. So leadership presence gives you the ability to do things once again that you couldn't do before and see things that you couldn't see before. Now I view leadership presence as one of a trilogy. To me, if you're going to look at the whole concept of leadership. There are three important component parts. There's the technical skill that's a given. If you're going to be a good leader, you have to have technical skill. The second part are leadership competencies things like problem-solving, critical thinking, flexibility, adaptability, good communication skills. That's the second. The second ring of the three rings. The third ring is leadership presence. Because, to be honest, if you don't have leadership presence, you don't know how you show up. You don't watch your words. You don't watch your behavior. Then you can have great technical skill. You can have great problem-solving skills, but you negate those by your very presence. And the other aspect of leadership presence that I think is very important is that it's not what you say but how you say it. It's not what you do but how you do it. And that's a nuance that some people miss. But it's not the words. It's your body language. It's your expressions. It's your smile. It's your eye contact. It's your listening skills. Those are all the things that drive leadership presence. Ken WhiteOf the three in the trilogy, technical skills, leadership competencies, and leadership presence. One more important than the other? Are they equally important? Margaret LiptayThey're equally important but as respects leadership presence. If you don't have leadership presence, you could be the smartest person in the room with the greatest technical skill. But if you don't have leadership presence, those words and that skill will fall fallow because people will realize that you're not listening to them. You're not open to other comments. You're not open to other ideas. If you're not present, if you're not listening, if you're not engaging, if you're not having a conversation, then you're selfish. You're not selfless. So my opinion is without leadership presence, the other two could very well be weaknesses, not strengths. Ken WhiteAm I correct in assuming that some may be newer leaders will have the technical skill because that's why they were sought out in the first place and maybe will possess some of the leadership competencies, but it's the presence that's missing. Margaret LiptayThat's exactly right. And that is something that needs to be practiced just like that golf game. It just is a question of practicing. The beauty of leadership presence is everyone can have it. It can be contagious. One person having it leads to others having it. Many people can have it, but it is something that requires practice. And just like in coaching, what we try to do is get practice to natural. That's the whole concept. So after a while, you don't need as much practice. You know, when you're gonna putt, you're gonna use your putter. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayYou know you know what club you're going to pull out of your bag depending on what your shot is. That's the same thing with both coaching and leadership presence. You know how you should show up in different circumstances. Ken WhiteIf I'm a lousy putter I know it. I look at my scorecard and it tells me that I four-putted, right? Margaret LiptayIt's good self-reflection. Ken WhiteWhat about how does a leader determine or anyone determine whether they lack leadership presence? Margaret LiptayWell, well, that's a really great question. If you are open you will hopefully get feedback. You will go to your peers. You will go to your leaders. You will go to your family and ask them how they think you show up. Do your words match your actions? Are you a good listener, and by good listening, I mean there's, you know, three levels of listening? There is listening when you're already forming a question. The second level is you're listening and you are kind of listening and leaning in a bit and then there's the third level the global level. Are you really listening, watching body language, watching the other person's expression, and also paying attention to what's not said not just what is said? So if we could take even that global listening skill to both our families and to our professional life that would be huge. But you don't know you don't have it until you ask somebody. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptaySo feedback is really important. Assessments are really important. Self-reflection is really important. And you'll also find out if you're self-managing well. Lots of emerging leaders seem to have challenges around energy management. They emotionally hijack themselves, or they self-sabotage themselves because they don't know how to manage their energy and manage their persona and manage their vision, if you will, of themselves. So I would encourage emerging leaders to reflect and, at the end of the week, say what did I do well, what did I not do so well, and what will I do differently tomorrow? And that might give them some sense of what they could do better. But asking people going to Ken White and asking him how do you think I showed up at that meeting. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayBeing vulnerable, being courageous enough to ask the question and then accept the feedback and then come up with a practice to fix it. That, again, would inculcate great leadership presence, and it would become contagious because people see the change. Ken WhiteWe'll return to our conversation with Margaret Liptay on leadership presence in just a minute. Today's episode is part of our Summer Look Back series, where we're reposting and replaying the top four episodes from our Leadership & Business podcast series. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization get to the next level by designing a leadership development program that specifically fits your needs to learn more go to wmleadership.com. Now back to Margaret Liptay and our discussion on leadership presence. Ken WhiteWhen I was in my twenties, I worked in television, and I would ask people how especially my wife, how did I do. It didn't matter what I did. She would say the same words every time. Oh great, or oh fine. It was tough to get really good feedback from anyone who cared about you. So I'm making an assumption here. I assume that's where the leadership coach can be so unbelievably effective because you're going to tell it like it is, aren't you, to your clients. Margaret LiptayThat is absolutely true. It's rigorous. It's not. We're not there to be a friend. We're not there for talk therapy. We're not there to tell people how great they are. We're there to have them self-reflect. And then through powerful questions and through really digging a little deeper, and I call it peeling the onion, finding out what's getting in their way. And you know, a typical question a good coach will ask is when someone expresses or describes their behavior in a certain situation. The easy question for me, and then I go quiet, is so, how's that working for you. Ken WhiteYeah, great. That's great. Margaret LiptaySo the feedback from a coach is critically important, but if you have good leaders around you, which is where leadership presence comes in, giving and getting good feedback, then your leaders should be in that position. They should not be afraid to give you constructive, you know, nonjudgmental feedback. Feedback that is objective around a certain behavior. Ken WhiteWhy is listening so really actively listening? Why is that so hard for many leaders and executives? Margaret LiptayIt's probably a skill that we haven't all worked on very well, and actually, listening at a global level is very selfless. It really is putting yourself in sort of suspension, and I think that's very difficult for most people to do. To just suspend their own thoughts, to suspend their own judgment, to just say let me be and be in this person's space and listen to what they have to say. And also, most people aren't very good at observing body language unless it's a severe anomaly. Otherwise, they're not thinking about a person's body language, so if you get to be pretty good at studying body language, studying what I call the secret weapon, people's smile. How often does a person smile? That's a secret weapon that people don't use often enough. How bright are their eyes, and then what are they saying? How does the content match their physicality? Ken WhiteYou said a couple really cool phrases, energy of voice and energy of body. Can you tell us more about energy of voice? Have you worked in that area? What do you mean by that? Margaret LiptayWell, energy of voice gets back to this whole concept of energy management, and we all know people who walk into a room and are very loud. The question is, are they effective? Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptaySo you have to understand the energy that your voice brings. You have to understand who you're speaking to. You have to understand when your voice should be louder when it should be softer when it should be more directive. When it should be more quiet, that's also very hard for people to do. Your voice does bring energy. We've all been at meetings where you know. I call it the talking head syndrome, the monotone. You know someone's talking in one monotone, monotone, monotone, and everyone falls asleep. The content of whatever that presentation was, you'll leave the room you have no idea, or you made two notes, and you could care less. But the real issue is when you have someone who is has energy from within and is centered and present. Their voice has the energy. They're excited. They're excited to be there. You're excited to listen. It's conversational. You're sharing it. It's a real connection. That's the beauty of energy of voice. It's that connection. Ken WhiteAnd that passion and people love that, don't they? Margaret LiptayThey do love it. Ken WhiteLike talking to somebody who's passionate about the company. Margaret LiptayThey do love it, and it's contagious. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayPeople leave that meaning, and they're jazzed. They go spread the word. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayIt's fabulous. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. Earlier before we recorded, you and I talked briefly about how the workplace is changing so much, and we have different generations now. Wow. And it's so interesting because those generations are unbelievably different. You know, the boomers from the millennials is such, and we'd do an hour on that. In terms of your leadership coaching, what are you seeing with the generations? What does that mean for leaders today? Margaret LiptayWell, you know, if you really do dig into the demographics, it's going it's a very interesting time because 10,000 baby boomers a day over the next nine years are going to be retiring from the workforce. That means there's going to be an exodus of talent and an exodus of intellectual capital. Meanwhile, we've got the millennials coming along, who are as big in generationally and demographically in size as the baby boomers. And right now, 15 percent of millennials are already leaders in firms. So the way I look at it we have a real responsibility to bring those leaders along very quickly and to have them appreciate the fact that there is this demographic shift going on but also to have them appreciate the fact that there are at least going to be five different generations represented in the workforce. And what I love about that is think about it, think about the storytelling that can go on between a 21-year-old and a 71-year-old, and those 71-year-olds are still in the workforce. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayThink about the exchange of information if everyone came to the party with leadership presence, openness, nonjudgmental, listen to stories, and learn from those stories. I think it could be fabulous where we run into a little bit of a challenge. I'm thinking is with social media. Social media may or may not be the best mechanism to demonstrate leadership presence, however, if you think about it. Why not. Why can't you write a fabulous tweet? That's that's empathetic. That's kind. That's putting yourself in the other person's shoes. Why can't you do that? Why can't you write an email that isn't full of outrage and vitriolic statements? Why can't you write how are you doing today? How are you feeling today? How can I help you today? Why can't we do that? So I think leadership presence actually dovetails into even everything to do with social media, which of course, is the space of millennials for sure. But I think they can also learn and want to learn. The one thing that I'm finding with millennials and I think they get a bad rap, frankly, because clients I've had who have been millennials and the emerging leaders that I coach. They are hardworking, diligent, wanting to learn, inquisitive. They have tons of skills, and they want someone to help them get better. And that's the beauty again of leadership presence. They want to learn about leadership presence but they want to be with people who are leadership present. And I think that's just going to be a win-win. The more leadership presence we can develop the more leaders we can develop. Once again, it can be contagious because we everyone is complaining. All the major firms are complaining right now that there are not enough leaders. They don't have enough leaders for the work that they've got. So we need to accelerate the system. We need to make this trajectory for millennials a lot faster than maybe the trajectory was of the baby boomers. And the only way you're going to do that is through mentoring and coaching, teaching them about leadership presence. Giving them the opportunity to learn skills that they have and that they want to have and also about those leadership competencies. So they too are going to be part of the trilogy. Ken WhiteWhen when we talk to our MBA students about professionalism and winning, we talk about communication, especially we say be and other-centric communicator. And it seems like that's the common thread. Everything you're saying is it's about the other person, isn't it? Margaret LiptayIt's selflessness if you just come back to that. And that's what we coach to. That's what leadership presence is all about. It's about being empathetic and trying to understand the point of view of the other. And if you can do that and be other-focused, I don't think you would write a vitriolic email. I don't think you would say something awful on Facebook. I don't think that you would show up and treat a colleague with disrespect if you thought about them first and you second. I think it would be a much better environment for everybody. And that applies to a generational gap too. There shouldn't be a generational gap. Everyone can learn something from everyone else. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Margaret Liptay, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Margaret Liptay and thanks to you for joining us. We'll be back next week as we continue our Summer Look Back series replaying one of the top four episodes from our Leadership & Business podcast. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Dr. Kelly Crace](images/kelly-crace-44-thumb.jpg)
![Summer Look Back: How to Handle Stress](images/kelly-crace-44-thumb.jpg)
Dr. Kelly Crace
Episode 44: June 14, 2016
Summer Look Back: How to Handle Stress
As part of our Summer Look Back series, we bring you a popular episode with Dr. Kelly Crace. Dr. Kelly Crace is a psychologist and the Associate Vice President for Health & Wellness at William & Mary. He studied stress and helps athletes, students, and teams understand the types of stress and how to deal with them.
Podcast (audio)
Kelly Crace: Summer Look Back: How to Handle Stress TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Amazon Music/Audible | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, we launched our weekly podcast series in September of last year, and since then, we've had a range of professionals join us as guests to talk about a variety of subjects. Our podcast has featured CEOs of companies such as the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard magazine, Red Lobster, Gateway, Universal Health Services, Honeywell, and others. Professionals, executives, and professors from a variety of backgrounds have talked with us on the podcast. They've shared their expertise pertaining to leadership, communication, career management, social media, marketing, personal branding, innovation, company culture, and many others. Well, now that summer is upon us, we thought we would look back at our series and repost and replay the top four episodes based on number of downloads and feedback we've received from you and other listeners. This week we start our Summer Look Back series with one of our earliest episodes. Since it was originally posted last September, people continue to download it regularly. It features psychologist Dr. Kelly Crace who talked with us about dealing with stress. Dr. Crace has worked with companies, organizations, and individuals for over 25 years, helping them understand stress and how to deal with it. Here's our conversation from last September with Dr. Kelly Crace, Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at the College of William & Mary, on dealing with stress. Ken WhiteKelly, thank you. Thank you greatly for sharing your time and your expertise. I've heard great things about you. I'm really interested to talk about the topic of stress. It seems to be something that so many people in all walks of life talk about. How do you professionally what is your role in terms of stress and stress management? Kelly CraceOur role in the university campus and in working with organizations is really trying to help people have a deeper understanding of stress. There's a lot of connotations around this concept of stress. Most of it is a negative connotation that stress is bad and that we need to do what we can to reduce stress which research tends to show that's actually not the case. In fact, the most negative health aspect of stress is the belief that stress is bad. And so it's about being able to understand stress at a more complex level. And we do find that there are some aspects of stress that are bad. One of the main considerations is the stress I am experiencing, purposeful stress or more fear-based stress. And they actually go hand in hand. And so it's something that one has to manage, and we find that people that one part if you could think of stress of having two components. One is the stress that's associated with caring. It's physiologically impossible to feel stress over something unimportant to you. Ken WhiteOh, sure. Kelly CraceWhenever we feel stress, we know that that's something that's important to you, and that's a good thing. So it's really about kind of looking at the neuroscience of caring what happens in your brain when you decide to care about something, and that brings up the other aspect of stress, which is uncertainty because everything we care about has some level of uncertainty. There's always an unpredictability to either something or someone we care about. So once I decide I care about Ken, one of the things that will then immediately come up to me is the what-if question. What if something happens to this person that I care about? Ken WhiteSure. Kelly CraceAnd so that's the uncertainty component which then brings fear into place. And so what we've learned is stress is this kind of very dynamic dance between what we care about and what we fear and how do people hold that well. When we look at the area of flourishing, we find that people that flourish are not less afraid. They just hold fear really well. Ken WhiteWell, what is the difference, right? You're talking about some things that are pretty near and dear to our hearts. This is important stuff. And so some people do seem to get, I guess, for lack of a better term, worked up, then others do what makes the successful person in terms of this successful what tools they employ. Kelly CraceRight. When we look at how we kind of fell into this is our work that first started with the work of values. Is what do people do when they clarify that this is important to me, and you can recognize that, especially in the age population that I work mostly within the university setting. These are young adults that have been raised with certain values, and now they're coming into an environment and starting to clarify for the first time which of these will I own as mine and which of these do I disagree with in developing my own value system. When you look at that kind of values constellation, that value system that is now personally yours or personally mine, what that starts to help us understand is values is your they are your purest form of motivation, and they're your number one source of fulfillment, but they're also your number one source of stress. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceSo there's that two-edged sword, that double-edged sword between once we decide to care, we experience the benefit of motivation. We experience the challenge of stress, and what we essentially find is people that struggle with managing stress well. And by that, I mean struggle with resilience when they struggle with being able to manage the hardness of life, the unfairness of life, the challenges of juggling so many things that we care about. People that struggle with doing that drift into this place of defining themselves more by the outcomes of what they do than the expression of their values. So why are we vulnerable to do that? That's just a human thing that's not a if you dare to care then you dare then you are absolutely bringing in the portal of fear. So what we find is the reason why we're overstressed we're unhealthfully stressed is human beings are not really taught how to in a sophisticated way manage fear. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly CraceAnd so if we're not taught how to manage fear, you'll go the natural way. The neurologically natural way of coping with fear is basically two pathways. One is either through overcontrol and mastery, and the other is through avoidance and escape. So if I can do this perfectly, then I don't have to worry about failing. I don't have to worry about the fear of the what if. Or if I can just step away from this uncomfortable fear until it has to be done. Well, when it has to be done, then it doesn't matter if you're afraid. So if you look at that kind of overcontrol, which we define as perfectionism, or if you look at that avoidance and escapist kind of approach, which we define as procrastination. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CracePerfectionism and procrastination are the neurologically natural ways we cope with values-based fear, the values-based uncertainty that's what we know. That's what we're. That's what we've learned. And so that's what we do because we're not taught a different way. So we become aware of that as early as middle school, eighth or ninth-grade young adolescents and emerging adults become aware of these things are starting to matter to me. And then they start to become aware of all the things that can get in the way of that. So then they develop that short path, that short path of how do I get there. And that's usually based on outcomes if I can get these grades and get these opportunities to get into this school, to build this portfolio, to get into this graduate program, and get these relationships. The short path becomes their way of managing that fear through control. And fortunately too well, fortunately, or unfortunately, however, we want to determine they can escape instantly today. They can immediately distract themselves and escape away from when they're too stressed. The problem with that the vulnerability of that is we start to define that short path by outcomes so that any detour from those outcomes or unexpected outcomes or disappointment becomes something that is threatening to us, something overwhelming to us. So it's no longer just a disappointment. It's a failure. It's a it's actually an obstacle that might threaten my ability to get where I want to get. Ken WhiteSo how do you teach people to manage fear? Kelly CraceSo we work on actually moving them toward a place of holding fear better, and what that actually looks like is that values are in the foreground, and fear is right in the background. It's not about eclipsing fear or getting rid of fear. It's recognizing they go hand in hand. It's how do you lead with values instead of leading with fear. So if I, if I followed you around in this very annoying manner all day and asked you over two minutes, why did you do that? Why did you do that? There would be, honestly, times during the day where you and me, if we were asked that question we, would say because I'm afraid that if I don't, this will happen. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceThere'll be other times in the day when I ask you why did you do that. You'll say because it's right for me to do it. It's right because this is something that matters to me. It comes down to this kind of simple equation. We find that during a day, if you will lead more of the why you're doing something, if you lead more with your values than with fear, we tend to flourish and if in a day's time, by the end of the day, you lead more with fear than with your values. Then you tend to kind of plateau and stay stuck at good. Not an awful thing. It's not a bad thing. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceIt's just a more stressful thing. It's a less-than-healthy stressful thing. The hard part about all this, Ken, is our most natural way when we lead with fear when we say so. How do you know that? What does that mean? The reason is when we lead with fear, that puts us in a need state instead of a values state. And when I'm in a need state, what I'm needing is reassurance that everything's gonna be okay. When I'm leading with fear, I need to know that everything's going to be okay. The only way I have to be able to determine that everything's going to be okay is through outcomes. So I'll start really investing a lot of my worth and identity on what's happening to me. The experiences that I'm having and what that then leads to is this chronic level of evaluation. This chronic scorekeeping. How am I doing now? How about now? How about now? Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceIn fact, chronic the, chronically evaluative mindset is the number one cause of insomnia today. When I'm quieting my body and activating my mind, am I keeping score on the day of what I'm doing? Well, we shift into work is moving from this very outcome-oriented or experiential mindset of I'm defining myself by what I experienced today to more of an expressive mindset, and by expressive, we're talking about the expression of your values. That if I start to define myself by the expression of what I believe is right for me and focus on the actions of that we tend to find ourselves very resilient because we're more process-oriented we're able to go into a deeper level of critical thinking a deeper level of creativity, and we're less judgmental. So if you look at the heart of what trumps fear, essentially, what trumps fear is trust, and so when we are in a state of trust, we put fear in its right perspective. Well, the question then is, what do you trust? The one thing that we can always trust is our personal truth, and our personal truth are our values. Ken WhiteInteresting. Kelly CraceSo if I define the day, if I start to define the day by what I express, the expression of my values, and hang my hat on that and let the outcomes just be the mood of the day, I'm not saying outcomes aren't important they're critically important that it's with those outcomes. If they're more the mood of the day than the worth of the day, that determines whether you flourish or whether you just kind of stay stuck at good. Ken WhiteWe will return to our conversation with Dr. Kelly Crace on dealing with stress in just a minute. Today's episode is part of our Summer Look Back series, where we're reposting and replaying the top four episodes from our Leadership & Business podcast series. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level by designing a leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. To learn more, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to Dr. Kelly Crace and dealing with stress. Ken WhiteYou mentioned insomnia which made me think of maybe meditation. People thinking the mind just going and checking off the list. This was good. This was not so good. Meditation seems to be so discussed so often in the business world. Many people, CEOs included, are experimenting with it. What actually is meditation? What's it do for an individual? Kelly CraceMeditation is that it's kind of a catch and recover kind of process. When we are in the state of stress, when we lead with fear, when we're vulnerable to this kind of doubt and uncertainty, our mind either goes very forward or very backward. We were either thinking forward as to the what if we were reflecting back and judging ourselves. Ken WhiteYup. Kelly CraceAnd so we just naturally, if you allow your mind to drift, you're either going to go forward or backwards. It's unnatural to stay in the present. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceYet we find to the degree we can be very mindful and accepting what is happening around us and focus on what is right for me to do right now. What's the right devotion of my time and energy right now? That's when we find that not only are you working at your best, but that's when you're also the most curative. That's when you're kind of in a healing state. Because when I'm able to be absorbed in the moment and be expressive in the moment, that's when we're the most productive, the most fulfilled, and the most present. It's actually we you've heard of the zone flow experience. Ken WhiteSure. Kelly CraceEverything just clicks. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceThat is something that we used to think we can't control that we just hope for. At the right moment of our training, when it's time to perform, we hope for that zone. We actually can train that more successfully because when you're in the zone, you're actually in a fully expressive mindset. Ken WhiteAnd the fear is just put away. Kelly CraceIt's there. It's just managed well. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceSo if you, when you're in the zone, what is actually happening is you're in a completely expressive mindset, and it looks like this. In this moment, I am completely accepting that this is the most right thing for me to do right now that I am fully enough to do it. That I'm going to trust my training and talent to date, you don't have to be perfectly there yet, but I trust that my training and talent today is enough. And then this is the last one which is the kicker, and I fully accept whatever happens. When you're at that place of acceptance and expression, that's when you're in the zone, and that's what we train people to do. To focus on defining themselves more by what's the most right devotion of my time and energy today. Be fully engaged in it with full acceptance of whatever happens, and that moves us to a deeper form of excellence. Ken WhiteYou've been at this for a while. You were talking earlier, you know, a couple of decades now. How have you seen the work world change in regards to what you do and what you study? Is it are we more or are we tighter than we used to be, or are we more tense? How have you seen the changes? Kelly CraceFor very real reasons, for very understandable reasons, at a systemic level, we have become more fear-based. We have we lead with fear more at institutional levels. Are we more reactive to what is going on, or the decisions we're making more reactive based on the fear of the what-if? We're much busier out of fear when we when you look at one of the number one causes of unhealthy stress. When you ask people in the workforce what's the biggest source of stress to you right now. Most of them will say email management, and part of the reason for that is the fear of not being responsive, the fear of being judged negatively if I don't immediately respond to this person when they're asking for that response and they stay it's ongoing. So being able to kind of help them understand that because of things that are going on around them that are very real and very pressuring, like in the university environment, we are demanded since, you know, the college life changed a few years ago with Virginia Tech. Ken WhiteOh, sure. Kelly CraceIt changed forever. And with that, there became this pressure of us being perfectly predictive and perfectly protective and which is something we will perfectly fail at. But from that, with that fear-based need for us to pay attention to that, are the decisions we're making more protective and more trying to reduce fear, or can they come back to what is right for us to do, what is really right for us to expect of ourselves to provide as healthy an environment as we possibly can and to train young adults to be very active consumers active and mature consumers of health. Part of that is about helping them redefine what wellness really is, instead of this kind of dichotomous level of sick or well, to help them understand the multiple dimensionality of wellness. That helps us made a stress better. Ken WhiteIf someone struggling in this arena, and many people I talked to are. There's so much going on in technology. Of course, email and I agree when we teach corporate groups at our Center for Corporate Education. Email management comes up every single time. So many people, I think, have probably a higher level of fear or stress than they'd like. What's step one for them to just sort of feel a little bit better? What is one of the first things they ought to do? Kelly CraceThe courage to set boundaries and that is so hard because what we find when we look at people that are overstressed and we do some assessment in terms of what is their knowledge level what is their content knowledge of stress management. We find especially in the workforce and at the college level. Individuals know what to do to take care of themselves. They don't need certain techniques and strategies. They know how to manage time. They know the techniques of stress management. They know what they're supposed to do in terms of eating. They know what rest is about. It's not that we need to teach them necessarily the content. It's when you ask them what keeps you from doing what you know is healthy. The phrase usually always starts out with I am afraid that. Ken WhiteWow. Kelly CraceAnd so they don't set boundaries for themselves out of the fear of whatever the fear of failure, the fear of disappointing others, whatever it is, they keep saying yes, and they don't say no. So the courage to boundary, the courage to boundary your email responsiveness, the courage to boundary your commitment to activities. What we try to help them see that is as a fight. There is no just to that you don't just set boundaries. You don't just do these things. You recognize that it takes courage to do it and that you fight to do it for the rightness of it for the health of it, which is just really important to be able to do. So one of the things that we always tell the individuals that are coming to college campuses is that, and we have found it especially relevant working with organizations. My background is working with multigenerational family organizations. And so that's particularly relevant during transition. But one of the things, if you do nothing else, commit to this one strategy, and that is give yourself a 24-hour pause before you say yes to anything, even if you know you're going to do it. Say sounds great. Let me get back to you tomorrow. It's the campaign of give it a day, then during that one 24 hours if you will go back and look at what you're doing and assume that you're 100 percent committed because you will be. If I'm going to take off on this thing. What value does it have to me, and at what cost to take it on? If they'll do that work, then they'll know that if I take this on, I've got to give something up. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceWhere if I cannot give up anything. Then I have to do this awful thing which is say no but doing so in the faith that something else is going to come along. It is the hardest thing in the world to say no to something that has that's connected to our values and because it's just it feels wrong to say no to something that has meaning to us. And so one of the things that we find with people that flourish is they ask a very important question to themselves that's attached to their values. They not only ask what's right for me, but they also ask at what cost. And so that's one of the best ways to boundary our lives is to keep that question alive of at what cost to take on this thing. Ken WhiteKelly, thank you. This is fascinating. We could talk for hours but thank you so much for sharing your expertise. We really appreciate your time. Kelly CraceIt's a real pleasure, Ken. It's nice spending time with you. Ken WhiteWell, that's our conversation with psychologist Dr. Kelly Crace, and that's our podcast for this week. If you'd like to learn more about understanding and dealing with stress, especially in terms of how it relates to your values. Dr. Crace shared a website with us that he helped develop. The address is lifevaluesinventory.org. That's lifevaluesinventory.org. It's a free site that focuses on values clarification and a personal development plan. Well, our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Dr. Kelly Crace and thanks to you for joining us. We'll be back next week as we continue our Summer Look Back series, replaying the top four episodes from our Leadership & Business podcast. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Akram Khan](images/akram-khan-43-thumb.jpg)
![Competing with Robots](images/akram-khan-43-thumb.jpg)
Akram Khan
Episode 43: June 7, 2016
Competing with Robots
It's no secret that robots and technology are coming into the workplace and replacing human beings. Our guest Akram Khan is President of Pantheon, a software development company, and he keeps a close eye on the constantly evolving technology that is disrupting work and those who work for a living. Akram discusses the skills that professionals will need for a future that will include ever-evolving technology.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. It seems everywhere we turn, we hear about robots, technology coming into the workplace and replacing human beings. Many positions, such as cashiers, bank tellers, factory and warehouse workers, have already been replaced by technology. And as that technology becomes faster, cheaper, and more effective, it will no doubt have an effect on professionals in the workplace. Akram Khan is President of Pantheon, a software development company in Northern Virginia. Being in that space, Khan keeps a close eye on the constantly evolving technology that's disrupting work and those who work for a living. We met with Khan last week in his Arlington, Virginia office, where he shared advice on the skills employees need for the future. A future that will include more and more effective technology. Here's our conversation with the President of Pantheon, Akram Khan. Ken WhiteWell, Akram, thank you for taking the time for inviting us here to the Pantheon office. It's great to sit down with you. Tell us about Pantheon and your role here. Akram KhanSure, Dean White. Thank you so much for accommodating our schedule. Pantheon is a software company we build software applications for the web for the mobile for non-profits, associations. We have commercial clients. We have federal clients. We have around 100 folks on our staff. So we are constantly looking to recruit good smart people, and when we have them, we look to train that talent to constantly deliver great software for our clients, and a lot of times, we find in software it's easy to build something and have it be go out there and then be functionally fine. But we have to remember that we're developing for humans and that we are building software applications that are meant to advance a business goal or to effect change or make healthcare better and more transparent to help some of our non-profit's clients raise money and promote their message. Well, there's that human aspect of it that we can't let go of. And so we try to bridge the gap between technology and people. It's that nexus of liberal arts. Ken WhiteYeah. Akram KhanWe try to infuse into everything that we do, which I think makes us a little bit different. But you know there are certainly a lot of things that we know that our staff needs to constantly be improving on. And we try to accommodate those as much as possible. Ken WhiteWell, one of the things we're going to talk to you today about is some of the skills that employees are going to need in the future. It's changing so quickly, especially with technology. But you actually have some headers some ideas of various advice to help employees succeed in the future. I thought we'd kind of walk through those. One of your headers is speak like the machines. Akram KhanSo I don't mean to be alarmist, but you know I joke around, and there's a lot of you can see memes about this on the internet, but the machines are rising up, and they are getting more powerful, and there are firms like Google and Facebook and others who are building great technologies there's a lot of investment in AI and machine learning, and that has tremendous benefits for all of us as consumers. But it is also very disruptive. Ken WhiteRight. Akram KhanRight. You know I, every time I take an Uber, the only question I ever ask is how long have you worked for Uber. Do you like working for Uber? Then in the back of mind. I'm thinking, well, they're not gonna have a job in a few years because there will be self-driving cars that'll disrupt that. And you know, as that happens, those folks move on to do something else. With this large range of disruption going on, what do, generally speaking, what do folks who may not be in software like like our teams are what do they need to consider, and one of the things is I think that everyone should have a basic literacy in coding in software development. You need to understand how programming languages work. You need to understand logic, and it's not really that hard. Some people are intimidated when I say that. Ken WhiteYes. Akram KhanBut, Dean White, you know very well there are elementary school kids who go through online tutorials on how to write code on, how to do logic, how to create loops, and if they can learn it, so can adults. I think it's essential. One of the other things is if you are in business and you need something done. If you have the coding literacy to be able to understand what exactly has to happen, it doesn't mean that you need to build that yourself. You need to be able to understand what it takes to get that done. And we help our clients with that every day. And we're happy to do so, and they get more and more sophisticated over time. But there's a wide range of tools that folks can use to be able to get that literacy. Ken WhiteYeah, and of course, you're more valuable as an employee a much greater asset to the organization if you know what you know. Right? Akram KhanYou absolutely are. Ken WhiteYeah. You have a phrase, map the machines. Akram KhanSo there is, and this isn't you need to know where the machines are because they're coming to get you, but you need to understand what infrastructure is available out there. And as technology becomes more and more commoditized, it reminds me of, you know, back when I started my career in the early 90s, I was e-business was the next big thing. And then we all thought, well shouldn't just be called business. Ken WhiteYes. Akram KhanRight, right. And, in fact, it is. And it's a fact of the matter that you know you see all of these IT departments. They went through some disruption where their budgets were at risk because IT was becoming commoditized. But then they realized that there are other things they need to spend money on. And one of the key things is there's a tremendous amount of infrastructure available both for building applications for doing deep data analytics. You know, long gone are the days where you need to have a data center in your office that you manage with servers you can provision that on demand in the cloud. And we do that for a number of our projects for a number of our clients, and it works really well for them. And I think that you need to have a base understanding of what's out there. I once told some students of yours that they needed to be able to think about how they could build an application in two weeks that can scale to millions of people and be lightning-fast, and they looked at me like I was crazy. And then I walk them through. Here's how you would do that. So I think that that is a key important thing, and there's things like Amazon Web Services is the biggest player, but there are others. IBM's to great amount of work there and others, and I don't want to just discount them. But there's a tremendous amount of infrastructure available that you can pull from if you want deep machine learning if you want deep data analytics, if you want to just build a mobile app if you want to build a mobile app today that replicated Tinder. I don't use Tinder. Ken WhiteRight. Akram KhanI'm too old for that. I'm happily married, but you could do that in two weeks, and you could develop it and get it out there and have it scale immediately. Now you've got to work on your business plan and marketing plan. Ken WhiteSure. Akram KhanBut that hard part, that barrier, is no longer there. Ken WhiteWow, amazing. Speak like the machines, map the machines, and number three, build human networks. Akram KhanSo we've been talking a lot about the machines, and I think that one thing that the machines can't do very well is, you know, they're still not human. I think about Data from Star Trek The Next Generation, who always wanted to be a human right. He got there he transitioned a little bit, but he never was fully human, and there are plenty of examples across pop culture where that comes up. But I think that you know, there's been a lot of great literature about this. Professor Carboni at the school at the college has done a lot of work on this with Ron Cross at UVA as well, where your networks are best when they're natural. You build them out natural I think that some people confuse building your network with developing a sales plan or marketing plan, and that's completely different. Ken WhiteRight. Akram KhanI think that you want to develop and nurture your networks just like you would anything else in your life with relationships, and you don't want to take advantage of those relationships. So I would you know I'm not telling people to go out there and find as many people as you can and give them your business card. I think that that can be disingenuous. But you do need to build natural connections and know the alumni network is great for doing that. There are other affinity groups that people are involved in. That's all I'm talking about. Those natural interactions that you have, people just keep in touch with people naturally. You know, many people who go to the college are naturally introverted. There's this typical William & Mary person who is naturally introverted but highly curious, and you may not have a big sphere of friends. You may have a few close friends, and that's fine. You will always have acquaintances. You will always have people that you have worked with or interacted with. You need to need to build that and not abuse it. So you know, there are folks who work very, very hard, and they don't want to constantly be hearing from you that you need to buy something from them just because you know them. Ken WhiteYeah. Akram KhanThat's abuse. Ken WhiteInteresting point. And you mentioned Professor Inga Carboni. We did a podcast with Inga quite a while back on strategic networking. Saying what you're saying but took a little bit of deeper dive, so if our listeners are interested in that. I encourage them to check out that podcast with Dr. Inga Carboni. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Akram Khan in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up this fall. It's a five-day program that starts on October 24th for the professional who lacks an MBA or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Akram Khan, the President of Pantheon, on skills employees need for the future. Ken WhiteThink globally. Akram KhanSo this is the other half of it. You know, while one of the benefits of having all this great technology out there and all this disruption is that it, along with other factors, have really narrowed the gap between someone in the metro DC area and someone in Dubai. Someone in Singapore, you know someone in Western Europe. The connections that are there, the infrastructure that exists not only exists for building out technology applications but also for moving goods and services and people. So it is really really important that you are thinking about global reach. And there's many ways to do that. I've been very, very fortunate in that I've got an international background, and I've been able to leverage that. I've been fortunate enough to travel to the aforementioned places, and I've witnessed myself how everyone is essentially the same. We've got a more or less level playing field with good strong, educated people who are trying to do good through commerce and trade. Ken WhiteRight. Akram KhanAnd there's some pushback on that politically. We're not going to talk about that in this. Ken WhiteRight. Akram KhanBut it's important as you consider the future to think about a couple of ways that you could advance yourself there. Learning another language is is is not critical, but it's important. English is the ironically lingua franca now of business, right? Ken WhiteRight. Akram KhanAnd anywhere you go around the world, if you speak English, you will find someone who speaks, and you'll be able to do business in English. You'll be fine. But I think that it's easier to close a deal or advance an opportunity if you can understand the culture on the other side. And that's that's really critically important. And if you don't have the aptitude or time to learn the language, it may be well enough to just understand a little bit about that culture and the mannerisms and just to get your feet wet on that. You know, there are international students who come here who have an advantage, and they are learning about America, and they're learning about, you know, mannerisms to learning about baseball which may be foreign to some of them. They're learning about American culture and sports and idioms, which is completely foreign, and that can be a challenge for them. And a lot of them do well. They get integrated in, and then they are able to contribute, and then they go back, and they're more powerful for that if they go back to their home country, and they're powerful if they stay here. So even if you don't have an international background, if you are local, it is important to give some consideration to learning. You know we have one of our employees here traveled for a year before she went to the MBA program. And it was amazing the places she went, the stories she tells, and how it expanded her mind and what is going on in the world. And I think that that's critically important. Ken WhiteIt is if you if I talk to a student who has done a global immersion it is amazing they say it's transformational and not just. I think sometimes we hear study abroad. We think it's just a little trip, but no doubt it can be transformational and, as you say, could be a key to a successful future. Be uniquely human. Be creative. Akram KhanSo I guess this goes back to, you know, we, the sort of liberal arts aspect of it. We like to hire folks who can think outside the box who can be creative thinkers who can use Design Thinking to solve problems. That is extremely important. You know it's easy in software which is our domain here. It's easy to develop something functionally, but you also want to consider what the real purpose is. You want it to develop the interfaces and user experience around the humans that are using it to dissolve their pain points, and to do that on time and on budget is a great challenge, and we try to be as successful as you can on that. But I guess for other domains. It's important that if you are trying to do a sale or advance an opportunity or solve a problem, you know, look at it from the storytelling is important right? You know empathy and leveraging that is really, really important for all aspects of your life. But I think that there is. You know, I've come across folks who lacked empathy, and I saw how you know, they had had struggles with advancing their careers. And that's unfortunate. I think that it's important. You know, I once told somebody that he shouldn't be a robot. You need to have some empathy and think through things here. And the last point on that is just naturally to be curious. I think that curiosity is often beaten out of kids in school, which is unfortunate all around the world. I mean, we have the Prussian model here, essentially. In Asia, they have some very strict models as well. I think that curiosity is what makes us uniquely human. And it is very, very important trait that has to be there. Ken WhiteAnd your final pillar for skills employees need to succeed in the future learn new domains. Akram KhanSo that it's, you know, we've got sort of the cultural side, we've got the curiosity side. You know, I was a political science government major at the college, and now I'm president of technology company which tells you that you need to always be looking outside of your comfort zone, whether it's with the books you read or you know I'm not telling you need to go learn anatomy and learn to become a doctor. That's a highly specific set of skills where I want my doctors to be trained correctly. Right. But if you don't understand finance learn a little bit about finance. If you don't understand supply chain, learn a little bit about that. If you know if you're not naturally a computer scientist, you know learning how to code is learning a new domain as an example. I think that that is important to give you breadth so that, as you know, if you're in a position which could get disrupted by any one of the things that we've talked about, globalization or technology, you have more to fall back on, and you're more valuable as an individual to any potential employer. And if you're an entrepreneur, it's essential you are wearing many hats. So entrepreneurs, by default, have to learn every domain. And you know, getting an MBA may not be enough for some of these guys. They have to learn about esoteric things with regulations that they've never had to dream about, but you gotta learn. Ken WhiteIt seems that disruption is absolutely everywhere. Of course, we're alive right now, and this is our life. Is it really? Do you think is the world as disruptive as we're making it sound like it is? I mean, there was disruption before, but we sort of talk about it a lot. Akram KhanIt has been accelerated, and you see a lot of concentration and the factors that we talked about, globalization and the emergence of ubiquitous technology. You know Mary Meeker slides that she posted yesterday that she presented on at the Ricoh conference talk about how there is a rapid acceleration of disruption. Disruption with capital markets, with technology, globalization, with infrastructure. It is something where you may not realize it today. You may be working away and plodding away, and you're good. But you always have to in the back. You might be thinking, how could this area that I'm working in be disrupted? Not everything will go away, but you've got to think about it. Maybe it's a little nerve-wracking to consider that you know there are large swaths of the population where robots may be able to do the work that they do, and are they now expendable? Ken WhiteRight. Akram KhanWhat should we do about them from a public policy standpoint from a human standpoint? You know how do they need to prepare to be able to better earn and provide for their families. Ken WhiteSo the message is it's changing, and in order to compete, you better be ready and be willing. Akram KhanYou've got to be ready and the folks who ignore that fact, whether you're an individual or your company or your country or your region or your culture. You're going to be in trouble. And we see that every day. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Akram Khan. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Akram Khan and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Phil Heavilin](images/phil-heavilin-42-thumb.jpg)
![Accelerating Your Career](images/phil-heavilin-42-thumb.jpg)
Phil Heavilin
Episode 42: May 31, 2016
Accelerating Your Career
As a society, we like to change jobs. Many people change employers to get promoted and earn higher salaries. But what if you want to stay at your job and get promoted? Phil Heavilin is the Executive Director of the Graduate Career Management Center at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. He provides career counseling and coaching to MBA students in a range of fields. Listen in to learn how you can accelerate your career within your organization and earn a promotion.
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Phil Heavilin: Accelerating Your Career TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. A weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, as a society, we like to change jobs. The median tenure for U.S. professionals in their current position is just under four and a half years. Many people changing employers to get promoted and to earn higher salaries. But what about professionals who prefer to stay with their current employer? Those who want to get promoted and play a larger role in their current organization's success. If that describes you, our guest today has advice on what you can do to earn that in-house promotion. Phil Heavilin is the Executive Director of the Graduate Career Management Center at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. He provides career counseling and coaching to MBA students and professionals from a range of fields. He joins us on the podcast today to share advice on how to get noticed and eventually promoted in your current organization. Here's our conversation with Phil Heavilin. Ken WhiteWell, Phil, welcome back to the podcast. We saw you last in January when you were sharing some tips with us about looking at your career at the beginning of the year, and we thought we'd talk to you today about when you're in a situation you're working for an organization, you like the organization, you like the job, but you're not being recognized. You're not getting promoted. Do you hear this a lot in your coaching in your counseling? Phil HeavilinI do, and thanks for having me back. I really enjoy it, and that's exactly right. So we do work with a lot of mid-level managers or even entry-level folks who really enjoy the organization that they're a part of, but they're just maybe they hit a ceiling, something is not moving them forward. And so, hopefully, today we can share a few tips that maybe if you implement within the next couple days or a couple of weeks and maybe you'll see some positive momentum coming your way. Ken WhiteYeah. Great. And you're gonna share four tips with us to sort of accelerate your career, especially again if you if you're in a position and in a company, an organization, and you'd like to stay. So what's tip number one? Phil HeavilinSo tip number one is something I call visualize the accolades. So this is something I actually do myself as well. So we all work on projects, we all do presentations we all have deliverables within our organizations as to what I would ask you to do is before you submit it. I want you to imagine what kind of reaction that you're going to get from your boss, from your colleagues, from your clients based on what you have put together and if it's maybe a reaction where okay, well, this is acceptable. This is good. This will this is a pass. Ask yourself, is that what you want? What kind of reaction do you want? Do you want a wow? This is exactly what I'm looking for more, or you really went above and beyond what I was anticipating. This is incredible. I'm going to share this with my colleagues you know in the industry. Imagine what kind of accolades you want to get for the work that you produce and if it's not what you are anticipating. Go back, make some changes get it to where you think you're going to get that big impact reaction. And if you do that and if make that a regular habit, then you're going to get noticed after a while. Ken WhiteAnd it works doesn't it if you say to yourself I'm going to knock it out of the park with this I'm going to knock it out I'm going to knock it out. And you often do. Phil HeavilinThat's right. And sometimes, I mean, we know when we put just average work out there. Ken WhiteYeah. Phil HeavilinWe all know that, right? And so before you pull the trigger, just hold back, give it another couple hours or a day of work, make those additions that are going to take it to the next level. Ken WhiteYeah. Why don't we do this? Do you think with every project? Phil HeavilinYou know, I think you know many of us are in positions where we're overwhelmed, and it's just nice to get something off your plate right. But remember that every time you deliver something, that has your stamp on it. That belongs to Ken. That belongs to Phil, and that is going to either keep you where you're at, or it's going to actually help you be promoted within your organization. Ken WhiteSo visualize the accolades turn in the work that's going to require people to say that was extraordinary. Phil HeavilinThat's exactly right. Ken WhiteDo that enough times in a row. You're going to stand out. Phil HeavilinYou're going to stand out. Ken WhiteExcellent. Visualize the accolades, what's the, what's step number two, or tip number two. Phil HeavilinSo tip number two is something I call step in to move up, and I think we've all been in scenarios where maybe a project went awfully wrong, or maybe we lost a team member, maybe our boss left us. I remember when I was in high school, I was a cook, and our head chef left us, and so suddenly, I found myself cooking as head chef. Much to the chagrin of our clients. But you know you step in, and you make an impact. You just don't let the bag lay on the floor. So what I would recommend to people is if you're in a situation where maybe you have a loss of resources, don't just stand back on the sideline and put your arms together and think, oh goodness, this is, you know woe is me this is awful. Step in, pick up the work, and make sure that your clients or your colleagues don't feel any different that they don't even know that you've lost your supervisor or you've lost your co-worker. Make it so that they don't even know the difference, and you're going to stand out because most people won't blame you for kind of sitting back, and they'll say, wow, you know this is really rough on you. You have no staff people are gone. No one blames you for just kind of sitting back and maybe complaining, but if you don't do that, if you take this as an opportunity to pick up the torch for the department or the organization and move forward and make sure that your deliverables are there, they're on time, and they're of high quality then when it comes time for a promotion or maybe another position within the company people are going to recognize you for the effort and the good work that you put into that situation. Ken WhiteAnd we've seen this. We've seen people who say the supervisor leaves. The team leader leaves, and someone, for whatever reason, says well, I'll just step up and do it. I'm not even going to announce it I'm just going to do the work. Phil HeavilinThat's right. Ken WhiteAnd then suddenly, you see that person in that role. Phil HeavilinYou do, you do. Ken WhiteAnd they end up with the role. Phil HeavilinIf it's if you know it's a position that you want. And this is your opportunity to have an extended interview. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. Phil HeavilinThis is your time to step in, to move up, to really show your stuff rather than sitting on the sidelines waiting for other things to happen or waiting for them to fill that new position. I recommend stepping in and picking up the torch and making sure that nobody knows any different that the quality work coming out of that department. It's still of high quality, and nobody would know any different. Ken WhiteYou know the extended interview is a great thing to put in your mind's eye. Where do lousy projects tie into this? Sometimes there's a project no one wants to touch but that's an opportunity. Phil HeavilinThat's another opportunity to step in. Absolutely. And there's always those projects that individuals, for whatever reason, might not want to do. It's not very glamorous. But if you're seen as that person who is willing to take on those projects and not and do them and do them well, you're going to stand down in a very positive way. Ken WhiteSo that's step in to move up. Phil HeavilinTo move up. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Phil Heavilin in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level with its certificate in business management program coming up this fall. It's a five-day program for the professional who lacks an MBA or wants to improve on critical business and leadership skills. For more information on the certificate in business management program, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Phil Heavilin on accelerating your career from within. Ken WhiteYour next tip for accelerating your career. Phil HeavilinThe next tip I have is what I call operating on a higher plane. This is really it's about integrity, especially integrity under fire. I give the example of I monitored the career of an individual who is a college president and dealing with a lot of political issues at the organization, and there was some conflict within the board and so on. But she conducted herself in such a way that she demonstrated integrity. She took the criticisms well and so well, in fact, that the community really rallied behind her. The local community that the students. Unfortunately, she was dismissed. Really nothing of her own doing. It was really the climate of this situation. And it was recognized, and no sooner did she end her relationship with the college. She was picked up as president of a bank of a large bank and the bank when she was hired. She asked well, why are you interested in me? I don't have any banking industry. And they said, you know what. We have people who know the industry. What we need from you is the leadership and the integrity that you demonstrated. We need you as a person to lead our organization. So my recommendation to individuals is that no matter how tough it gets within your organization, no matter how overworked you are or maybe criticisms that are coming your way that may not be warranted. Always operate and function in a high level of integrity. Don't lose your cool. Just always maintain that level-headedness because that is going to be recognized regardless of what happens within your organization. You're going to be recognized as someone who is mature and maybe is perhaps ready to be in a different situation. It could be a promotion. It's just maybe the circumstances aren't exactly the way they should be. And so as long as you maintain a high level of integrity, then that's going to be recognized and could potentially turn into another opportunity. Ken WhiteAnd we love to follow people who are poised and professional, and we love to hire people who are poised and professional at the same time, so basically, operate on a higher means take the high road. Phil HeavilinTake the high road. Ken WhiteGreat. Phil HeavilinYou got it. Ken WhiteYour fourth tip. Phil HeavilinThis is one of my favorite tips just because I've seen it played out in so many situations that and it's something I like to do as well, just within higher education, working with students. And to me, it's aggressively promoting others. And so this is really being a client or colleague-centered professional. You'll be that individual who. And it goes beyond just being humble you know being humble to me is kind of deflecting the accolades from others. Taking from tip one. This is just not just deflecting it, but it's actively and proactively going out and recognizing the good works of other people and being that individual who recognizes maybe a project that was delivered on time and it was done really well. You weren't on the team, but you're going to make sure that in a public setting, you're going to recognize that and make sure the individual who's responsible for that project gets the accolades that they deserve. If you're seen as an individual who is promoting others who rally behind other people, and again, going back to your comment about getting behind leaders who take the high road. This is another characteristic that I think we all like to see is someone who's not really that interested in their own career, but they're interested in promoting the good works of other people. But the byproduct of that is that will actually accelerate your own career. Ken WhiteYeah. No doubt, and we hear that concept at wellness. We hear that in servant leadership. It's almost like karma. Right. I mean, you give, you'll receive. If someone doesn't necessarily adopt that type of thought, how can they get started? Because we see many people, especially well, I shouldn't even say younger professionals, but a lot of professionals aren't that way. It is about me, me, me, and I've got to move forward. How do you get started to be that other-centric kind of person? Phil HeavilinThat's a great question, and I think for individuals need to step back and really think about their own behavior, and if they're not already doing that, you know, take some time and think about when was the last time I promoted another individual. When was the last time I recognized one of my colleagues on my team? Maybe it's a competitive environment. It's really all about you know me succeeding over others but really you know that's really counterintuitive. I really recommend to people that just take a moment and think about when was the last time I promoted someone else. And provided that recommendation or, you know, just went back and okay, well, this team member really did something well, but I didn't really acknowledge it and then really make a point within the next week or two to identify an opportunity where you can promote another individual. And I and you for me individually. I get so much good feeling get emotional from doing that. It just feels good promoting other people and soon, so it gives you the good feelings, but also if you're seen as someone who recognizes other people and promotes others, then I mean that's a great quality of leadership, I think. And so when opportunities come up, if you are promoting others, if you're taking the higher plane, if you're stepping in to do projects that nobody wants, then when opportunities come up, your name is going to be move forward as a potential candidate. Ken WhiteYeah. Phil HeavilinYou know when you're seen as that individual who's really out to promote other people? People are love to recognize you as well. And that's really the key, and that's where the career acceleration comes from is when you have what you what you've done is you've created a whole network of advocates for yourself by promoting others, and it's just a terrific feeling it's a great strategy to help you out move up within your organization. Ken WhiteSo in addition to aggressively promoting others operate on that on that higher plane with integrity, step in when available to help move up, and visualize the accolades right expect people to say wow with your work. These are great pieces of advice for people who are within an organization and want to stay within that organization. When someone who is in an organization and they just don't feel they're moving up quickly enough and they meet that frustration, other than these tips, what are some things they can do? Is it a mindset? Is it a discussion with their supervisor? What do you recommend when you have you know people when professionals talk to you about that? Phil HeavilinYou know, when I see that when people make the breakthrough, it's those individuals who engage in that self-reflection because we do get so caught up in the day-to-day of our work, and we think that what we're doing maybe is enough, but if you want to really stand out then you have to start doing things that nobody else is doing. And so these are just a few tips, but there's other things that you can do to differentiate yourself from other people. And until you're ready to make that move to stand out, then you're still going to kind of be stuck in that same role. And so I recommend going through these tips and if you and it doesn't take long and it doesn't take much. It usually just takes that extra 10 percent of effort that helps you be differentiated from other people. So if you implement some of these tips just within the next week or two, I can almost guarantee that you're going to start seeing some activity that and some and some feedback and some action that maybe you didn't see before. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Phil Heavilin, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business has brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Phil Heavilin and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Margaret Liptay](images/margaret-liptay-41-thumb.jpg)
![Fear of Failure](images/margaret-liptay-41-thumb.jpg)
Margaret Liptay
Episode 41: May 24, 2016
Fear of Failure
Failure is something that everyone in the professional world encounters, and how you approach potential failure will have an effect on your professional and personal life. Margaret Liptay is a leadership coach who helps her clients understand and react to failure and the fear of failure.
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Margaret Liptay: Fear of Failure TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Failure it's something every professional encounters, whether it's a lost client, a poor performance review, or a special project that falls flat. Everyone will fail. How you approach potential failure will have a considerable effect on your professional and personal lives. Margaret Liptay is a leadership coach and executive consultant. She helps her clients understand failure and how best to react when faced with a fear of failure. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss something many professionals know all too well a fear of failure. Here's our conversation with Margaret Liptay. Ken WhiteMargaret, welcome back. Thank you for joining us again. You're always out there coaching leaders, and we love to have you here to talk about some of the things you share with leaders and today, we're going to talk about fear of failure. So, first of all, welcome back. Thanks for being here. Margaret LiptayThank you, Ken. I'm delighted to be back with you. Ken WhiteSo one of the things that you come across often is fear of failure. What does that look like? How do you define that? Margaret LiptayWell, it's actually rather difficult to define, but we all know it. A fear of failure is more about the feelings that you have from the failure than actually the failure itself. And let me give you an example. Imagine if you would a toddler. A toddler is just learning how to walk. But first, it learned how to crawl, and then it picked itself up and held onto the side of the table, and it wobbled, and it was getting such praise, and everyone was clapping. Yay, it's terrific. You're terrific. And next thing you know, the toddler falls down, and you still wave, and you still clap, and you're still so happy for the baby. And then the next thing you know, the baby picks itself up again and goes a little further and goes a little further. And next thing you know, the baby is walking, and you're cheering, and it falls down again, but you're still cheering. And next thing you know, it's running, and you're still cheering. The point I'm trying to make is that fear of failure is something that, over time, develops inside of us. If it wasn't something that developed inside of us, obviously, none of us would ever learn to walk because we would be afraid. The nice thing about a toddler is that they're in an environment where they haven't had any bad experiences, yet they haven't had anything awful happen to them, yet their brains are still formulating. They know their parents love them. They're cheering them on, and off they go. Ultimately most of us learn to walk and walk really well and then run and then ride a bike and do all those other things. So the point of the fear of failure is not really worrying about the failure. It's worrying about the feelings that you get from failing. And this is where people get very hung up. This is what people are afraid of. They're afraid of the shame of failure. They're afraid of feeling small. They're afraid of feeling weak. They're afraid of being outed. They actually think I'm a fraud. I'm going to be outed if I fail. They don't see failing as learning. They see failing as being diminished as an assault to their very dignity, the very person. That is not what failing is. Failing is learning. Failing is building a building block to success. So the point of fear of failing is that the reason that we have these various emotions, if you will, is because, over time, our experiences, our family, our hereditary, our brain chemistry dictate how we will react under certain circumstances. And I quote that those feelings your narrative. And then I take it a little further. The narrative is really the critic in your head, and that critic in your head lives with you if you're having experiences, if you're growing, if you're developing, you're always going to carry that critic in your head with you. Ken WhiteSo when you deal with professionals, if you had to guess, say a percentage, what percentage of professional people struggle with fear of failure? Margaret LiptayAlmost everybody struggles with fear of failure. In fact, I think it would be abnormal not to. The point is if you think you're perfect and you can never fail you've just doomed yourself to failure. Perfection takes you down the road to failure. If you do not allow yourself a chink in your armor if you do now, do not allow yourself the ability to say I'm wrong. If you do not allow yourself to be viewed by others as having perhaps a moment of vulnerability, then indeed, you are somewhat doomed. Ken WhiteWhat are some of the career derails associated with fear of failing? Margaret LiptayWell, you know, there are really so many and so many people behave around failure, and that shame and that critic differently, but lots of things can happen. Procrastination is one. Low ambition is another. Acting out in an inappropriate way is another. You know it's sort of that you know fight or flight syndrome and sometimes you fight and sometimes you should have fled. There are other symptoms, such as you you lose your sense of communication, appropriate communication, you want to be involved in the blame game, you want to drag others down for your own benefit. You start to behave in ways that you wouldn't normally behave and wouldn't be what you would normally do if your critic wasn't hijacking you. Once your critic hijacks you, you're potentially going down a road where you're you're not acting as you would normally in a rational state. Ken WhiteYou deal with professionals and coach professionals all over the country. Can you give a couple of examples or stories of leaders who've struggled with fear of failure? Margaret LiptaySure, I'd like to give you sort of two extremes, and let me start with one, and we'll call the first person. Let's call her Joan, and Joan was a very high-performing, high-achieving leader. She was invited into a group that were also very high-achieving and high performing. The group reported to a gentleman by the name of Robert Taylor, and they happened to be a group of 10 men, and these men were called the forts f o r t s friends of Robert Taylor, and it became kind of a joke in retrospect that probably wasn't the wisest thing, but it became kind of a joke. So this woman, Joan, was invited into the group, and she accepted that invitation readily because they were viewed as very innovative and creative. So sometime after she joined the group, I had a conversation with her, and I said Joani how is it going. How are you enjoying the group? And she said you know Margaret, I'm basically just staying below the radar because then I won't get hurt. I said what do you mean? What you mean you won't get hurt? And she said I'm afraid there will be pain if I step out of my comfort zone. So I thought about that, and I thought, what is going on there? And I realized as I dialogued with her that she was afraid that in this group where she was definitely a minority that she would make a mistake, suggest something that was incorrect or inappropriate, and she would feel shame she would feel embarrassed, she would feel weak in her rendition she would feel hurt and pain. That was very real to her, Ken, very real to her. So she kind of derailed herself because she did not live up to the expectations of herself or of the group. She wasn't contributing to full capacity. So that took some work. We had to really work on that to get her to be brave and say what difference does it make? So what if you have a little chink in your armor? They have chinks in their armor too, and to get her to put it in a frame of reference and a reframing that she can understand and that she could live with. And it worked out fine after that, but it took a little work. Ken WhiteI'll bet. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Margaret Liptay in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation on fear of failure with leadership coach Margaret Liptay. Margaret LiptaySo the other example, let's call the person Mark. Mark was once again very high achiever. Tons of success, tons of success stories, highly promoted, highly elevated consistently, and had a very high opinion of himself. He was invited to join a startup. And off he went to the startup and he was very close to the CEO when the startup grew over a year or so. But as it grew the CEO started to bring other people into the equation as you would imagine because they were so successful. And thankfully because of a lot of the work that Mark did. However, Mark started to feel a little bit isolated. He started to feel that the CEO was paying more attention to the other individuals. If the door was closed, he got a little upset about that. What is the CEO doing with these other people? Why aren't I part of that story, and little by little, because of Mark's impression of himself, his feeling of such superiorocity superiority excuse me, and grandiosity, he felt that he should be involved in everything. So the ramifications and the derailers for him started with he started micromanaging. Then he started talking about his CEO to his direct reports. Then he started criticizing his CEO outside of the firm. Then he started really kind of having some behaviors that would never be the way Mark would normally behave. But he felt isolated. He felt his own kind of pain. He also felt he should have been the top dog, and he was number one, and he was the best, and he was the most superior. And why were these other people getting all the attention of the CEO? It was almost childlike. So bottom line is, guess what. His contract came up for renewal, and his contract was not renewed. He was terminated, and the CEO reminded him that he thought his behaviors had changed dramatically from when he was hired. Now, what happened there? He had such a sense of success and such a sense of grandiosity that he didn't realize that it was okay to fail. It was okay to share. He didn't he succumbed to micromanaging. So that's sort of the story about how your behavior can change how those derailers, how these new behaviors come into play when you let your critic take over. His critic, Mark's critic, was saying you're not good enough. The CEO doesn't care about you anymore. You're not important anymore. And he had such a high elevated impression of himself. He couldn't imagine that. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayAnd the other one, Joanie. She just felt she wanted to stay below the radar. Play it safe. Not have any pain and that her words would not be honored. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayAnd so both of them had to work very hard at it. So with both of them, I ask them questions like, so what did you do well, what would you do differently, and what would you say that you did that really was not the best? And when I presented those questions to Mark he said I can't answer any of those questions. The reason I can't answer any of those questions is because I did nothing wrong. I was the best thing that ever happened to that firm and they didn't realize it. Ken WhiteWoah. Margaret LiptaySo that's pretty hard to coach around. But Joanie, on the other hand, she wanted to know how she could break through this barrier and get rid of her fear and her pain, and that's what we worked on. But those were both real. Joanie's potential derailers, and in Mark's case, there were absolute derailers. Ken WhiteBut you touched on some, especially in Joanie's cases. So many people have some self-doubt. I mean, it's probably typical and even healthy at times, right? You just wonder Margaret LiptayCorrect. Ken Whiteam I in the right spot? Can I do this, or what have you? How do you deal with the self-doubt so it doesn't lead to a fear of failure? Margaret LiptayCorrect, and the good news about self-doubt is that it actually makes you edgier sometimes. You work a little bit harder. So I think that we should embrace self-doubt. I think we should embrace the critic. I should I think we should say to the critic you know we know you're there. I'm aware of the fact that you're there, but I've got my own story to tell. You have your story that you want to tell me. But I have my own story to tell and my story isn't I can't. My story is I will, and you have to reframe the story. You have to work on what that really story is all about that the critic is telling you. Is it valid? Is it not valued? Is it old news? Is it reminding you of something you did you know 10 15 20 years ago? And also you have to reframe the whole concept of failure. Failure is not is not an awful thing. Failure and being slightly imperfect is probably the best thing that can ever happened to a successful person because too much success and too much perfection or your belief in perfection will only lead you down another road. So I maintain self-doubt can be a good thing when it's managed. And when you push yourself beyond that self-doubt and when you move out of your comfort zone and you give yourself stretch opportunities, and you say I can, not I can't, or I won't, which is what the critic may be saying to you. Ken WhiteAnd can people do that on their own? Margaret LiptayYes, they can. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayYes, they can. It's nice to have help. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayIt's nice to have somebody to talk to. It's nice to observe yourself. It's nice to keep a journal. It's nice to know your own body. It's nice to know when your brain and your body are starting to react negatively. So I would, one thing I would certainly advise people to do was when they see themselves getting hijacked by their critic or by their shame or by their sense of they might fail. Have a conversation with yourself. Sit down, write down in your journal how you feel. Write down what you're going to do differently and when you do have an instance where you've stretched yourself. Ask yourself what did I do well, what did I do not so well, and what will I do differently. Because on the road to success, we always need to do something differently. We can't just let success allow us to be stagnant. So we're always having some self-doubt. We're always pushing ourselves on to be better. Ken WhiteAnd with your clients, do you encourage journaling because it seems to me I know a lot of successful people, and I find out many of them do that. Margaret LiptayYes, yes, I do because I viewed journaling as storytelling, and everybody likes to tell stories. But this is a story that you tell yourself about yourself. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptaySo you can learn from it, just like if you tell me a story, I always take have a takeaway from it. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptaySo if you can write a story about yourself and then reflect on that story and then put some of the principles that you learned and plus ask yourself those tough questions, you know what did I do well, what did I do not so well, and what will I do differently. I think that can be very revealing and very self-reflective and also give you the energy to move forward. Ken WhiteWhat can companies and organizations do to create a culture where fear of failing is okay? Margaret LiptayWell, that's a key question. And remember the two examples I gave? I think we could argue that in both of those cases probably, the firms could have done a little bit of a better job in how they conducted their own behavior and how they handled their own culture. So what a firm should do is have a culture where failure is accepted. Now you know we don't want people running around making mistakes that are intentional or saboteurs or whatever. That's not what we're talking about. But what you want to do is encourage people to experiment in a safe way, in a cost-effective way, if you will. If you make a mistake, it's okay. That's the way we're all going to learn. So if a firm can do that, if a firm can review its successes and its failures and put them in the context of a failure is a building block to success. I think that would be very helpful. If a firm can keep track, if you will, of where the failures come from. Then, of course, they can identify patterns. And, of course, firms should not engage in the blame game, and they shouldn't hone in on the who they should hone in on the what if there is a failure. But the more successful firms that are out there and the more people that we now look to as really successful in, the Bill Gates's and the Elon Musk's, all of these people they've experimented along the way they've allowed their people to experiment. They live by experimentation, and experimentation leads to failure. Failure leads to success. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayIt's that simple, so I think that firms can really do a lot to change the perspective and how people feel about failure. If the firm's culture is one of understanding and accepting failure and using it to learn, then individuals will then realize I'm failing. I may have failed here, but then I'm also learning and growing. Ken WhiteIt's like some of the entrepreneurs we've talked to on the podcast. They say failure is fine. Just fail fast and move on. Margaret LiptayThat's right. Exactly. Ken WhiteLearn from it and keep going. Margaret LiptayAnd fail small. Don't bet the ranch. Ken WhiteSo last question if someone listening is really struggling with this. What would you say is the best step one to kind of conquer this and deal with this fear of failure? Margaret LiptayThe best step one is really to identify it to understand you're not alone. We all have it. You're not in this as a single entity and then befriend that critic, you know. Don't let the critic manage you. You manage it, and I know that sounds somewhat complex, but it's really not. It's sort of the fear of the unknown. Forget about the shame. Forget about feeling weak. Forget about all of that. Just convert the conversation. Say I'm not, I won't, but I will. And that will make a big difference. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Margaret Liptay, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Margaret Liptay, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Priscilla Shumway](images/priscilla-shumway-40-thumb.jpg)
![Real Women, Real Leaders](images/priscilla-shumway-40-thumb.jpg)
Priscilla Shumway
Episode 40: May 17, 2016
Real Women, Real Leaders
What makes successful women leaders successful? Priscilla Shumway is the co-editor of the book Real Women, Real Leaders, and she chats with us about the qualities that women leaders possess and tips for women looking to gain leadership experience today.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. What makes successful women leaders successful? Well, that's a question our guest wanted answered, so she and a colleague identified a select group of successful women in leadership positions and asked them to share the details regarding their leadership journeys. Those stories, along with an examination of leadership competencies, became a book Real Women Real Leaders surviving and succeeding in the business world. The book has not only become a hit with emerging female leaders but also with men who are supporting a wife, sister, daughter, or female friend whose goal is successful leadership. Priscilla Shumway is co-editor of Real Women, Real Leaders. She visited the College of William & Mary recently for the Women's Leadership Summit and Stock Pitch Competition. Prior to speaking with the attendees, she sat down with us to discuss what she and others have learned from the book. Here's our conversation with Priscilla Shumway. Ken WhitePriscilla, thank you for joining us appreciate you taking the time to share your expertise with us today on the podcast. Priscilla ShumwayMy pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Ken WhiteYou have a very interesting book, a topic that's covered, but your approach is very different. Tell us about the book and why this unique approach. Priscilla ShumwayYes, thank you. So the name of the book is Real Women, Real Leaders, and the subtitle is Surviving and Succeeding in the Business World. It's co-edited by myself and Kathy Hurley, and the whole vision for this particular book in order to sort of stand out from other women in leadership books is to really look at how do women differ in their leadership styles from men and, therefore, how can we strengthen the areas that we are perhaps a little weaker in and then how can we maximize the strengths that we have. So what we did was we started with a research study that was done back in 2012/2013 by an organization in Utah, Zenger Folkman Leadership Group. They had done a research project for Harvard Business Review. They had identified 16 leadership competencies, interviewed over 7,300 people all around the world. And they found that women outscore men on 12 of those 16 leadership competencies. So we went out then and created a process where we found 24 women who are leaders in their fields. All of the women are different ethnicities different ages. They come from different industries and backgrounds, and we asked them to write their own personal journey to leadership. We gave them a series of guiding questions. We gave them the results of this leadership profile and asked them what they felt their top five were. And so that was the genesis of the book was how do you tell the stories of leading women, and how do we create a compelling version of what we want women to think about in the world of work? Ken WhiteRight now, you, in the book, you've got eight particular headers that you really dive into. But before we talk about that, you mentioned early on what the differences in the styles between men and women. What were some of the takeaways that you've experienced in doing your research? Priscilla ShumwaySo the interesting thing is that for women, women typically are more interested in motivating other people, developing other people, very high integrity and honesty, a lot of teamwork and collaboration, very interested in supporting and building relationships. Kathy and I have worked Kathy Hurley and I have worked together in various different educational publishing industries for many, many years. And to give you an example, back in the late 80s early 90s, in the educational software industry, there were very few women in leadership. In that industry, it was very male-dominated. So Kathy and two other of her female friends who were executives at that point decided to begin a mentoring program for other women in the industry, and they called themselves the DOLS D O L S called the dirty old ladies of software, and they started out they had maybe 25 or 30 women, and we would get together at various different conventions and meetings and have dinner, but we always encouraged ourselves to bring someone new from the industry another woman bring them to dinner. So it became a networking opportunity, and networking then grew into mentorship. At this point, the DOLS is still ongoing, and they have over 400 members, and the men in the industry have become very envious. Ken WhiteYeah. Priscilla ShumwayAnd they've tried to get these things starting, so now I think they have what they call themselves the DOGS, the dirty old guys of software. Ken WhiteThat's great. Priscilla ShumwaySo I think that's one of the strengths that women have is building relationships, supporting each other, helping to develop each other. But on the other hand, and you will read that in many of the essays, women can also be very catty about each other, and Ken, if they feel threatened by another woman, can often undermine them. And so that's also something that we have found is prevalent with women in leadership, and so we're trying to help people to overcome that. Ken WhiteYeah. Now some of the women who've written essays that the leaders you've talked to any common threads in the you said it's a pretty diverse group but any commonalities among them in terms of leaders or how they got there. Priscilla ShumwayYes absolutely. So we have the former governor of North Carolina, Beverly Perdue. We have a young woman who is the only female African-American pastry chef in the Hall of Fame for pastry chefs. Ken WhiteWow. Priscilla ShumwayAnd yet many of the women's commonalities were that they came from very poor backgrounds, many of them were the first in their families to go to college. But the commonality is that there was someone early on in their life who supported them, who saw something in them as a young girl who said I believe in you. You can do something, who supported them. And many, many times, it was a family member, it was a grandfather, or a grandmother, or an aunt, and as well it was someone in their education, a teacher, a principal, someone who believed in them and who supported them and propelled them on. Ken WhiteYeah. And even if that relationship is no longer taking place, they still remember that. Priscilla ShumwayExactly. Ken WhiteBut you know, men would have had sort of the same thing. They would have had someone in their corner. What is it about the female executive that makes that so important? Why did they? What's so special about that? Priscilla ShumwayWell, I think because it's been harder and harder for women to take leadership roles or to be given leadership roles or to be given the opportunity to lead that anytime they can be supported and mentored is going to be important. And because they themselves realize the importance of that, they're more apt to realize the value of doing it for other people. One of the recent research articles that I quote in my section in the book is that the Girl Scouts did a review of middle school girl scouts and asked them if they themselves considered themselves a leader, and a very low percentage of the girls considered themselves a leader. And then, they were asked what's the barrier why do you not want to be a leader. And at that age, at the middle school age. They were afraid that their friends would not like them. Ken WhiteOh wow. Priscilla ShumwayAnd so that's another issue that we talk about here is, starting at a very young age. How do you encourage young girls to realize that there is a role for leadership? There are perils, and yes, always, there will be people who try to shoot you down. Ken WhiteYeah. Priscilla ShumwayBut how do we overcome that? Ken WhiteInteresting. Priscilla ShumwayWe'll continue our discussion with Priscilla Shumway in just a minute. Shumway's visit to William & Mary and her appearance on the podcast was made possible by the Women's Leadership Summit and Stock Pitch Competition organized by the Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance through its two student clubs Smart Woman Securities and Women in Business. The center provides hands-on learning for undergraduate students from all majors. Other opportunities at the Boehly Center include a fellows program, study abroad, mentorship programs, and more. If you'd like to learn more, go to boehlycenter.com. That's b o e h l y center.com. Now back to our conversation with the co-editor of Real Women, Real Leaders, Priscilla Shumway. Ken WhiteAnd some of the elements you have in the book one really jumped out at me. A leader displays high integrity and honesty. It seems when I'm teaching, especially with corporate groups, the whole idea of authenticity and honesty is very important to people today, more so than it even was a few years ago. What did you find in that particular element what struck you? Priscilla ShumwayYes, and that was one of the very highest that women outscored men on was integrity and honesty, and we really didn't get into the why of that. So I'll give you my guess. My hypothesis. I believe that women are not so much strategic and goal-oriented for the long term, so they are more in the immediate of what can I do in this moment to be morally correct to do what's right, to support other people, to build relationships, to make sure that my team is working well. Men, on the other hand, where they score very highly in this particular research was developing strategic perspectives. So I think that perhaps there's a correlation there that in order to advance and move forward, sometimes the integrity or the honesty might take a backseat to that. That's just a hypothesis. Ken WhiteYeah, interesting. Interesting. Inspires and motivates others. What did you learn in terms of that particular element? Priscilla ShumwayThat was a big theme for every woman's essay in here was the understanding of how important that is. And again, I think it goes back to being aware of those folks who had inspired them. Who had supported them and realizing how important that was that they wouldn't be where they are now. Secretary of State for the state of Montana, former Assistant Secretary of Education for the United States. They wouldn't be where they are now if it weren't for other people who inspired them, who motivated them, and who supported them. So I think there's a sense of giving back. Ken WhiteYeah. Priscilla ShumwayThere's a real sense of nurturance that's innate with women. And perhaps it's biological. It's anthropological. But I think that that is something that is a little more prevalent in women. And so, therefore, they're more willing to mentor and develop other people. Ken WhiteSomebody help me, and I'm gonna pass it on, right? It's my turn now. Priscilla ShumwayThat's correct. That's correct. Ken WhiteVery interesting. Takes initiative that's interesting because, you know, in talking to a lot of people who study that the way a man is seen in terms of initiative is different than a way a woman can be seen. What were your takeaways from that takes initiative pillar? Priscilla ShumwaySo it's interesting that you ask that because I looked at the William & Mary Women's Leadership Summit website. And they have several advertisements videos from YouTube of current advertisers, and this whole push of women and kids young girls' vision of what being a woman is. And one of the ads, I believe it was for Always, which is a feminine hygiene product. They said you know, if a man takes initiative and takes control, the word that's assumed for him is boss. When a woman takes initiative and tries to take control, she's seen as bossy. And so there's sort of a different persona, I guess you would say, in corporate America right now. And so taking initiative for women is more and more women are realizing to use Sheryl Sandberg's we have to lean in. We have to sit up at the table, and we have to do it whether somebody is looking or not. And that's really what taking initiative is all about is seeing what needs to be done and getting it done happening. Creating a team whether or not you're being asked to do it whether it's being required of you or not. And women were scored very, very highly on taking initiative. Ken WhiteDrive for results. What's that about? Priscilla ShumwayYeah. So the women the essays in here women were very conscientious about feeling that they needed to show that they were worthy of what they did. So they were very goal oriented. They said that they needed to set a goal and show prove that they could do it. And part of it, many of them felt, was because they were a woman, they were judged by a higher standard. They had to do more to prove themselves in order to get the next promotion, et cetera. And I'm hoping that as our world changes and more and more lead women are leaders that women won't have to drive quite so hard or feel as though they have to drive harder for results in order to be considered competent. Ken WhiteHow much has it changed? Because as you're saying that, I'm thinking, boy, are we not there yet? For crying out loud, are we not there yet, and maybe we're not? But it has it. How have you seen it change from beginning of your career? My career today it's a different environment but are women progressing as leaders? Priscilla ShumwayYes, I think we are. I think for sure we are, and I think part of it is that more and more corporations are realizing the value of having women in leadership roles. We quote a lot of different statistics in the book about the companies that have more women on their board of directors. For example are, making more money having better customer service scores. I mean, it just goes on and on and on, so people are paying attention to that. And that's not to say that they're putting a woman on the board just so they can have a woman on the board. But I think that it is more apparent in the world today. And I think also because of technology, and because we can work virtually, there is more opportunity for women, especially for women who want to also have families for women and men who want to have families the ability to work from home so that you can be your soccer coach at four o'clock. You can still log in at eight o'clock and do a little extra work after the dad has put the kids to sleep or the mom or whatever, so it's not just a female issue. I think it's a male and a female issue. So virtual workers. Technology. There's a lot of things that are in play in our global society that are helping with that issue. Ken WhiteYeah, it's interesting. You know we have an online MBA now. A fully online MBA and one of the biggest demographic pieces interested in the online MBA is the woman who just stopped work for a couple of years to raise the family. They don't want to feel out of it. Well, this is perfect. I can stay home. I'll pick up my MBA, and you know what a great opportunity, so technology is definitely playing a role in a lot of different ways. Priscilla ShumwayYes. Ken WhiteWhen you talk to people about your book, and it's so interesting the whole approach you've taken. What's the feedback you hear? What do people say that they like about it or what they've learned about? Priscilla ShumwaySo what we hear over and over again is that people love to read the stories. They're not so much interested in the research. There's a lot of hard facts out there about women in leadership. But we learn so well when we understand other people's stories. And so the book, really, I have often told people I kind of view it as a bathroom book. It's not a book that you're going to pick up and read from cover to cover. It's more a book that you can jump in and out of. If you find an essay or a person that might be of interest to you, you might jump in and read that. Jump back and forth in the book. We also have found that people are really interested in the appendix. There's a lot of resources in the appendix. Many people have said that that has been of huge value to them as well. So I think that it's the stories that resonate the most, and for many women to hear that in this particular research study, we outscored men on 12 of the 16. It sort of validates what they are already doing on a daily basis in their world of work. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Priscilla Shumway, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Priscilla Shumway, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Karen Griffith Gryga](images/karen-griffith-gryga-39-thumb.jpg)
![Helping Female Founders Succeed](images/karen-griffith-gryga-39-thumb.jpg)
Karen Griffith Gryga
Episode 39: May 10, 2016
Helping Female Founders Succeed
Women are founding more companies than ever—yet only 3% of venture capital is invested in female-led businesses. Karen Griffith Gryga is an investor and venture capitalist, and she helps female founders through her initiative Dreamit Athena, helping them increase the probability of raising capital. We discuss women in business, her successful Dreamit Athena initiative, and more.
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Karen Griffith Gryga: Helping Female Founders Succeed TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. In the startup space, women are founding one-third of all companies. Yet only 3 percent of venture capital is invested in female founder CEOs. Well, Karen Griffith Gryga plans to change that. An experienced venture capitalist, investor, and entrepreneur, she founded Dreamit Athena, which focuses on assisting female founders by among other things helping them increase the probability of raising capital for their initiatives. Gryga visited William & Mary recently when the Mason School of Business and the Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance hosted the Women's Leadership Summit and Stock Pitch Competition. As the summit was taking place, Gryga joined us on the podcast to discuss women in business and her successful Dreamit Athena initiative. Here's our conversation with the founder of Dreamit Athena, Karen Griffith Gryga. Ken WhiteWell, Karen, thank you for joining us. A big day you're very busy. First of all, William & Mary is your alma mater. So welcome back. It's always nice to come back, I suppose. Karen Griffith GrygaAbsolutely. Ken WhiteYeah. Karen Griffith GrygaI'm so happy to be here. Ken WhiteAnd thank you for participating in this weekend. Just a great event from top to bottom. Karen Griffith GrygaYeah, absolutely. Ken WhiteAnd it's been we're recording it's 3 o'clock on Saturday, so you've had time to interact with some of the students and some of the attendees, what's sort of the vibe of the conference so far. Karen Griffith GrygaI think everybody is excited. Excited to have this peer network that they can expand upon to not only validate what they're doing but to have other parties to interact with. Ken WhiteYeah. Karen Griffith GrygaAnd to hear explicitly about other people's focuses and initiatives, it's just it's a very expansive day, gets everyone thinking. Ken WhiteAnd you can feel the buzz and the vibe as you just walk through the hallways. Karen Griffith GrygaYeah, it's a great energy. Ken WhiteYeah, very exciting. So tell us about Dreamit. Karen Griffith GrygaAbsolutely. Dreamit is both an accelerator and a fund. Dreamit was established in 2008 by three serial entrepreneurs. Our entire team is made up of entrepreneurs and being the third most established accelerator in the country. We've launched two hundred and twenty companies since 2008. Our focus is on technology companies, and we have specific areas of interest within that, which include healthcare, education technology as well as our program for female founders called Dreamit Athena. Ken WhiteYeah, let's talk about Dreamit Athena. It ties in perfectly with this weekend and what we want to talk about today. Karen Griffith GrygaSo Dreamit Athena is a program I founded to specifically address the needs that female founders have in order to increase the probability of them raising capital for their initiative. Some of the interesting statistics in the industry is that three percent of venture capital is invested in female founders, CEOs. Ken WhiteThree. Karen Griffith GrygaThree percent. Ken WhiteWow. Karen Griffith GrygaAnd females are founding one-third of all companies. In addition, only 12 percent of VC-backed teams have women on their executive management teams. You couple this with the fact that studies have shown when you have diversity on the executive management team, companies are more profitable and less capital invested. It's just something that not only doesn't make sense from a gender perspective. It just doesn't make economic sense. Ken WhiteRight. Karen Griffith GrygaSo there is a massive economic opportunity out there. And so, I wanted to formulate a program that addressed some of the particular gaps that exist to help the female founders raise capital. Ken WhiteAnd right before we were recording, you're talking about sort of pillars and areas that make up the program. Can you tell us about those? Karen Griffith GrygaAbsolutely. So I deal there is a lot of research out there on why this gap exists. I believe some of it has merit. Some of it is not valid at all. So I synthesized the research and came out with what I hypothesized to be the real obstacles, and I came up with these four pillars. Two were structural pillars. The first is access to role models. So if you look at popular media, the press, when they're talking about founding CEOs and CTOs and CMOs, it's usually male. And in fact, a little-known fact that I found to be shocking when I discovered it is the fact that even though women have owned businesses since the colonial times here in the states, women cannot have their own line of credit for a business until the credit Act of 1972. Prior to that act, either your father or your husband had to sign the line of credit. Ken WhiteThat's amazing. Karen Griffith GrygaIt's mindblowing. Ken WhiteYou didn't know that. Karen Griffith GrygaI didn't know that. Ken WhiteYou had to about fall out of your chair when you heard that. Karen Griffith GrygaI did, and you know, all this has been an eye-opening experience for me. You know my background has been completely nontraditional. I started programming computers in the 70s, and my approach to the world has always been one of meritocracy. You do a good job. Good things will happen. Ken WhiteRight. Karen Griffith GrygaAnd there's certain truth to that. But when you look at these statistics, there's just these differences that need to be bridged until we get to the point where it is kind of an even ground. So this whole exercise has been interesting to me because it's not in my orientation to carry that gender banner. I mean, I started Athena last year, so this is a new initiative for me. But when you look at the statistics and the facts. So role models is really important. And the fact is I bring you know like I said earlier, CEOs, CMOs, CTOs people that are experts in branding and customer acquisition and financial modeling all women to build a network of role models. That that my entrepreneurs can access, look up to, read about that are that are basically, you know, guiding light posts for them. Ken WhiteCritical. Karen Griffith GrygaCritical. Ken WhiteYeah. Karen Griffith GrygaSecond pillar is access to capital. We're fortunate today there's a lot more funds are specifically focused on investing in female founders than ever before. And as I said earlier, it's all about economics. I mean, it really is. But in addition to specifically taking my teams on a road trip to meet with these investors and coaching them on how to raise capital, we did a lot of research into traditional VC firms that have backed female founders, which shows a propensity to at least you know contemplate and potentially invest in female founders. Ken WhiteSure, sure. Karen Griffith GrygaSo those are the two structural issues that we addressed explicitly. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Karen Griffith Gryga in just a minute. Gryga's visit to William & Mary and her appearance on the podcast was made possible by the Women's Leadership Summit and Stock Pitch Competition organized by the Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance through its two student clubs, smart woman securities and women in business. The center provides hands-on learning for undergraduate students from all majors. Other opportunities at the Boehly Center include a fellows program, study abroad in Singapore, mentorship programs, and much more. If you'd like to learn more, go to boehlycenter.com. That's B O E H L Y center.com. Now back to our conversation with the founder of Dreamit Athena, Karen Griffith Gryga. Karen Griffith GrygaThe two other pillars. I kinda call a little bit more personality based with, which is a dangerous way to put it. But you know, women tend to have a framework that's very female. Right. Ken WhiteSure. Karen Griffith GrygaAnd it's just kind of reality that our minds work differently, which is a good thing. But it has to be explicitly understood. So the third pillar which is the first. The personality trait the popular press likes to call it the confidence gap. I call it the bravado gap. So the most straightforward example for this is HP had an initiative to promote women into their executive ranks, and what they found out was when they put out a job that had ten qualifications, men apply when they had six, and women applied when they had 10. Ken WhiteWow. Karen Griffith GrygaSo a lot of this with my entrepreneurs was educating them on this propensity to do this. Ken WhiteYes. Karen Griffith GrygaAnd then having explicit action plans to address it. So we instituted what we called the 60 percent rule. So when you're 60 percent ready, you go for it. Now that's a very well-understood concept in the innovation the startup space because, you know, we always do MVP right. Minimal viable product to get out in the market and test. You have to, you know, put that MVP concept together with this 60 percent rule just to make sure that the female founders are putting themselves out there aggressively earlier. Ken WhiteSure. Karen Griffith GrygaAnd kind of coupling with this bravado gap is the fact that I found with my entrepreneurs that they're fabulous at their elevator pitches, right? There is an elevator pitch about the company. There's an elevator pitch for the investors. There is an elevator pitch for business development. Fabulous. When they go to talk about themselves, horrible, horrible. So we did a lot of explicit coaching around that. And the final and fourth pillar, which is people always react to in surprising ways, is the concept of multitasking. So women are very strong multitaskers which is a good thing. However, we tend to take on too much. So it's the concept of multitasking has to be you don't have to do everything even though you can do it. Should you do it? And what can you explicitly carve off for someone else to do so you can focus on the strategic decision-making to build your business? So that's what we've put together. I've had an 80 percent success rate with my teams raising following capital, so that's dramatically better than the industry average. So I won't represent that I have all the answers, but it seems to be working. Ken WhiteWhat I find fascinating is the PCC about the elevator pitch. You know, in the higher education industry, I think of admissions. The folks who are out there they're the sales reps. Boy, are they good, especially the women, and I'm generalizing at the pitch. They can sell the school. They can sell the program ask them to tell you about their career what they want to do. It's almost a shutdown. So it's wrong. What causes that? In your experience, what do you think has led to that? I can give an elevator pitch, but I'm not as effective as talking about my abilities for young women. Karen Griffith GrygaWell, there's a lot of dynamics in that question. Part of that is, you know, women tend to be very team-oriented and collaborative by nature. We tend to be less disposed to take credit for things, so that, I think, is part of it. I think part of it is unconscious bias, right? There's these, you know, society norms on when a man presents himself a certain way, it's aggressive and assertive, and when a woman does the same thing, it's not seen as a positive representation. These weird dynamics. Ken WhiteYeah. Karen Griffith GrygaIt's a lot of history, a lot of cultures that are just kind of ingrained, and it's, you know, in this unconscious bias is on the part of men and women. Ken WhiteYeah. Karen Griffith GrygaIt's nothing. It's very complex. Ken WhiteYeah. So what kind of training, what kind of advice do you give the women you work with on conquering that or improving a little bit on that? Karen Griffith GrygaWe practice. We practice. I have, you know I, out of the blue, I surprise them, and I'm like, give me your elevator pitch. And inevitably, they do a terrible job. And I say, well, what about this and this and this that you've done? And we just iterate and explicitly practice, and it's like anything else, you know, with Dreamit, our whole focus is getting our companies out in the marketplace. Me, at least. So one of the things we love to do is send our entrepreneurs out on the street. Right, so the first time they do it, they're like so awkward walking up to all these people and trying to talk to them. But by day two three, they're very comfortable. The same is true with the personal elevator pitch. The first couple of times you give it, it's very uncomfortable, but then the more you do it, the more comfortable you get about it, and the more natural cadence develops, and people develop a style. It just requires explicit thought and practice. Ken WhiteWhat are some of the positive things you're seeing, what gets you excited about dealing with the women you're dealing with, and some of the results you're seeing? Karen Griffith GrygaYou know, these teams are smart, and they're doing some really cool stuff. I mean, my passion is the entrepreneurial world. And so my passion is both with the male entrepreneurs as well as the women entrepreneurs, but they're doing, you know, one of my team is developing what the first disposable pregnancy test. So which is kind of interesting because you think about, say, it's both a sustainability issue and a privacy issue. And so this disposable nature of it is really empowering. I have another team that's developing a device for women's safety where it's far that could be a necklace or attached to a purse, and if they're in a compromised situation, they press a button, and it calls family and friends and notifies people both it can have an over alarm to it or it can be in silent mode and it notifies people of the situation. In addition, they have kind of a peer-to-peer information network where they're crowdsourcing danger zones to warn people. Ken WhiteYeah. Karen Griffith GrygaThe teams are is doing really, really great stuff. And it's nice to see that some of these challenges that being an entrepreneur is the best of the beans and the worst. It's really hard. But it's like the best and worst all at once. And if I can help them remove some obstacles, it's all good. Ken WhiteDoes it take? I'm thinking we have a young woman listening. Does it take any type of a personality? Does it take certain traits that she should have, or is it more about the idea? Karen Griffith GrygaThe idea is 1 percent execution is 99 percent. The personality traits are a passion to pursue, persistence because, you know it's one of my favorite exercise as a VC is to pull out the original business plan for a very successful investment and have a good belly laugh. Ken WhiteNo doubt. Karen Griffith GrygaIt never looks like that. So it's a winding journey, so you need persistence, you need empathy because you need to understand your target market, your target customer, and you need to be willing to go through walls to make it happen. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Karen Griffith Gryga of Dream it Athena, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Karen Griffith Gryga and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Tim Dunn](images/tim-dunn-38-thumb.jpg)
![Doing Good and Doing Well](images/tim-dunn-38-thumb.jpg)
Tim Dunn
Episode 38: May 3, 2016
Doing Good and Doing Well
Tim Dunn has spent his career as an investment professional and decided to start giving back. He's on the podcast today to talk about why you should do good for the world as well. As Millennials insist that their employers give back to the world, we talk about the many ways you and your organization can give back.
Podcast (audio)
Tim Dunn: Doing Good and Doing Well TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, you don't have to look very hard to find a story in the media about millennials and their commitment to public service. According to many reports, members of the millennial generation not only want good jobs but they want their employers to give back to others. But millennials are not the only group looking to do good and do well. Some established professionals in their 40s, 50s, and 60s and beyond have also decided to give back. Tim Dunn is in that group after spending 25 years as a successful investment professional. Dunn decided to make a change. He wanted to give back. Well, he joins us today on the podcast to share his story and to encourage others to find ways they can make a difference. Here's our conversation with the Founder, Managing Member, and Chief Investment Officer of Terra Alpha Investments, Tim Dunn. Ken WhiteTim, thank you for being here. You're spending a couple of days here at the College of William & Mary and the business school you spoke to a number of students yesterday. How was your day? What was that experience like playing the role of professor? Tim DunnWell, I would say it was a lot more tiring than I anticipated, but it was energetic in a way but also tiring. I think by the end, I was through, like, I kind of expended a lot of energy. But it was great because the students were very interested they were asked a lot of good questions and I hope they took away something that will help them with their careers. Ken WhiteThey definitely did because I talked to many after you had spoken with them, and they liked your story of you had your career. You really did some great things, and then you made a real switch and change not only in career but in your life, and I thought this would be great to talk about on the podcast. So tell us about your career. What do you do after graduation? What was your career all about? Tim DunnSo when I finished at William & Mary in 1983, I at the time was like today is not an easy job market. And I didn't. I had international relations degree, which was fantastic. I knew a lot. But it wasn't necessarily applicable to a lot of the jobs that were available. And I had the good fortune of going to business school directly out of undergrad and got an MBA in finance at Northeastern University. And then, from there made a decision of what path I wanted to take. And I knew at that point I wanted to go into something related to global finance. Been really triggered by a course I took here at William & Mary on international trade and finance in my senior year, which really triggered something inside of me in terms of wanting to understand all these topics of trade and currency flows and so on. So it kind of triggered that interest which is why I went to the MBA and finance route, and I looked at whether I wanted to be a management consultant, investment banking, or investment management. Which of the three investment management was less well known and well less high compensation of the three but also had this very nice aspect it was a little bit more in control. You know, investment banking and management consulting, you really are at the beck and call of the client. Understandably they're paying the bill. So I pursued the investment management track, which worked well because for my wife and I, we were already about to get married, and I wanted to have a little more of a fuller life in that regard, and I ended up going for working for a bank in Rhode Island and then after a couple years worked for another bank in Philadelphia in their investment team and then ended up joining Capital Group which is a large money management firm based in Los Angeles in 1990. So that was a path to that career, and at Capital, I started out as an analyst covering some sectors in the US. Eventually started covering in some sectors globally and then, over the course of my career, became a portfolio manager managing money in several of our Capital's large mutual funds at. The near the end of my career was managing money in a Growth Fund of America, which is a very large US fund, and Europe Pacific Growth Fund, which is a large international fund, and capital growth and income, which is a large global fund and it was a fantastic career. I mean, really interesting I spent most of my time; I always thought it was 40-50 percent. My wife would say it was 60 percent of my time traveling, seeing companies around the world, and you know, it was just a great experience to learn how companies work and meet the leaders of all these companies and to make decisions for the investors about what companies to invest in. It was a fantastic career but also had some downside. Really I was very focused on the success of the portfolio and doing well with the with our investing, which was very financially rewarding also for me as a nice benefit of that. But eventually, I realized that that was not all I wanted to do with my life. It was a very important thing. It's something that needs to be done well, had a lot of colleagues who were doing it very well, also. But for me, there needed to be something more that I could look back on in my career that I had done and I was in the fortunate position to have the luxury of taking a decision to step away from that role and focus on other things that I thought would have more impact. Ken WhiteSo how did you make that decision? I'm done. I want to try something different and, like you said, make that impact. Tim DunnYou know, it was an interesting set of scenarios at the time. One of the things that triggered it ironically, I was starting to feel like I wanted do something of my life. I've been very focused on work, and then family was pretty much all there was. And then ironically, I didn't mention this yesterday in the class. I was asked to if I was interested in joining the Board of Visitors at William & Mary, and it was really the first time I did something outside of that. And I found it really rewarding to be involved that and kind of started make me think about the world beyond, you know. Yes, I was very involved the globe. I was investing around the world. But you know, I was very focused on the stock market, you know, and the investment world. And you know, you step away from it for a little bit into a different space and also realize, you know, actually not everyone lives and dies by what the stock market's doing every day, and that's a good thing. I mean, they're doing things to just to learn and live and survive and thrive that don't really have any direct contact with that. So you realize no matter what world you and you can get a little trapped in that. So when I was on the Board of Visitors, I started thinking about, well, this is really interesting what where am I going to go in my career and, you know do I want to continue doing this or do I really want to make a change and that kind of triggered inside me. You know, a recognition that, yeah, I actually really want to spend a lot more of my time not focused just on investing. So over the course of about a year, my wife and I spent a lot of time talking about it, and she knew that I wasn't really happy doing what I was doing. It was just a continuation doing the same thing every year. I'll be it very fascinating thing. Ken WhiteSure, sure. Tim DunnBut there's only so many times you want to go to Tokyo in September. We go every September, and I've been, you know, probably been in Tokyo 20 times and never even seen Mount Fuji. Ken WhiteRight. Tim DunnI saw a lot of hotels and a lot of businesses. Ken WhiteOf course. Tim DunnBut not a lot of the world around it. So I made the decision that I was just going to step away and then figure out what I was going to do after a break because I had a lot of people said don't plan to what you're going to do before you leave. You need time. Step it away like literally go to the beach, go to the golf course, whatever you want to do for a couple months because it's very you're going to get lots of people coming to you and say do this, do this, do this. I knew I wanted to be involved in something related to the environmental challenges of the planet. Exactly what I wasn't sure at the time, so literally, I went and spent three months at the beach reading books and relaxing, and then about two and a half months into that. My wife and I looked at each other. She was like you need to get back to doing something, don't you and I was like yeah, you bet. So that was kind of that transition point. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Tim Dunn in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the Founder, Managing Member, and Chief Investment Officer of Terra Alpha Investments, Tim Dunn. Ken WhiteSo you decided to take some of your expertise actually and almost reposition everything you didn't start totally clean like some people do. Tim DunnNo, no. I what I knew I brought to a conversation well, there was a big underlying issue that I was focused on, which is the environmental challenges that our economic system that we as all people have helped create. We're all part of it. Is having it on a natural system, and there is a big disconnect between how we consider and we're really actually impacting the natural system through our economy that isn't fully priced into our system. So you know, things like the impact on the on our economy on the clean air and clean water as well as the depletion of natural resources that we rely on for survival. Ken WhiteSure. Tim DunnWe're being taxed to a point that wasn't sustainable. And I knew that I wanted to be use my experience working with CEOs and investment professionals to help bring a better conversation between them and the non-profit environmental groups who have tended to be more casting blame and dispersion on those groups rather than figure out ways to work effective with them. And it wasn't leading to successful outcomes. It was leading to actually just creating barriers and walls between the groups. So that was really what I knew I wanted to be doing exactly and what format I hadn't yet fully figured out. Ken WhiteRight. And so now what you're doing is? Tim DunnYeah, so after a couple years, we actually did work for some non-profits, one of which was very much focused on how to help get companies to measure and manage and report their environmental impacts on emissions, water, and other factors in terms of helping them be more effective in their role. I became it became increasingly clear to me that what these companies these groups were helping to create was a lot of information that decision-makers could use to make better decisions about environmental factors in their right in their everyday business and investment decision making and ultimately, I came to the conclusion that the best way for me to demonstrate that this data was useful and actionable data was to create our own investment firm that would operate that way. So we created Terra Alpha Investments to actually demonstrate that environmental productivity, which is our term for the efficiency by which companies utilize and impact natural resources, will, in fact, improve business returns and, therefore, investor returns because more profitable businesses are better investments than less profitable over long periods of time. So we've created the firm, and we have a fund that invests that way. Using data to identify companies that are more efficient and as part of a multi-process investment decision-making process. And then we also advocate to businesses and investors for their increased attention to environmental factors in decision-making. Ken WhiteAre you having fun? Tim DunnIt's fantastic. It's really been quite an interesting experience to start a firm. I certainly never envisioned that I would do this. You know, I worked at Capital Group had when I left, had 10,000 employees and managing a trillion dollars to start from literally scratch, and you know, have an office with one person in it initially and zero assets and actually have to go out and do every single thing from you know talking to lawyers to create the legal structure for the fund to literally getting the cable company to come and connect your cable so you have access and you know and getting in touch with Bloomberg and getting your first Bloomberg machine which is darn expensive. Every one of those things you have to do, but you're responsible for it all. It's yours. You've helped create it, and now as we've built up the team to eight people. They're great people. They're fun to work with. You know, it was a goal. Of course, I want people around that are fun and smart, and very collaborative. And it's really a real pleasure to work with them and to build this team and the fund, and so far, we've had good success. But it's very early days. Ken WhiteWhen I talk to people who've done what you've done a very successful career, but I'm going to do something different a little bit later on, they tell me that they thought they might not be working quite as hard and here they are working just as hard or even harder. Is that the case? Tim DunnYeah, I would say I'm well. It's a combination of things. I'm certainly if someone were to portrayed me as having retired when I left Capital, I've certainly a failure at that. But I never really intended to actually not work. I just wasn't sure in what format, and I certainly didn't intend to start my own firm. I am involved with a number of things outside of Terra Alpha. So when you add that on top of the Terra Alpha thing, I'm working just as much as I ever did. But I find it very meaningful and so I don't I have no qualms about it before. You know I'm excited every day I'm in the office. I look forward to it. And you know, I actually just wish I had more time to focus on it. Ken WhiteThe idea that you and your wife had talked for so many months, and you truly unplugged for a couple of months to think about that. Looking back on that, is that what you would advise someone who's thinking about maybe that second career or semi-retirement doing that? Tim DunnWell, certainly, if you have the luxury of being able to do that, I think it it, you know what? I got a lot of advice from people when I was made the decision to step away from Capital. There were a number of people I knew who had done something similar or had gone through something similar or someone who knew a friend who had done that, and the universal advice was it was actually to take a year and absolutely agree to nothing because there'll be all sorts of boards and non-profits and so on that want ask you to be to join them. And once you've joined your kind of, you have an obligation, so many people take even longer. I knew I could never take a year and do nothing and but I think it's very important to kind of step away a little bit and get comfortable with the fact that you actually are no longer that person you were. You know, it is difficult when you're in a position of someone who's had a lot of responsibility a lot of reputational value on what you were doing and step away from that just become a person who is sitting on beach reading a book and rethink about who you are and what you want to do with your life from a different perspective because you're not going to be that person you used to be. Ken WhiteRight. Tim DunnYou know, and this is true for people of all aspects who have had leadership roles, once you step out of that, you're just another citizen, and you got to get comfortable with that again. Ken WhiteNo doubt. That's your identity, right? Tim DunnIt is your identity, and it's it was very difficult for a period of time when I was not doing Terra before doing Terra Alpha to kind of even describe who I was and what I did because our culture is used to tell me what you do and who you are. And it's usually a title, and you know, being on a number of non-profit boards and working really hard on a lot of issues is a hard thing to explain to someone if they don't, they can't put that into a box. And so it is, but it was very healthy for me to kind of just step away. Put everything down, you know, pencils down, sit on the beach or go to or whatever you're going to do. If it's, just go visit your grandkids for a while and just think about life a little bit. Ken WhiteYeah. You mentioned right before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about millennials and what we're certainly starting to see people 45, 50, and older thinking about this. But you interact quite a bit with millennials in your company and elsewhere. Where are you seeing them in general stand in terms of, you know, I want to do some good while I'm on the earth. Tim DunnYeah. I we've been very fortunate with our hires within Terra Alpha and people who have applied. And I see with my own children who are millennials that they really do see their lives ahead of them as needing to be involved with more than just their career success in what we in our generation would have used traditional things. I have a job. It pays well. I buy a car, get a house, etc. they actually really see things very differently. They see it as am I doing something that I think is important. You know, they understand there's some big challenges out there, and you know, across the gamut of issues, and you know they're stepping up and want to see that they can do something about it in their careers and the companies they're working for are engaged that way. So when we have put out openings for positions, the response rates have been very high for people who just want to be part of something like what we're doing, and you know, companies across the globe are seeing that when they're bringing on people I had a conversation with a gentleman who used to be a senior executive at Zurich Financial, and he said the number one place on our website that they're prospective employees are looking at their sustainability report because that's the first thing they look at. They want to see if that company before they consider interviewing there, is serious about that. So it's companies people want to see that the company they're working for is even if their job isn't directly doing something directly connected that they want to say they're part of a company that is involved in thinking about things beyond just their own financial success. Ken WhiteFor someone who might be in the position or not in the position, maybe not everybody is financially able to do it, but they still want to shift gears right. It's time had this great career, and I'm thinking about doing this other than the take the break, pull away and reassess. Any other advice you might have or something that you think they might see or experience as they do make this transition? Tim DunnYou know, I think even before that, one of the things I probably made a mistake in my career at Capital was not deciding to do more while was there. In terms of joining maybe a board of a non-profit or volunteering more, I may have volunteered some in our kid's school or do things, and it's always very rewarding. But you feel like you don't have the time to do that. And I would say, first and foremost, find an organization you care about and figure out a way to support them either volunteer as a volunteer, you know, in doing program work weekends helping out a soup kitchen, whatever it is, or join a board be involved help them organize you know that's very valuable. So you don't even have to make a complete career shift to make a difference. You can do it in other ways. But if you are thinking about it, you know there are lots of organizations that are constantly helping to recruit people to come into non-profits, and you know there's a one website, one firm that I had some interaction with called On-Ramps as an example and they help people who are thinking about. They help non-profits find people for roles, and non-profits are always desperate to have good people help them run their organization. They're not going to get paid as much as you would get in a for-profit world in most cases, but it's very rewarding. So there's lots of ways you can do it, both as the direct transition or as just incremental to what you're already doing your career, and most companies are very supportive of allowing you to do that. I think if your company isn't supportive of that, then that may be a signal about other things that you should think about. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Tim Dunn of Alpha Investments, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Tim Dunn, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Alan B. Miller](images/alan-b-miller-37-thumb.jpg)
![Lessons from a Leader](images/alan-b-miller-37-thumb.jpg)
Alan B. Miller
Episode 37: April 26, 2016
Lessons From a Leader
Alan B. Miller is one of the most successful leaders in all of business. He founded Universal Health Services (UHS) in 1978, one of the largest hospital management companies in the nation. In this episode, we talk about how he learned about leadership, from his high school basketball team to the US Army.
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Alan B. Miller: Lessons From a Leader TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. He's one of the most successful CEOs and leaders in all of business. In 1978 Alan B. Miller founded Universal Health Services UHS. Since then, UHS has become one of the largest hospital management companies in the nation. Owning and operating facilities in 37 states with annual net revenues in excess of 8 billion dollars. Throughout his career, Miller has often been called upon by the business media to share his thoughts on healthcare and business. Miller learned about leadership on the high school and college basketball courts then in the U.S. Army before embarking on a successful career in business. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss leadership, what it takes to lead successfully, and why his passion is in the healthcare arena. Here's our conversation with the founder and CEO of Universal Health Services, Alan B. Miller. Ken WhiteWell, Alan, thank you for being here. We appreciate your time. We want to talk with you about leadership. I mean, you certainly lead a large organization, a successful organization, you're considered a successful leader. When you were a young guy coming out of college, did you think you would be a leader someday? Alan B. MillerWell, I actually leadership there is, to a large part, innate because you have run into people in junior high school or high school, and there's something about them, even if you have a little group they seem to have they're the leaders they tell you where to go Saturday night. They tell you what you're going to do on vacation, and then for some reason or other, you tend to follow them. So who knows why, but there is an innate leadership where people are willing to they do have ideas and willing to put them forth. On the other hand, the military academies will tell you that they can make leaders so, but they also, I think, may leave out the part that when they recruit, they are recruiting for people who have been athletes, people who have been captains of their teams, people who have done outstanding things in high school. And so there is a leadership quality already baked into the people that they are now going to make into leaders. So I think there is a lot of natural leadership, and then it should be worked on. Ken WhiteWhen you first got out of college, military? Did you go in? Alan B. MillerYes. Ken WhiteAnd what did you? Did you start to learn about leadership? Alan B. MillerYes. Ken WhiteWhat were some of the lessons from the military standpoint? Alan B. MillerWell, I think that the big lesson is to be reliable. I mean, I inculcate this in my company to be trustworthy. You know officers don't lie, cheat, steal, and nor do they accept or tolerate people that do. Ken WhiteRight. Alan B. MillerAnd I think that's leadership that's also good grounding for a company. But I think people have to trust you. That, to me, that's the biggest attribute or quality. If people trust you, then they will follow you. If they don't trust you and Mrs. Clinton will find out, they may not be willing to follow you because they don't know where it's going to lead. So it's integrity, and it's trust. Building integrity and trust. Well, the question then becomes how do you build integrity and trust. Over a period of time and keep your word. I always say I'm slow to agree, but once I agree, it's written in stone. If I give you my word, you can count on it. Absolutely count on it. And if people are now going to follow you, talk about the military, some people risking their lives following somebody it's not a serious in business, but they're risking their careers, they're risking their family's well-being by following you or being in a company that you lead. So there are serious consequences. And you should be trustworthy. Lou Holtz, to quote a leader, actually was a William & Mary coach. Ken WhiteYes, true. Alan B. MillerOne saying I remember from him was people want to know before they know. They want to know how much you know. They want to know how much you care. And I think that that's very important to keep that in mind. And I always tell people if you don't care about people, if you're not a people person, then go into, you know, some sort of a job where you don't have to interact, and you know, because it's something you don't like or care about. But if you're going to lead an organization if you're going to lead people you should, you should care about them because they will know whether you care or not. And certainly, for military leaders, you're asking people in the most extreme to risk their lives. What else do they have? And you have to care about them even though you are willing to put them in harm's way. I'll quote Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee said that the most difficult thing is killing something you love. And he was talking about officers who love the army, and they love their people, and they've been with them for long periods of time. Very intimately. And then they have to sacrifice a certain number of these people. And he's saying not many people can do that. And that's the most difficult thing for an officer. A leader is to sacrifice what you love. Comes to mind. You know, people say pull the trigger. A lot of leaders can't pull the trigger when it comes down to it because they love or they don't want to harm or put in jeopardy things they love. It's tough. Ken WhiteIt's certainly not easy. I don't think if someone's in a non-leadership position, they may not appreciate how difficult leadership can be in making those tough calls. How do you learn to make those tough calls and be able to feel okay about it? Alan B. MillerWell, let's work back. I have never been in a position where I put people's lives on the line. Ken WhiteSure. Alan B. MillerSo I shouldn't. I can't talk with authority. I don't know if I would, in fact, be that ultimate leader where you are committing your company or your battalion to 30 percent casualties at the outset. But for the business standpoint, I don't have a problem with the fact that we employ a very large number of people. I multiply that by three, two, or three. So I have their family and their children, and I think about that all the time, and they are relying on the company that I lead to be successful to provide them a living, to provide them a future, to provide them a safe working environment. I think about that all the time, so I don't have a problem in telling the people that work with me. Who have responsible positions that if somebody can't contribute to the company or in some way is harming the company, then we have to part company with them? Look, anybody enjoys firing anybody. They're not the kind of people I want to know. Sure, but at some point. Just like the military officer, you have to do what is best for the organization. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Alan Miller in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the founder and CEO of Universal Health Services, Alan Miller. Alan B. MillerI it's not thinking about the leadership part about it; I enjoy accomplishing, and I work hard. I enjoy accomplishing. I enjoy having a reputation for excellence and in my business in the hospital business. We build hospitals. We are the best people we can possibly find. We keep give them the best equipment because, ultimately, our goal is to make everybody who comes to us. Much better off than when they came to us and to provide an excellent care for these people. And when we do that in different communities, and we are in a lot of communities now, I get a big kick out of that. I mean, that's my satisfaction. Let me tell you a story, a quick story. Ken WhitePlease. Alan B. MillerThat I have talked to the company about, and I found out about a couple who lived in Arizona, and the woman had difficulty carrying a baby to term, but she had a few miscarriages. She had a baby, and she was going to deliver a very small baby prematurely. And the people in Arizona specialist told her that chances of the baby surviving were very, very slim, if nonexistent. She got in a car with her husband. She came to our hospital in Summerland, Nevada and which is part of near Las Vegas in Las Vegas. And the baby was delivered at one pound. Now I can't imagine how you could have all the organs and everything else compressed in one pound, but the baby was delivered. The baby was in the hospital for five months had incredible care from our people and a couple of physicians that I am now familiar with. And the baby left the hospital at nine and a half pounds. All of the tests proved that all of the organs were functioning. They said the way the baby reacts and all they think this is a very smart and it's going to be a very healthy. It is a healthy baby, and I have been following this baby now. He's in our annual report. Alexander. And for some reason, I'm just tickled with this because, you know, people talk about massacres, and they talk about even the Holocaust. You can't relate to six million people or to a flood would 450 people. But if you have one example, you can relate to that. And this one pound of protoplasm that's now a person, I feel like we are the parents of this child. And I didn't build a hospital. We didn't staff it if we didn't have the equipment. It has tickled me, and so he's in our annual report. Ken WhiteThat's great. Alan B. MillerAnd we're going to follow him. Yeah. I feel like I'm related to him. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. How important is the field? Hospital and health care, how important is that to you in terms of your passion? Could you be as passionate in retail, for example? Alan B. MillerNo, our business is the field. I mean, we have a corporate office, and I had a meeting just the other day. Every quarter we meet with the corporate staff. We have about 700 people in a corporate office. But I tell them there are no patients here. And our job is to support everybody in the field because that's where we deliver the care. That's the company's mission is taking care of patients. So we're very passionate about it. And I like to think everybody in our office realizes if they buy a piece of equipment or if they collect an outstanding debt or no matter what they're doing, they are supporting what we do in the field. So I showed a tape of Alexander, and half the people were crying, and I said, well, wait a minute, we made that happen all of us have a little piece of that nine-and-a-half-pound fellow that's now cute as can be. Ken WhiteYeah. Alan B. MillerCute as can be. So yeah. Ken WhiteIt means a lot. Alan B. MillerMeans everything. Ken WhiteHealth care and, in general, as you're moving forward, what are some of the hurdles, challenges, and opportunities on the landscape? Alan B. MillerWell, I mean, the basic thing is that this is an essential business essential area demographic people are getting older. The country is up over 320 million people and aging. As you know, the population, because of increases in technology health care people are getting older living older and older, but they need more and more care. And so my business will not be obsolete. Methods of treatment will change. There's new technology, there's new pharma, there's new ways of doing everything, and that continually changes, and we change with it every day in every of our units. We have about 240 hospitals total. Behavioral health and acute. And every one of them has a big capital budget. We buy equipment. We put away all the equipment that can function, as well as new equipment. So it's always changing, but the basics of it, the demographics taking care of people and people that get sick and injured or have mental problems, that's hardly ever going to go away. Ken WhiteWhen you visit your hospitals and you see patients, you meet people like Alexander. What are some of the major changes you've seen today, the way it looks in your business, say maybe 25 years ago? Alan B. MillerI'm not a clinician. The only way I could answer this is equipment and training. Our people the equipment we have is unbelievable. But that's technology changes all the time. It gets better and better. And the training of the people gets better and better because we know more, and the analytics are a big part of our business now. So there's a lot of changes. Continually. Continually. Ken WhiteAnd you've got to embrace that, right? Alan B. MillerWell, without question. Ken WhiteYeah. Alan B. MillerBut Alexander, I mean, chances of him being where he is today, you know, ten years ago is zero. I don't really I don't know what happened in the intensive care unit. You know, the neonatal intensive care, the equipment that's in there, the training the people have, what they had to do to keep him alive. I mean, it's monumental. The difference is ten years ago. He's gone. He's not even a thought. Ken WhiteRight. Alan B. MillerIt couldn't happen. Ken WhiteRight. So back to leadership. You know we've got some of our listeners are emerging leaders early on in their careers, and hopefully, for them, they'll find a field in which they're passionate like you. Any other advice for them? I'd say 20-something coming up through the ranks. They think they may want to lead one day. You mentioned integrity any other last words for those folks to stay on the right track? Alan B. MillerWell, I think that leaders are being looked at, and you lead by example. Absolutely but that's basic tenant lead by example. So if you're going to say one thing and do something else, it undermines credibility and undermines trust. I don't think an effective leader can be that. You have to believe what you say, live what you say, lead by example. And when I say people are looking, I don't mean that you should do the right thing because you're afraid somebody is looking. You should do the right thing all the time. But people are looking, and if you do the right thing all the time and you do have your integrity, you do have character. Character being defined as what you do when nobody is looking. Then people will trust you, and they'll follow you. And if you have half a brain and some kind of intellect and a little good luck, you'll all be successful. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with the CEO of Universal Health Services, Alan Miller, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Alan Miller and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Becca Marcus](images/becca-marcus-36-thumb.jpg)
![Mindfulness](images/becca-marcus-36-thumb.jpg)
Becca Marcus
Episode 36: April 19, 2016
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a combination of focus techniques, breathing exercises, and meditation that executives and leaders have found helpful in business—for relaxing, focusing, and relieving stress. In recent years, mindfulness has become so popular that it has grown into a mindfulness movement, and a growing number of companies now offer mindfulness programs and classes. Becca Marcus teaches mindfulness at William & Mary, where she works at the campus counseling center. In this episode, we'll discuss what mindfulness is and why it might be right for you.
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Becca Marcus: Mindfulness TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. It has become so popular that it's been referred to as a movement. The mindfulness movement. Mindfulness is a combination of focused techniques, breathing exercises, and meditation that professionals, executives, and leaders have found helpful. For many, mindfulness has proven to be extremely effective at fighting stress. Those who practice it say it helps them relax, focus, and enjoy life. And they say it's been a positive influence on their jobs and careers. Well, many professionals who practice mindfulness say it has been transformational, and that's why a growing number of companies and organizations now offer mindfulness classes to employees and leaders. Becca Marcus teaches mindfulness at the College of William & Mary, where she works at the campus counseling center. She's a licensed clinical social worker who, through her studies, counseling, and experiences, became interested in mindfulness and now helps people learn to embrace the practice. She joins us on the podcast to discuss mindfulness, what it is, and why it might be right for you. Here's our conversation with Becca Marcus. Ken WhiteBecca, thank you for taking time. You are a busy person, and I appreciate you taking time out of your day to join us today. So thank you very much. Becca MarcusThank you, Ken. I'm happy to talk about mindfulness. Ken WhiteWho isn't talking about this? It seems like it is everywhere, but I'm not so sure people really understand what it is. How do you define it when you run into someone like me who doesn't know much about it? Becca MarcusIt's not the easiest thing to define, but I'm going to give you a definition, and then I'll give you some examples. Ken WhiteGreat. Becca MarcusSo mindfulness is being fully present in the moment with an attitude of acceptance and non-judgment. Ken WhiteAnd why is that important for us to be there? Becca MarcusSo we are so caught up in our minds planning, doing, hurrying, worrying, thinking about the past and the future that we barely know what's going on around us. And we miss a lot of what's going around us. But by turning to the present moment, we're able to find a moment of peace within, and we're able to ride the waves of life. It helps us tremendously, and in a few minutes, I'll tell you more about the benefits of mindfulness. But first, I want to explain a little bit more about how we do it and why we do it. Ken WhiteYeah, please. Good. Becca MarcusSo, first of all, I just want to read my favorite quote by the Dalai Lama because I think this explains why we need mindfulness today in our society. So when asked about humanity, the Dalai Lama said man surprised me the most about humanity because he sacrifices his health in order to make many, and then he sacrifices many to recuperate his health. And then he's so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present. The result being that he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he is never going to die. And then he dies having never really lived. Ken WhiteWow. Becca MarcusSo the point of mindfulness is to be there for our lives to experience our lives. It enriches our lives. It enhances our lives, and we learn different techniques to practice to be in the moment. And I say practice because it's a practice that we keep on doing over and over and over again. Ken WhiteSometimes I think people get confused. In fact, when I was telling people, I was going to meet you. People said how is that similar to meditation. What are the parallels or the differences? Becca MarcusOkay, excellent question. Mindfulness has formal practices and informal practices. And I emphasize both of those, and the research that has been done on mindfulness is mainly done on the formal practices. The formal practice of mindfulness involves meditation, and so meditation is a very important part of mindfulness. But I want to explain. I just met a student in the hall a few minutes ago. She was reading a bulletin board about mindfulness, and she says, but I can't do it. I've tried meditation, and I can't empty my mind. And the point of mindfulness is not to empty our mind but to observe what's going on in our mind and to learn to accept it and to learn to have a different relationship instead of our thoughts controlling us. To be able to be peaceful and observe what's going on without being pulled around by it. So meditation is one part, and the other part is informal practices that we use to be more in the moment. And so I teach a course here to students, and we practice all different ways to be in the moment. But one of the ways is just to ask ourselves over and over. Where am I now? Am I right here with what I'm doing? Or am I somewhere in my head? In the future, in the past, or planning, or worrying, and what we try to do is bring ourselves back again and again to the present. Ken WhiteIt's interesting because so many of the members of our audience are professionals they're in business. Becca MarcusYes. Ken WhiteAlways thinking ahead. Becca MarcusExactly. Ken WhiteAlways thinking ahead and not focusing on the present. So how do you get? What is the teaching like? What is it? What does the student experience with you? Becca MarcusWe start out by just noticing what we see, what we hear, what we smell, the sensations we feel in our body to know what it's like to be present, and then we learn doing daily activities being present. So each student in the training I do chooses one activity a week to be mindful for. So like, one student might take a shower mindfully instead of planning what she's going to do that day and what she needs to study during her shower. She is listening to the sound, she's feeling the temperature and the water, she's smelling the soap, she's enjoying being in that moment, and we'll talk about the benefits. The benefits are quite astounding. And so that's one way that we turn our mind to the present. Just maybe briefly. Ken WhiteYeah. Becca MarcusIt doesn't mean it needs to take over our day. And some people say that I have so much to do. Well, it helps us be more productive. Ken WhiteSure, and of all the examples, the shower, too, right? Cause we're constantly thinking in the shower, whoever stops to actually experience that right. Becca MarcusExactly. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Becca Marcus on mindfulness in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com That's wmleadership.com. Now back to our discussion with our guest Becca Marcus on mindfulness. Ken WhiteYou've mentioned the benefits, and it's certainly something that I wanted to ask about. What are some of the benefits when someone and it takes time to get it? It's not going to happen overnight. Right. When they get there, or they're getting to a certain point, what do they experience? Becca MarcusWell, I think the first time the students come into the training, and I lead them through a little exercise, a five-minute exercise of following their breath and watching their thoughts come and go and then going back to their breath immediately, they feel a sense of peace and calm that they're very surprised by. So immediately, by doing some of these practices, we are able to center ourselves, ground ourselves, and calm ourselves. And that also helps us be less reactive. That is one way that we continue to be affected. If you want to know about there are many, many benefits, and would you want me to tell you about some of them? Ken WhiteAbsolutely, please. Becca MarcusWell, there's been a lot of research done on mindfulness, hundreds and maybe thousands of studies. I'm not really sure how many. And so I cannot cite most of what they've found. Ken WhiteSure. Becca MarcusBut what I do know is it's been found to be extremely effective in helping people with dealing with stress, with anxiety, and even with depression. Some people say it's more effective for depression than anti-depressants. I can't tell you if that's true, but it helps us develop a sense of well-being. It also helps us with our health. It lowers our blood pressure. It helps us deal with pain better. Our immune system improves by use of mindfulness and many, many other benefits. It helps us with sleep. It helps us with life satisfaction. And there's some amazing results that MRIs shows that people who have practiced mindfulness for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks physiologically change their brain. Ken WhiteWow. Becca MarcusAnd the part of the brain that relates the stress decreases, and the part of the brain related to memory, concentration, and satisfaction it increases. Ken WhiteWow. You mentioned time, like 30 minutes a day or something. How much time do you recommend that someone spend? Becca MarcusI recommend that people come back to the present moment as often as they can through the day and when they're feeling stressed and we learn through doing various practices like a body scan where we learn to tune into the sensations in our body, we learn to listen to our body and we learn to be aware if we're getting stressed. Every emotion we have comes out as a sensation in our body. So we learn to read that and if we're starting to get stressed, we know we can stop. We can even just take a few breaths and calm down, slow down, so it doesn't have to be a tremendous huge thing, but if we do practice every day. Not only coming to the present moment but also doing meditation. The more we practice, the more we benefit. Ken WhiteSure. If someone finds this fascinating, and I'm sure many do. Where should they start? What's a good way to get moving? Becca MarcusI mean, we can find it everywhere. You can read a book about it. You can join a group. Actually, joining a group, if possible, is the best way because they find that people that are part of a group tend to stick with it longer and get less discouraged. I think people doing meditation on their own often get discouraged and think to themselves this is not for me; I'm not good at this which actually when they're in the group, they learn that's not true. They say that everyone has about 50,000 thoughts a day, and about almost 50 percent of the time, we're lost in our minds of somewhere else. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Becca MarcusSo being able to have a way to deal with this in a way to what it is it's exercise for the mind. It's training our mind. Ken WhiteI would imagine it has quite an impact and effect on listening. So many executives are not great at listening, and we know from research the reason is they're not listening to the question they're forming their response. Becca MarcusExactly. Ken WhiteSo, in other words, they're ahead instead of being present exactly like you were talking about. So you mentioned briefly your class. If we go back to that for just a second, so if I'm in the class or a listener is in the class. What's it like? Do we sit at a desk? What do we wear? Where does it all take place? Becca MarcusSo I, right now, I'm teaching two of them and to grad and undergrad students, and I like to limit it to eight to ten or twelve, and we sit in a circle, and they come in. I ring my chime, and we learn to sit in meditation position, and I lead them through a little exercise of closing their eyes and following their breath where it comes in and out of their body and each time a thought comes into their mind. Just go back to your breath. We do that for a few minutes, and then when we finish, and then each week, we learn two or three different mindfulness practices, which we do together. I teach them breathing techniques, and I teach them meditation techniques. We learn walking mindfully, eating mindfully, listening to music mindfully. And we also learn a meditation pose, we learn all kinds of things, and then they are given homework where they are asked to practice one activity that they do daily do it mindfully and then do some of the exercises we learn do it daily, and then they're also asked to practice gratitude because gratitude is an important part of mindfulness and what we're doing is we're looking around for things in our daily life that we appreciate, and just the act of looking enhances people's enjoyment so much. It's one of the favorite aspects of practicing mindfulness. So each week they come in, we do a little breathing meditation like I told you about, then we learn a skill, we talk about how everyone's doing, they share their challenges their successes, and then we need to learn another skill, and then they go home, and they do their homework and then we report it again, and we only meet four times, and I require them to agree to attend four sessions because I think four times is enough practice that you can start using this on your own in your life. Ken WhiteYeah. And you've seen the benefits in the students, and I'm sure they report them, but you also see them as well. Becca MarcusYes. And it's transformational. I can't tell you how excited the students are. They are all writing papers about it, doing presentations, and they want everyone. I just was asked one of my students said I want everyone on campus to be exposed to it because they're very excited that they have a way now that they can deal with the ups and downs of life. And it's not just the push away the bad things. It's also to learn to accept all the challenges in our life. So it is being aware with nonjudgment and acceptance. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Becca Marcus, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Becca Marcus, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White until next time. Have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Frank Fahrenkopf](images/frank-fahrenkopf-35-thumb.jpg)
![The Presidential Debates](images/frank-fahrenkopf-35-thumb.jpg)
Frank Fahrenkopf
Episode 35: April 12, 2016
The Presidential Debates
Frank Fahrenkopf is Co-Chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the organization responsible for organizing the general election debates between presidential candidates. He founded the Commission in 1986 and chats on the podcast today about the organization, the current presidential race, and how they create the debates.
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Frank Fahrenkopf: The Presidential Debates TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, we've never witnessed the United States presidential race quite like the one taking place now. Bernie and Hillary, Cruz, Kasich, and Trump. The races seemed to have just about everyone talking, but when the dust finally settles and the parties select their nominees, today's guest will step in. Frank Fahrenkopf is co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates. The organization conducts the general election presidential and vice presidential debates in presidential election years. Fahrenkopf is the former longtime Republican National Committee chairman. He and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Paul Kirk co-founded the Commission on Presidential Debates in 1986. Fahrenkopf and his colleagues on the committee have four debates scheduled for the fall. In addition to the dates, the committee determines the location, format, rules, moderators, and all other details. Fahrenkopf visited the Mason School of Business recently as a part of the Tokar Chair of Business and Investment Analysis speaker series. After Fahrenkopf spoke with MBA students, he sat down with us. Here's our conversation with Frank Fahrenkopf. Ken WhiteFrank, thank you for being here. You literally just came out of the classroom with the students had a great talk with them. How did that go? What's your reaction in the classroom? Frank FahrenkopfIt was great. You know I speak at universities quite a bit. In fact, four years ago, I spoke to university students in Beijing and Shanghai, and I thought they would ask good questions. They spoke great English and asked, but this group really had some very insightful questions, and I was just really, really excited about it. I really enjoyed it. Ken WhiteYou know, it's interesting an MBA student they are so enveloped by their studies. It's a time you actually lose sight of what's going on in the world, but with this election being so interesting in these campaigns, I think students today are making sure they are involved. You don't organize or lead the debates we've seen so far, but you've certainly been observing them. You've had a lot of years of experience in that realm. What do you think? What do you see? Frank FahrenkopfI've really been upset by what's happened. The parties have lost control. It's the networks who are driving it. They're making a fortune. They're making it into the old racehorse thing the way they advertise it. Tomorrow night we'll have the showdown. And then they get on there, and they ask questions, the moderators ask question trying to get the candidates to fight. I mean, the classic one, particularly if Trump's involves, says well, Mr. Jones, last week Donald Trump said this about you. What do you got to say? I mean, they want to start fights rather than asking substance, getting into the issues that are disturbing the American people and ought to be discussed. I'm very unhappy with the manner in which the networks have conducted these primary debates, and ours are much different. We don't have any sponsorships. Well, we have a single moderator. There's the audience. No audience participation. If they clap or yell or boo, they're thrown out, and we go for 45 minutes and, excuse me, 90 minutes and hope that we get some depth on the issues. Ken WhiteAnd you've been doing the presidential vice presidential debates for how long now? Frank FahrenkopfThe commission started the debates with the 1988 cycle. And so, up to this point in time, we've produced 19 presidential debates and seven vice presidential debates. So we'll break 20 in this cycle. Ken WhiteYou have a board of directors people from all over the country. What do they do? And who are they in general? Frank FahrenkopfWell, it's across my co-chairman now is Mike McCurry, who was Bill Clinton's press secretary when Bill Clinton was President. He took the place of Paul Kirk. Kirk and I created the commission back in 1987. He was the chair of the Democratic National Committee at that time. And he was in that role until Teddy Kennedy died. When Teddy Kennedy died, he was appointed to fulfill Teddy's seat until a special election could be held, so he had to resign. And McCurry came on. But we have people in both parties and independents. We have people like former Senator John Danforth of Missouri. Mitch Daniels, who's the President of Purdue. Father John Jenkins who is the President of Notre Dame University. We've got Dick Parsons previously of Citibank. We got Olympia Snowe, a former United States senator. So it cuts across the board Republicans, Democrats, and independents. But the work we do is nonpartisan. Ken WhiteRight. Frank FahrenkopfWe have been fortunate that we've had people have stuck by that. Ken WhiteYou've got some media people certainly on the board as well. Frank FahrenkopfWe added Charlie Gibson, who was a former anchor of Good Morning America. Ken WhiteAnd a Virginian. Frank FahrenkopfA Virginian. Yes, I found that out who moderated a debate for us. We also have Jim Lehrer, who's been our grand old man. I think he's done ten debates over the years. We had Bob Schieffer on until about three weeks ago. He had retired from CBS, and then CBS called him back to be the gray eminence during this is a campaign to comment and so forth. So he had to step down, but he will rejoin the Commission. And they're there to help us with this very difficult task of choosing moderators. Ken WhiteRight. Talking about moderators, what are you looking for? And they're different formats in terms of what you're televising as well. Frank FahrenkopfYeah, they are, and I guess we don't want to. We don't want a hot shot. We don't want someone who's going to try to show the world how smart they are. Their job is to steer the candidates to answer questions and hopefully debate among themselves. And they're sort of as a guide. And they're not to be involved in the debate. And we always try to strive for diversity with women, with blacks, with very difficult to find Hispanics nowadays with the networks where you could find someone who has that experience. But we work on it, and we also age now is important with millennials. We'd like to try to find someone who millennials will relate to. Ken WhiteSure. Frank FahrenkopfSo that we can, and we can get them involved because they are such a large part now of everything we do in this country, it seems. Ken WhiteYeah. So the moderator, you're looking for someone who does not have that it's all about me attitude. It's all about the audience kind of attitude. Frank FahrenkopfRight. Exactly. Ken WhiteI would assume, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that someone with broadcast experience might go to the top of the list faster than someone, say, with a print background just because of the nature of the production. Frank FahrenkopfUp to this point, since we've gone to the single moderator, we have always done electronic media people. Prior to that, we went there was a moderator and a panel of reporters, and most of those reporters were print reporters and but the moderator was running things, and we got away from that because reporter number one worked long and hard to come up with a question when it was his or her turn and to show how smart they were and to make it a good question. And in those days, the rules were you asked the question, one candidate would answer for two minutes, the other would have a minute and then 30 seconds, and then it was time to go to reporter number two. Well, it's obvious that the candidate hadn't answered question number one but reporter number two who worked very hard for their question. They don't want follow up on reporter number one. So that's why we did away with the panel of reporters, and we felt that with a single moderator, that moderator can then say wait a minute, you haven't answered the question. Let's stay there and get an answer. So that's why we've gone to a single moderator, and all of them up to this point in time have been from the electronic media. Ken WhiteRight. Now can you give us the schedule what's coming up? Where are you going in terms of the presidential and vice presidential debates? Frank FahrenkopfThe first presidential debate will be on Monday, September 26th. It's earlier than usual. We moved it into September. It's usually always in October, but the conventions have been moved up. The Democratic and Republican conventions are now going to be in July late July, then maybe a couple of days in August. They moved them up. So we felt we had to move them up, plus the fact that in 2012 on Election Day, 40 percent of the American public had already voted by early voting in their state's absentee ballots or whatever. So we wanted to move them forward a little bit to try to catch some of those people with the educational work, so that first one is at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday, October 4th. The vice presidential debate will be held at Longwood University here in the state of Virginia in Farmville. The second presidential debate will be Sunday night, the 9th of October, at Washington University in St. Louis, and then the final debate will be Wednesday, October 19th, and that'll be at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. And Hofstra University is what we call our backup site if something should blow up with these other sites. Hofstra would move in and fill the vacuum. They've done debates before, so they know that they could get up and get it done. Ken WhiteSure, so three presidential and one vice presidential. How do you select the site? Frank FahrenkopfThat's done in. I'll give you the example with these schools here. In January of 2015, the commission sent out to every college and university in the country. In effect, the requests for bid. We lay out what's necessary, the facilities, the hotels that have to be within 100 miles. All the things because you know you have 5,000 reporters from all over the world attending. Ken WhiteRight. Frank FahrenkopfAnd then we have a technical team, sound people, lighting people, and so forth. They go out look at the sites that have come in. Usually, reduce it down to maybe ten or twelve, and then the Secret Service gets involved because Secret Service has got to be comfortable that they can lock down this campus from a security standpoint. I mean, this was very important this time with what's going on in the world with the terrorism, and then they get it down to maybe about eight, and then the Commission those members of the Commission, we sit down and make the final decision as to where to go. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Frank Fahrenkopf in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, Frank Fahrenkopf. Ken WhiteYou talk about the audience and security. How many people in the audience? What's it look like when you do it? Frank FahrenkopfI mean, we'll do it in arenas that hold 20,000 people. But when you build the boxes at the back of the hall for the networks and everyone that covers it, C-SPAN and so forth, we usually have about a thousand people. We've been as low as 600 in one place, and I think we were 13 hundred was the most we've had. And the way it's done is that if let's assume for these two candidates if there are three candidates, you do it differently. A third of the tickets will go to each of the candidates, and the remaining third is divided between the host school and the Commission and the host school usually holds raffles among its students as to which students get the tickets, although we bring in a lot of students who serve as ushers and so forth. So we get them in the hall another way. But that's how it's done. So normally, it'll be roughly a thousand is a good way to judge it. And they're warned ahead of time that they're not to participate, that they're not to clap and yell, and very few times in all the years we've been doing this has there been any disruption. Ken WhiteSure. On the night of the debate, what are you doing? Frank FahrenkopfOn the night of the debate, I'm getting. Well, usually, what I'll do and and and my co-chairman we'll take turns. I'll do a half an hour interview on C-SPAN, he'll do a half an hour on C-SPAN, and then we're checking everything out. And then a half an hour before the debate begins, we go out on the stage, and you only see us appearing on C-SPAN, and we introduce the President of the University, who thanks their givers and all the rest of it and student body president usually comes out and says a few words. Then we talk to the audience about what they can and can't do and security and all the rest of it. And then, with about 10 minutes to go, the moderator is introduced. He comes out or she and also warns the audience about what the rules are. And then we're sitting on pins and needles to make sure it comes out because a lot of work that goes into it. And we only have a staff of regular staff of one person the Commission. Ken WhiteWow. Frank FahrenkopfIt's full-time, but we take in interns and so forth from schools that work with us, but we regularly, on non-debate years we, have one or one and half people so. Ken WhiteSo if someone listening to the podcast has ever been to, say, Los Angeles and watched a sitcom taped, you're the comedian who goes out and warms up the audience. Frank FahrenkopfExactly. Ken WhiteYou're in charge. That's your role. That's a great role. Frank FahrenkopfIt's exactly right. It's exactly right. Ken WhiteAnd the rule keeper get them all fired up and ready to go. Frank FahrenkopfI'd say that it's important. We're nonprofit. We get no money from the candidates. We get no money from the parties. We get no money from the federal government. We raise all our money privately. So there's no connection with the parties. We choose the dates for the debates. We choose the locations for the debates. We choose the formats for the debates, and we choose the moderators of the debates without any contact or input from the candidates. Ken WhiteRight. What about questions? How much do the candidates certainly issues or issues? You know what's coming, but how much did they know about questions? Frank FahrenkopfWell, up until last year, they didn't know anything. And we don't know the questions. The we would never try to tell a moderator and interfere with their journalistic integrity what to ask. But we've gotten good moderators, and they know what they're going to talk about. We changed the format for two of the debates last time, where for the 90 minutes are divided into six 15-minute pods, and the moderators announce a few days before what the subjects of that 15 minutes going to be and that the candidates are warned you're not going to be able to give a two-minute response that you normally give out on the campaign trail because the moderator is going to drill down to know what you know and what you propose to do. And it's really worked out very, very well, and we try to get the moderators to get the candidates to actually debate to enjoy enjoying each other. Ken WhiteAnd, of course, the candidates have big coaching staffs and their coach, and they're ready to roll. Frank FahrenkopfYou know, there's a reason we go with three, and it's gonna be interesting because I think the networks are making so much money on the primary debates going to try to do end runs around this. They're gonna try to do what they call town hall meetings where they bring the candidates in the set and one by one they interview them, and we're usually been an excuse for the candidates not to have to do that sort of thing. Look, we're always getting requests to do debates and so forth. We're just going to do the official three debates, so it takes the pressure off them. But they'll know now and particularly on foreign policy and on the domestic policy. They're going to be drilled down, and they're going to have to know the subject matter and be prepared. Ken WhiteThe audience has always been there for the debates, hasn't it? The ratings, and so forth. Frank FahrenkopfYeah, I mean the, you know, when you go back to 1960, the famous Lincoln. Lincoln 1860 that was a Senate race. The Kennedy-Nixon debates. They were done in television studios. We've always done audiences, and we've talked to. The fact that there's an audience gets the candidates up a little bit rather than being in a sterile studio, and it cranks them up. Now there's some people who are still there was a group from Penn the Annenberg study recommended we should go back to doing it in the studios. But we think it's important, and we do it on college campuses because it's part of our educational function. Our goal in doing this is to educate the American public so they can make hopefully an informed decision. Our polling tells us that 60 to 65 percent of the American people say that our debates are important factors in who they vote for. It's not the only factor but are important factors, and so we think we're fulfilling our function. Ken WhiteWhen you look back over the years, all the debates you've been involved with. Was there one that was just great? When you walked away from it. That's exactly what we were looking for. Frank FahrenkopfYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It clearly was it was Reagan-Mondale in Kansas City in 84. And that's when President Reagan had performed so abysmally in the first debate. And the question raised as to whether or not he was up to it. He was too old. He shouldn't be President. And then he was asked a question about his age, and with a smile on his face, as only the President could do, he said I will not take advantage of the relative youth and inexperience of my opponent for political purposes. And even Mondale broke out laughing. And I talked to Vice President Mondale a few years later when I was given an award up at the Humphrey Institute up in Minneapolis University of Minnesota, and he said that was the moment he knew it was over. Ken WhiteHad to. Frank FahrenkopfYeah. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Yeah, you can see it on his face if you watch it again. Right. Frank FahrenkopfThat's right. Ken WhiteYeah. There is a chance maybe that we have a third-party candidate this year. What's the likelihood? And how will that happen? Frank FahrenkopfWell, the way it works is that the we're required by the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service because we're nonprofit to announce in advance a clear and transparent criteria to get into debates. And so we announced a year ago that you must meet the constitutional requirement, which is 35 years of age and natural born citizen. Ken WhiteRight. Frank FahrenkopfThen you also must appear on enough ballots so that you can conceivably get 270 electoral votes. And if you're a third-party candidate, that means you've got to go out and gather signatures from state to state. And it's not easy. The Libertarian Party and the Green Party will be on probably all 50 ballots this time because of their past performance in elections and the leading candidate, the Libertarian nomination. And I think they're having their convention here in the next week or so. Is a former governor of New Mexico named Gary Johnson, and he I saw a poll a Quinnipiac poll where he was running third to Hillary and Trump at 11 percent. Now the third or the last criteria is 15 percent. So if you've got to be a 15 percent a week before on three on five major polls, so if he's at 15, he'll be invited and will participate. Now that doesn't mean the others will. In 19 in 1980, when the first debate rolled around, John Anderson, who was a congressman from Illinois, was an independent candidate. He was at 17 percent. And so the League of Women Voters invited him to participate. He said yes. Governor Reagan accepted Jimmy Carter, the President of the United States, said hell no. I won't go. And so that first debate in 1980 was between Ronald Reagan and John Anderson Ken WhiteHow about it? Frank Fahrenkopfonly. And then, by the time the next debate rolled around, Anderson had fallen 12 percent, so he wasn't invited. Jimmy Carter accepted. And you had the debate between. So there's no gun that you can fire at these candidates. For example, in 1992, George Herbert Walker Bush always felt the President shouldn't have to debate. He really didn't like the debates, and he wouldn't agree to the debate. We announced the sites and so forth. He wouldn't agree to the debates. Clinton had accepted, Ross Perot was a third party he had accepted, and we couldn't get the vice president to in 92. He was already the President. And it wasn't until Bill Clinton supporters started dressing in chicken costumes showing up at all the President's rallies saying your chicken of the debate, your chicken of the debate that they finally changed their mind and agreed come in and accepted a proposal by Clinton to have the first town hall meeting which took place up the road here at Richmond University. And that was the first town hall meeting at the University of Richmond. Ken WhiteHow about it? Well, they're coming up soon. You shared the schedule, and if you really interested, if our listeners really want to see more than the debate, go to C-SPAN that half an hour, and we'll see what goes on in the background with you. Frank FahrenkopfWe'll see you in the background. Ken WhiteWell, good luck. It's a heck of a year, isn't it? Frank FahrenkopfThanks, Ken. I'm looking forward to it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Frank Fahrenkopf and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Kim Lopdrup](images/kim-lopdrup-34-thumb.jpg)
![The Hospitality Gene](images/kim-lopdrup-34-thumb.jpg)
Kim Lopdrup
Episode 34: April 5, 2016
The Hospitality Gene
Keeping customers happy is one of the basic goals of business, but is especially hard to achieve in the restaurant and hospitality industry. Kim Lopdrup is CEO of Red Lobster, and has spent time with Procter & Gamble, Burger King, and other. He joins us today to discuss several key elements of the restaurant business, including the importance of customer-centric employees and the hospitality gene.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, a weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Keeping customers happy. While it's one of the basic goals of business, it can also be one of the most difficult to achieve, especially in the restaurant and hospitality sector, where customers' likes and dislikes can change quickly and often. Our guest knows that space well. Kim Lopdrup is the Chief Executive Officer of Red Lobster, the world's largest seafood company. He began his career in brand management at Procter and Gamble before moving into the restaurant business with what is now Dunkin Donuts. He then joined Burger King and then Red Lobster, where under his direction, the restaurant has achieved industry-leading guest satisfaction and record profitability. On the podcast today, Lopdrup discusses several key elements of the restaurant business and Red Lobster, including the importance of customer-centric employees, the hospitality gene, globalization, and supply chain, and how a mention from Beyoncé can really kick things up. Here's our conversation with the CEO of Red Lobster, Kim Lopdrup. Ken WhiteWell, Kim, thank you for joining us. Welcome back to William & Mary. How does it feel to be back? Kim LopdrupIt's great to be back, Ken. I tell you, I love, love William & Mary had such a great experience here, graduating in 1980. You know, the college really shaped me when I went to school. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to be a psychologist and wound up realizing I was a lot better at economics and then wound up going into business where I could combine both of those. But just had a tremendous experience at William & Mary, and I'm very grateful to the school. Might add my sister followed my footsteps. She's a William & Mary graduate, and my oldest daughter is William & Mary, graduate. So all three of us had tremendous experiences here. Ken WhiteIt happens so often the family, right? That's a great story. It's great to hear. Well, again, welcome. You have had a wonderful career in the restaurant and hospitality space. What is it about that space that gets you excited? Why do you like that space? Kim LopdrupOh wow, I actually do love the restaurant industry. And part of it is what we're really doing. Some people, I mean to, think we're serving food. Yes, we are doing that. But what's really happening is that people around the tables in our restaurants are strengthening marriages, strengthening relationships. We are serving fantastic food. Actually, if you have listened to the Harvard School of Public Health, seafood is the most important food one can consume for good health. I also love the fact we're developing people. We have 58,000 employees in our business. They're really good people. You know, we select people who care about others. They're really good people. And yes, we have some people a fair number of people at headquarters with great educations, but the average person in the restaurant was not born with a silver spoon in their mouth and has had to work their way up for a living. And I love the fact we're creating career opportunities that can lead to fantastic jobs. You know, corporate officers with really good incomes for people who were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and it really can be a great career track for people who care about others, willing to work hard, have high integrity, and are willing to stick to it and make sure those guests have a great experience, their employees have a great experience they can have fantastic careers in this industry that they simply are not available in very many companies today. Ken WhiteHow do you find and train that other centric person, right? Kim LopdrupThat's a great question. And part of it's interviewing, but we actually even have personality tests we give people to understand what really makes them tick. And there's a lot of questions and a lot of sophisticated things we look at. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to do you care about it do you genuinely care about others. You know, people can kind of go through the motions and fake it, but you know, customers see right through that. And we like the people who are genuine. We can teach them steps of service. We can teach them all that. We can teach them about different types of seafood, but that inner motivation is so critical, and that is something we look for in all of our employees at all in all parts of the organization. Ken WhiteHow important is the training? You've got somebody. They are the right person, and then you get them in the job. How important is their training in development, and what is it that you do? Kim LopdrupWell, it's hugely important, and it's important in all parts of the organization. You know, obviously, within the restaurants, we have a well-defined training program. There are certain steps you have to go through to get certified to demonstrate that you're proficient at certain things before we let you do different jobs. But even if you're going to, you know, go to work at our corporate what we call a restaurant support center as opposed to a headquarters. But if you to if you're going to get a job there, we're going to make you work in a restaurant for a while before you start doing your regular job because it's really important you understand the basics of the business and the needs of the people you'll be supporting. So so training is very important. Actually, while it's important and while I constantly hear from people who join us from other companies that, we're in many cases better than the company they join from. To be honest, we actually think it's an area where we have continued opportunity to get better, and our inner one of our BHAGs or big hairy audacious goals is about being the best people developer in casual dining, and we're currently working on a number of initiatives to continue people's development throughout their career leveraging e-learning you know much more than we have in the past given that we're a distributor organization across the U.S. And actually now we have restaurants in 11 countries, and we want to be able to deliver training more efficiently and effectively so that while a strength is something we continue to work at. Ken WhiteRight before we started recording, you said a great phrase we like to hire people with the hospitality gene. What is that? How do you define that? Kim LopdrupWell, the hospitality gene is really that genuine caring about other people. You have to really want to make somebody have a great evening. You have to really want to serve great food, and you know we are blessed to have a lot of people who really are passionate about what they're doing. And I hear that all the time from people outside the company also that they're amazed how passionate our people are. But we think that's a real competitive advantage, but also once you get those folks, you have to, as we talked about earlier, train and develop them but then make sure that they understand what it is we're trying to achieve and stay motivated. And so it's really important to talk about the vision for not just where the company is going but what's the guest experience we're trying to create. We've actually defined that pretty well. We call it the ultimate seafood dining experience, and it's about, you know sea to table quality seafood served extremely fresh and personalized service from friendly seafood experts in clean, comfortable restaurants that reflect our passion for seafood. So everybody has to know their role in creating that, and the really good people who really care really actually get quite excited about creating an ultimate seafood dining experience and offering kinds of seafood you can't get very many places and making sure it's prepared perfectly in ways that not many people do. And that pride, I think, is very important to attracting and retaining and motivating the right people. Ken WhiteAnd how great it is to love what you do right. Kim LopdrupAbsolutely. Ken WhiteWherever you happen to be in the organization, it's fun to love the job. Kim LopdrupYou used the word fun. That's actually key. You know, when we became an independent company, we actually changed our values statement a little bit. It used to be do the right thing, which stands for respect, integrity, genuine caring, hospitality, and teamwork. But we added two new values and excellence and fun. We realized you know the restaurant business should be fun. And our guests are there to have fun, and you know if the employees are having fun, they do a better job providing a great guest experience and making it fun for them. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Kim Lopdrup, CEO of Red Lobster, in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Now back to our discussion with the CEO of Red Lobster, Kim Lopdrup. Ken WhiteOf course, it's all about seafood, and that's not something you always have a handle on. There's a lot of things that go into that. How do you approach making sure that the restaurants have fresh great seafood? Kim LopdrupWell, terrific question, and I'll point out I'll start by pointing out we actually named the company when we became an independent company 20 months ago. We decided to name it Red Lobster seafood company instead of Red Lobster restaurants, and that reflects the fact that that supply chain is so important to our business. We actually are actively sourcing. We have buyers and inspectors active in over 20 countries around the world looking for what the best seafood is and bringing it. Our whole senior management team goes and meets with suppliers now, and we've been learning where the best catches are likely to be and locking up the best supplies ahead of time which we never used to do when we were part of our big company before. But we are way more nimble now, way more willing to lean in and lock up the best supplies of things ahead of time. So that's been an interesting cultural shift for us. But we have to be nimble, you know, and make the most of what Mother Nature is giving us because supplies fluctuate, and so we have to be willing to move nimbly and make adjustments. We have to also make sure we're always the customer of choice for our suppliers, and we want to be their first choice. The guy they want to give their first offer to on whatever great catch they came up with because they know we're gonna be in it for the long term. They know we pay our bills on time. We know we are honest in our dealings. So being the customer of choice is very important also, and we inspect everything to teach our suppliers how to inspect things before they even send them to us because it's just, you know, we want to give our guests the top of the catch, and it's far more efficient when you work with suppliers, and they learn what your standards are, and they learn how to meet them pretty much every time. But supply chain actually is critical in our business, much more so than in a typical restaurant business where you can just call the pasta factory and say send more pasta. We have to be constantly seeking out new and interesting things and bringing it to our guests. Also, the logistics are quite interesting in our business. We're the largest overnight shipper of fresh seafood in the world. So we've got a lot of planes flying with fresh seafood, and the ground logistics are very important as well. It is very different than a typical restaurant business. Ken WhiteYou mentioned around the globe you're looking around the globe. What about growth of the restaurants are you outside the United States? Is that in the future as well? Kim LopdrupYes absolutely. We have been over the last few years expanding internationally, and we are currently in 11 countries. We started in the Middle East, specifically United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and then Latin America, where we've now entered Mexico, Brazil, and Ecuador. We'll be in Puerto Rico starting in November and beginning to go over to the Pacific rim as well. We are very excited about the international opportunity. It's really interesting how well-received the brand is in international markets. Generally, it's viewed as an American luxury brand, and you know it's new in the market. And we presented in a very contemporary with a very contemporary restaurant design, and it's been really incredibly well-received. Looking longer term, we see some big markets out there that we think have a lot of potential that we are just we're sequencing our markets in an order where we do the easy ones first, figuring we can learn there and still be successful but continue refining as we work towards what we think are ultimately the largest opportunities which are probably China and India but markets where you really have to get it have your business model exactly right before you enter given the high cost of real estate in those markets. Ken WhiteThe world is changing so quickly right in every business, and you've been in this business for a while with the millennials and just changes in the world. How's the business change? What's different today than maybe when you first got into the field? Kim LopdrupWell, first of all, you're right there. Is there is an interesting generational shift going on when? I when I joined the company, actually we had a fairly older customer base, and it is now shifted where it is very balanced. We're sort of right in the middle of the industry norms from an age standpoint, but within that, you have a balance of a group that we call quality traditionalists, which tend to be baby boomers. They really care about quality. They want things served in a fairly traditional way, but quality is super important to them, and we have a lot of those folks in our customer base. We also have an emerging group that we refer to as adventurous up-and-comers that are a little bit younger. They want to try and experiment with new things that are different, and they are a growing part of our customer base. Interestingly, the quality traditionalists tend to watch a lot of television. The adventurous up-and-comers tend to be more digitally focused, so we're able to target our messages differently to the two groups. We are currently getting based on our analysis getting almost as many guests now from digital media as we are from traditional broadcast media, and there's some really good things about our brand that resonate very strongly with this adventurous up-and-comer group. For example, they tend to be very interested in, say, more internationally-inspired dishes. We're working to start putting more of those on the menu there. They are very interested in sustainability. We actually have a phenomenal sustainability story to tell that we have probably not done as good a job telling in the past as we could have, but we have our practices have been industry-leading in terms of never selling endangered species, never buying from any fisheries that aren't well managed. Being an industry leader in requiring great sustainability practices from our suppliers. There's some incredible success stories. You look at the lobster fishery in off of Maine and eastern Canada. How industry has worked work with universities and governments to fishermen to adopt best practices and that the output of that fishery has been growing dramatically since it's more than doubled since I joined the business because of excellent fishery management practices. For example, if the carapace of a lobster is under three and a quarter inches, the fishermen actually will throw it back because they want it to grow and get bigger and have babies and all those good things. Or if it's too large, we won't serve it because, you know, really big lobsters are super producers, and so the lobster fishery is incredibly well managed. Off Alaska, incredibly well-managed fisheries that are doing great and genuinely sustainable. We know we need to do more. There are absolutely are fisheries, in particularly third world nations, that are not well managed and out in the open ocean beyond the reaches of any government. There are, unfortunately, some bad practices, but we do not buy from any of those companies. We are very careful about who we do business with and, fortunately, have some terrific partners. Ken WhiteI told a number of people that you'd be on the podcast, and I think without exception, they all say you've gotta ask him about Beyonce, right? I mean, I'm sure you've been asked a million times about that. What was that like? I mean, that was quite a bump after she dropped the name, right? Kim LopdrupYeah. We were certainly quite surprised when that happened. I actually was at a board retreat for another company over the weekend, and on a Saturday night about 10 p.m. I got a text message from someone outside the company. Did you know your trending number one on Twitter ahead of the Republican debate? Ken WhiteWow. Kim LopdrupAnd no. And so we quickly look and see Beyonce has released this new video called formation that mentions Red Lobster in a somewhat provocative way. And you know I phoned into the office, and our team is working trying to figure out how to respond to it. And honestly, there's some pretty easy ways to go wrong in responding to that. We ended up concluding we had to respond. Not to do so would frankly make us look like we were a dinosaur company that simply didn't understand digital media or contemporary culture. But we had to do so in a way that avoided endorsing the controversial aspects of the mention. So we wound up with a tweeting in a way that was designed to be relatively neutral. To be honest, it probably was not enough. We knew this when we did it. The truth is there's nothing we could have said that would have been profound enough to satisfy Beyonce's fans. Ken WhiteRight. Kim LopdrupOkay, but we did. But had we tried to be say something that profound, it would have offended a lot of other people who are part of the family values crowd, and so so we did not attempt to be profound. We did not attempt to clever, but we did respond and acknowledge in self-deprecating way where we kind of made fun of ourselves for the eight-hour delay and made something. There were some funny comments or people came up with like. Well, you try tweeting while baking biscuits, or you know it suddenly got busy in here and things like that. And then we, you know, we saw that on Super Bowl Sunday, we had a 33 percent sales increase. And you know the press was very interested, so we decided, okay, we'll share that. But as we share, we're going to be very important secondary messages to emphasize the fact is we were surprised by this, which we were because that served three purposes. One is to the to Beyonce's fans said, hey, this was a genuine shout-out. This wasn't some paid endorsement that we paid 20 million dollars for like, like other companies do. This was genuine. We're, you know, but to the folks who are part of the family values crowd, and the truth is our customer base does skew conservative, you know, and there are a lot of families they're people with very strongly held values who don't use some of the language that was in the song. To that group, it says we actually didn't approve and didn't pay for that or actually had nothing to do with it happening, and then to the group that was saying well, why did it take you eight hours to respond on Twitter? Okay, it was eight hours on a Saturday. We didn't know it was coming. And so, you know, the fact that it was a surprise was actually a very important secondary message that we had had as part of this. We wound up getting two and a half billion media impressions that were mostly positive for the brand. And it absolutely wound up helping sales. A company called Foursquare actually was seeking to do a study on which brand benefited the most from the Super Bowl, and they were looking at different companies that had advertised. They actually concluded we had benefited the most from the Super Bowl, which was kind of remarkable given that we didn't advertise on the Super Bowl. We didn't sponsor anything on the Super Bowl, and in fact, she didn't even mention us during the song she sang on the halftime show because that was sponsored by another company. Ken WhiteYeah, wow. Kim LopdrupSo so, anyway, we're grateful for the sales bump, and, you know, grateful to have some new fans, you know, but we it was not an easy situation to handle. We tried to thread the needle in an appropriate way, and I think we came out okay, but it was certainly one of the more unusual situations I've ever faced in my career. Ken WhiteNever a dull moment in your business, right? Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Kim Lopdrup, CEO of Red Lobster, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Kim Lopdrup, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Walter Hickey](images/walter-hickey-33-thumb.jpg)
![Telling Stories Through Numbers](images/walter-hickey-33-thumb.jpg)
Walter Hickey
Episode 33: March 29, 2016
Telling Stories Through Numbers
Data Analytics has been one of the most important and fastest-growing sectors of business, and the combination of data analytics and journalism has become increasingly popular as well. Walter Hickey is the Chief Culture Writer for FiveThirtyEight.com, a website that uses data and statistics to talk about the world. In this episode, we discuss how journalists are using data to help us understand the world around us.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, the weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, in the past few years, we've seen the growing importance of data analytics in business. Well, the combination of data analytics and journalism has become increasingly popular and important as well. Books like Moneyball. Websites like FiveThirtyEight have opened our eyes to the importance data can play in a range of areas, from professional sports to presidential elections. Our guest is on the leading edge of the data revolution. Walter Hickey is the Chief Culture Writer for FiveThirtyEight.com, a website that uses data and statistics to talk about the world. He joins us today to discuss how journalists and others are using data to help people understand and enjoy the world around them. Here's our conversation with Walter Hickey. Ken WhiteWalter, thanks for joining us. It's really exciting to have you on campus. You just met with a group of William & Mary students, maybe about eight or ten of them. It was the loudest conversations, a lot of laughter and talking. They were really excited. This is really cool. So welcome. Walter HickeyThank you so much for having me. This is a lot of fun. Ken WhiteYeah, so tell us about what you do today and how you got there. Walter HickeyYeah, so I'm the Chief Culture Writer at FiveThirtyEight.com. It's a data analytics website. And so what I kind of do is I write all about culture, and culture is anything that's not politics, sports, science, or economics. So so, we have a really kind of broad way to approach all these topics. A lot of it is like entertainment, like how do we talk about movies and talk about numbers in movies? How do we talk about TV in numbers and TV, the kind of stuff that really resonates, not just ratings? And so it's a pretty kind of wide field. We do you everything from like the lottery to predicting the Oscars. And I just kind of use numbers and statistics do what we can to find out cool new things about the world. Ken WhiteAnd a generation ago, if you were to say that, people would turn around and run the other way. Who wants to hear this? Today it's really hot. What I think it's part of the approach of FiveThirtyEight. What is it you do that makes numbers so compelling? Walter HickeyYeah, it's definitely a challenge that we're kind of getting better at. You know, like, whenever you try to talk about numbers with people, it's always a little bit of an uphill because you need to get A people to buy in on the topic, and then you need people to kind of buy an on the approach and in the past couple of years, especially in the politics field which my boss Nate Silver has done a lot to kind of bring data to in the sports field. I mean, ever since kind of Moneyballish kind of stuff, it's been bubbling up. Talking about numbers as a way to kind of understand the world, not the whole story. But just a chunk of the story, it's kind of coming into vogue. So what we're really interested in doing is we're kind of finding new ways to approach older topics when it comes to newer ways of using analytics and whether that's taking approaches from the sports world like Elo or whether that's taking stuff from the politics world like kind of averaging polls and making a forecast and things like that. We're just trying to find out cool new things, you know. So I think once you the way that you hook folks is you kind of talk to them from where they're coming from, right? You want to find out not necessarily the most important thing that's going on when it comes to these numbers but probably like the more interesting thing. Ken WhiteYeah, like the John Goodman piece, it was really fun. Can you tell us about that piece what that was about? Walter HickeyYeah, so that kind of came together, and a lot of this starts look far more informally Ken WhiteYeah, sure. Walter Hickeylike this was like a lot of them just kind of when you're talking to a friend in a bar about like, oh, that new John Goodman is out this weekend, and they just kind of like have a conversation about John Goodman who's a really fun person to talk about. Everybody's got a favorite movie that he was in. Everybody's got like a favorite role that he was. And the thing that we just kind of arrived at just like again just among friends was, hey, this is a guy who is like always really good whenever he's like number two or number three like the movies where he was number one, like the Flintstones is not really a cultural touchstone. I don't know about you but. And so then I just kind of set out like, hey, let's find out some cool stuff about this. We looked into how well the films were rated when he was in various billing orders, and we sort of found that he had the films where he was number one didn't do as well as the ones that number two and number three in number four so you want John Goodman as your second banana. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. And that's the story online certainly says that and lists all the movies and so forth and how well they did. You mention Nate Silver. Many people know him and what he did, but for those who don't. Can you give us a brief rundown on how he just brought all this on? It wasn't there before him, sort of. Walter HickeyYeah. So Nate started out he was like, I believe, an analyst for a while at certain places. He was involved in some of the sports. Specifically, baseball analytics, and he was one he developed a system called PECOTA, which, long story short, kind of figures out career trajectories for different players. And he had been this analyst for baseball for a while, and then he was tracking the 2008 election just personally. And what he kind of found was that the narrative was that Hillary had momentum in the Democratic primary and that Barack Obama was too far behind. But what he kind of found just averaging polls was that you know, Obama actually stands a really good chance of winning this. So he started a blog called FiveThirtyEight, and he tracked that through, and he ended up being vindicated by the results of that election. Then, when he carried that through to the general, he ended up predicting. I believe all or most of the states. I forget that particular batting average here. He went over to the Times, he leased the site to the Times, and then he did the 2012 election there again had a great degree of success, and in 2013, the site was bought by ESPN. And so we've been there since it's been a lot of fun. I signed on shortly after the sale, and it's mostly we try to broaden that. We take what he did in politics. We take what we've known in sports for a while to be cool, and we try to apply those lessons to other cool things. Ken WhiteAnd making data cool. I mean, that's really what it's all about. You sometimes talk about important data versus interesting data. What do you mean by that? Walter HickeyYeah. So when you approach someone in a room, and you start talking about statistics, they're going to leave you very, very quickly. So if you want to kind of find a way to talk to somebody who's maybe not super well versed on this. Somebody who like the biggest myth is that there are people who are bad at math, right? It's mostly just kind of folks who haven't had the opportunity to kind of talk things out or get things or get an approach that they kind of can believe in right. And so what we try to do is we try to even though there are important things going on in this data. Even though there are things, you can learn about the world, the way that you kind of reach out to folks that you can kind of meet them where they are is by talking about the interesting data. Like, you talk about, hey, here's a cool thing that I learned about John Goodman, and then you can kind of get it to, like, then you talk about like how much money the movie is made, which is probably the one that he actually cares about right. I republishing a post on like Batman versus Superman, right? And the important number for Batman versus Superman this weekend is going to be like, how is it going to do? How's it going to approach? And so what we try to do is we tried to find out the interesting thing like how often have they interacted in comics before. Are they best friends things like that? And so if you can kind of meet folks where they are, if you talk about things that they find interesting like, you know, like the lottery like March Madness things like this, you can talk more sophisticated like you can get into that stuff later. But hooking folks on the interesting data is kind of the first step. Ken WhiteIt's hooking them, basically. That's what that's really what it's all about. Walter HickeyIt's all about making an argument right. Like, we read a lot of posts, and I read a lot of posts about movies and stuff. And the thing is, with movies, there's really not like a correct answer like there's no best John Goodman movie. We're using the best data that we have based on critic aggregation, but we're not like we're not solving huge problems here. We're just kind of finding a way to talk about a topic, have an interesting conversation about it, and then maybe find something cool to kind of share and if that gets folks more interested in using data in their own lives or trusting data more or getting or even actually getting more skeptical about the use of data in some of the news, then that's a win you know. Ken WhiteYeah, how about data visualization? I mean, talking about it is one thing, but for some people, they really need to see it. What are you? Are there discussions at FiveThirtyEight about data visualization? Walter HickeyYeah, we have it's very core to kind of what we're doing. We have a whole interactive team, and they put a ton of thought into how we approach this information, and a lot of times, it's a very collaborative process. The reason that you want a lot of folks working on like how do we process how do we do this right is that you have different ways of like learning and reading. And the key is you want to reach a lot of people you don't want to. We were talking before this before the podcast started about like do you use data is, or data are. Ken WhiteYeah, right. Walter HickeyAnd so, like data are is like grammatically the correct way to do it. Ken WhiteRight. Walter HickeyBut like you want to meet folks where they stand. You don't want to come in like, hey, here's the way that it's done. You want to say, like, hey, here's an argument we're gonna make. Here's the way that we're gonna make it, and here's just kind of a new way to approach this kind of stuff. You want to meet people where they are. And a lot of that kind of comes down to how do you visualize things in such a way. How do you write about things in such a way that you can kind of hit those folks? Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion with Walter Hickey on data and journalism in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with the Chief Culture Writer for FiveThirtyEight.com, Walter Hickey. Ken WhiteYou've been with FiveThirtyEight, and if and for our listeners who aren't aware of what it is, it's spelled out FiveThirtyEight as though you spell it dot com. Just a really interesting website. It covers politics, sports, science and health, economics, culture, significant digits feed every day is pretty cool. Just a number there, and you see a 17 or what have you, and you read it, and then we read some of the things you've written. Looking back, you've been there two and a half years now. Is there a story or a series of stories that stands out to you as man that was just really fun to do that? Walter HickeyYeah, I got a chance to do a lot of really cool stuff. It's been a real blessing, you know. There's a couple really ones that stick out in my head, like when it comes to you actually like getting something done and making something like making a change in the world. We did this whole feature on Fandango and rating sites, and what we kind of found was that there's actually in their code there were they were artificially rounding up scores that shouldn't have been rounded up, and such movies look better than they actually, in fact, were. And as a result of us finding this, we contacted them, and they fixed it, and now like the ratings are now real on this site. And so that's like when you talk about like writing a story that actually changes, you know, the world and whatnot. Obviously, movie ratings are not the end all be all of society but like it was kind of cool. You know, you found something cool, and then it got fixed, and now people are essentially better for it. Right. But the most fun one, though, was probably we did a story about Madden, the video game series for the NFL, and what they do is they give assigned ratings to every single football player out there. And what we wanted to know is, and again I know that this is a podcast and podcasts are not a visual medium, but I am not a football player-looking fella. What we want to find out what a normal type dude like this guy who doesn't exercise too much would actually perform in the NFL, and we were able to. I went down to Florida. I ran drills they gave me a number. They assigned my throwing ability, passing ability, running ability. Out of 100, I was a 12, which was very, very humbling, and as a result, we got to find out cool new ways about, like, here's how you actually are able to rate people, evaluate people, and simulate like one of most sophisticated simulation engines that we had out there for football. Here's how they do it right. Ken WhiteYeah, and I'm sure you got incredible feedback. Walter HickeyI got the best picture that has ever been taken of me. It was definitely during that process. So yeah, we had a fun video series on it. I wrote it with my colleague Neil Payne who ended up actually going into like here's how the individual ratings are constructed, and then I got to guinea pig it. And it was a lot of fun. It was definitely. As far as features go, that were just kind of a hoot to do. That's up there. Ken WhiteSo how did you get to this job? I mean, it's sort of journalism. It's data. It's sort of a mix. How do you get here? Walter HickeySo in school, I studied applied math with a focus on probability and statistics, and again William & Mary is a great liberal arts institution, so you get to do a lot of other stuff too. You don't need to stick strictly in the Applied Math. So I kind of I took a lot of courses. I took an accounting course actually here the business school. And but in my free time, I was at the Flat Hat. I was their online editor. I was writing stuff for them, I was doing newsy stuff for them, and that was just kind of it was, you know, was the yin to the yang. Right. Like if you're doing math all the time, it's nice to write a bit, and you kind of get to flex all the muscles that you have without going too hard in one direction. And so when I was a senior, I wasn't really a hundred percent sure of what I was going to do. I applied to a site Business Insider that I had been reading for a while. Ken WhiteYeah. Walter HickeyThey're a really cool company. They started about maybe five or six years ago, and they just got bought by Axel Springer last year. So they hired me on as an intern, and I just kind of worked there, and what I'd basically try to convey was like, hey, you see this data journalism stuff going on, I can try to do that again. It's very much always you learn by doing kind of thing. So they gave me a shot, and it ended up really kind of working out, and that's how Nate ended up kind of getting familiar with my stuff, and he reached out. Ken WhiteSo I'm sure there are college students and people in their 20s, maybe people in their 90s, saying to you this looks really cool. I would like to pursue this. What kind of advice do you have for somebody who would like to do this kind of work? Walter HickeyDefinitely, and I would say the main thing that you need to do is, like, you don't necessarily need to be a pro at this. It's very much like when if you look at the stuff that I was putting out when I started. If you look at the stuff that I was putting like towards the end of my time at BI. Even at the beginning of my time at FiveThirtyEight, you can definitely see like I feel like I'm getting better at this right. And you can start right now. You can start like all really comes down to is asking a cool question and then doing everything that you can to kind of find an answer and whether that's just kind of pulling like going to a site with that has information on it whether it's like pulling from IMDb like you just got to have a cool question. And once you start that, it's really just throwing spaghetti at the wall until you see what sticks right. Ken WhiteAnd that cool question is really what's going to resonate with other people, right? What works for them? I mean, if you and I think it's cool, but no one else does. So what, right? But it's one that will resonate with others. Walter HickeyYeah, and you don't find that by like trying to pull the Internet. You find that by just having conversations with your friends. Think about like I do not want to tell you the percentage of article pitches that I have that we're that we developed in one-star bar in Manhattan, just me and my friends throwing back and forth about movies coming out right. Like it's a lot of very much just like talk to your friends, like if you have if you had an argument about how much you should tip, you know. Like that's the thing that you can start looking into. That's a way that you can start approaching data in the real world and that kind of thing. It's really just think about what makes you passionate, what you have really good conversations about, and a lot of the time, that's going to end up resonating. Ken WhiteWell, that's where all the great ideas come the back of the napkin, right? Walter HickeyExactly, yeah. Ken WhiteIt's a conversation with somebody in the car or on the train or what have you. Yeah. So what's it like at FiveThirtyEight during March Madness? Walter HickeyThere's lots of serendipitous yelling going on. Like, I'll be working on a piece about, like, I don't know, batman. And I'll just hear screams from someone at the office, and I'll just be like, well gosh, I guess that that bracket is busted like it's a really fun place to be. I think one of my favorite sport times at FiveThirtyEight was during the World Cup because ESPN was covering the World Cup, and it was the policy of essentially just, like yeah, you should just go watch the games. It's fine. Like, just kind of take off and go watch the games, and watching that just happen was absolutely amazing. Ken WhiteYeah. Where do you think the future of the business is going? What what's coming down the pike? Will we see more will it be? What do you think? Walter HickeyYeah. So data journalism, in particular. Ken WhiteYeah. Walter HickeyCool, because I know the future of journalism is a question far above my pay grade, but for data journalism right now, it's not a mature market, I would say. Like somebody was asking me earlier about, like, who do you consider competitors, and what I'm saying at this point is just like, you know what every even if like other folks are resonating in the data visualization space. Its kind of like a rising tide carries ships right. Ken WhiteRight, right. Walter HickeyStill definitely growth. There's still like increasing interest. People are getting new and interesting ways to look at this. And the more folks who get interested in it, the more mature it gets. So it's really going to be at this point it seems like a rising tide phase like it seems like a lot of folks are increasingly reading up on this kind of stuff. People are becoming sympathetic to it. It is very much like Moneyball kind of stuff for a while, that was the outsider, and then it was like now people are getting interested in it, and then within two years, every single team had a Bill James right. Every single team now made it happen. And so you're going to kind of see people increasingly getting credulous when it comes to data visualization, and then you're also going to see, I think a lot of people kind of like kind of backing off a degree like at least the skepticism is such a big part of this when it comes to like how much credibility do you assign to this study and one thing that makes this so fun is that you can actually kind of make your data available and put it out there, so there's definitely kind of we're in a growth phase. People are getting increasingly interested in it. The grassroots of it are fascinating. Like there's a bunch of kids in dorm rooms making really cool visualizations now, and you know the future of our field is strong. I think it's going in a good direction. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Walter Hickey from FiveThirtyEight.com, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you, and your organization get to the next level with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Walter Hickey, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Janice Min](images/janice-min-32-thumb.jpg)
![Career Advice for Young Women](images/janice-min-32-thumb.jpg)
Janice Min
Episode 32: March 22, 2016
Career Advice for Young Women
Janice Min leads two of the most powerful and prestigious news brands in entertainment media - The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard. She was on the William & Mary campus this past week to speak to professional women and students about careers, business, and being a leader. She sits down with us to share her advice for young women in leadership roles.
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Janice Min: Career Advice for Young Women TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, this past weekend, William & Mary in the Mason School of Business hosted the Women's Leadership Summit & Stock Pitch Competition. Hundreds of women, both professionals, and students, gathered to network and share career advice. One of the keynote speakers was Janice Min, who leads two of the most powerful and prestigious news brands in entertainment media, the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard. Under her leadership, the organization has strengthened its reach in print, online, and social media, as well as in television and live events. After addressing the attendees of the Women's Leadership, Summit Min sat down with us to share some of the advice she gave to the young women in the audience. Here's our conversation with the President and Chief Creative Officer for The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group, Janice Min. Ken WhiteJanice, welcome to Williamsburg, College of William Mary, in the Mason School of Business. It's great to have you here. Janice MinIt is great to be here. Ken WhiteHow was? You just had a wonderful presentation to a packed house in Brinkley Commons. How was that? Janice MinIt was great. I love speaking to groups of students, and this happened to be all women here and all women in finance, and I was, of course, chuckling to myself when I sat down. I said to the person next to me like everyone here is wearing black, and then she's like it's businesswomen. They all wear black suits. There were a few people who broke out of the mold and wore grey. But it was definitely a group of serious-minded women. I like that. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. There's a culture in this building, right? Yeah, well, you gave a talk, especially to younger women, with some sort of guidelines that you've come up with throughout your career, and I thought maybe we can talk about those. Janice MinAll right. Ken WhiteThe first one you said is nobody is ever going to reward you for just working hard. Janice MinYes. Okay, so, like a lot of the women who are in the room there today with us. I was born a nerd. I am a total nerd. I grew up feeling pretty confident I was smart, and one of the things that happens when you get your first job is that people will use you for that. People will sort of spot the person who is oftentimes a woman who will be given all the work because they know A she'll do it. B, she probably won't complain. And so, at my very first job, when I was at my first magazine job when I was at People magazine, they gave me every assignment. It was I was just completely dumped on, and the thing is, when you're young at that age, you feel like, oh well, I have to prove I can do it. And so you do it all, and you think you're going to get rewarded for that, but the fact is when you are the person who gets all the work, and you're known for the person, they can put all their drudgery on they will just give you more. And you know, I still remember distinctly being the person sitting there at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. at night in the offices in New York, and it's deserted. It's a ghost town. I'm sitting there with, you know, a few more hours of work to do, and everyone else is out to dinner and going to the movies. And that is not a sustainable way to live. But it's also not a way you move ahead. Ken WhiteRight. But as a young person, you're probably thinking this is good for me; I'm learning. Janice MinSure. Ken WhiteYou're falling into that. Janice MinI feel like I became a very good writer through the constant repetition of just honing the skill over and over again. So I'm not going to say that that was a bad experience, but I'm really glad today I'm not still in that same experience. Ken WhiteSecond thing you shared being the idea person is more valuable than being the hardest worker. Janice MinYes. So one of the things, when you are a student, you really feel like you put your head down you, work hard, you get an A, you know you did well. In organizations, it's very different when you're out in the quote-unquote real world. And when you are the person who can pack 100 boxes an hour, for example, that's great. But the person who can invent the machine that packs 300 boxes an hour is the one who will get ahead. And that's a very sort of basic analogy to creativity, but there are things that I think it could be particularly female and or to sort of more understated males in the workforce. You will sit there in a meeting and be terrified when you start out or even not when you started out. You'll be terrified to speak. And I always had this nagging feeling when I started out well if I if my idea were so good someone else would've said it by now. And so you sit there, and you sort of sit on your hands, and then sometimes you even do silly thing where you email your idea after the meeting, and that's just ridiculous. And I really firmly believe that the people who and I do it myself now that I am a boss. You always remember the people who give you good ideas, you never remember the people who don't, and I've never seen a person who is not an ideas person move ahead. It's not the person who decided that they needed to log in 80 hours a week alone. Ken WhiteWe know how important communication is you sort of referred to it there. Your number three tip was listen. Janice MinYes, people so underrate listening. Listening is just probably the most valuable skill anyone can have, both as a human being and in your own personal relationships. But in the workplace and I made a somewhat embarrassing confession in there, and I don't think I'll say it for this podcast, about how many of the editing The Hollywood Reporter I went to the Oscars and of the eighth best picture nominees I've seen an embarrassingly small number of them yet I have a whole staff who covers those movies. Talks about them in meetings. I could sit there if you turn this podcast into a podcast about the best picture-nominated movies. I could talk about them with you, and you would never think I hadn't seen some of them. And it's the amount of information you can glean. You can't be an expert in everything. You have to count on other people, the people you work with, to tell you what's going on. And some of the best ideas come from listening to your staff. So way back when in the early 2000s, I was the editor of this publication called US Weekly that was struggling to make a name for itself, and it eventually did. But I remember there were moments, and I'm not saying this because there are journalists out here who want to think about reality television but using as an example of how you find ideas from your staff. There was a reality show called Newlyweds on MTV, which some people thought was, you know, the scourge of the Earth, and other young women loved. And I remember the first day that it came out on MTV. The day the morning after it premiered on MTV, the women in the office, who were largely young women in their 20s, were talking about the show. Oh my gosh, you know it's so silly and this and that I like her for this reason, and she didn't know the difference. She thought that Chicken of the Sea was chicken, not tuna. And there were all these things that they kept talking about, and I and I couldn't actually get the morning meeting going, and I remember that moment. And you know, I was trying very hard to be the business of being first on identifying different celebrity and trends in entertainment. And I'm like, Let's just go for it. Let's offer this woman a cover and with her husband. And that was the first magazine cover Jessica Simpson ever had. And she became a billionaire. I did not. But it did. It was one of the things that put Us weekly on the map, and you know, time and again, you know I have never watched a Jessica Simpson reality show. I have never watched The Bachelor. I have never watched American Idol. I can't believe I'm saying these things on a podcast, but they are stories that I've put on covers. And that was really based on my skill that I could that I knew I have, which was developing stories out of just listening to people and understanding what the story was. So this is just a roundabout way of telling you. Telling people, though, that you know companies spend millions of dollars on focus group testing and research and product analysis, you know, competitive studies but sometimes the biggest and best answers are sitting there right in front of you if you listen to people. Listen to your sister, your mom, your brother, how they talk about the way they bank, the way they grocery shop, what they wish they had the meals on an airline. You will learn everything about the market just from keeping your ears wide open. Ken WhiteExcellent advice. Number four, don't apologize for being ambitious, even though everyone will want you to. Janice MinYes, this is probably a little more of a female problem. I think men largely are ambitious, and they wear it on their sleeve, and no one faults them for it. I think the idea of an ambitious woman is probably still somewhat threatening to a lot of people and also something women apologize for all the time or try to conceal, and so when I was a writer, my first magazine job the one at People magazine and I got promoted and to be a senior editor and I you know I remember saying to my boss who I loved and she was a woman probably in her late 40s early 50s at the time, and I just said you know what. Because I'm a very type A person and I said don't give me the baby sections to edit; I want the real sections, and you know she loved that, but she probably loved less a few years later when I believed I was very confident I was doing more and better work then the people I reported to, and I said you know I would really like to be promoted again. And one of the things she said to me was, you know, some of these people have worked here decades to get in that position, and you know, I'll never forget one of the other things she said to me was, you know how long it took me to get this job. And I just felt like, well, I would like to be in a different timetable than that and some of it. I wasn't angry. I just felt like, okay, so maybe my time here is done, and I will find another job, and that will happen at times in your life like sometimes you will just have we all just know when it's time to move on. So you know, I think there is part of the good girl syndrome that a lot of you know A girl students have, which is I'm not going to break the rules. This is how it's gonna go, but sometimes you need to get ahead. Ken WhiteKnow what you don't know and be totally fine with that. Janice MinYeah. You know. I have I probably had a hard time in my life as a younger woman needing to always be right. And my husband, who I met in college before we got married, maybe sometimes even now, anytime I would say I was wrong about something, he'd say like he always make the joke wait, get off the tape recorder. You know this is history being made. You know, it was it I didn't like being wrong, and part of that is being a perfectionist and or having that sort of smartest girl in the room, or you know, the smartest boy in the room syndrome where you have to know everything and I remember always feeling maybe I was a slight failure if I didn't know everything like that how did that person know something and I didn't. How did I miss that, you know? And it could drive me insane. And now you know one of the things that you one the things that really makes people good leaders. I believe firmly is the ability to bring in smart people into your fold and people who are smarter than you. And oftentimes, most times, the smartest person in the room is not the leader of the organization. If the person who exhibits leadership skills and knows when to when to say really, I this is a skill I don't have. How do we hire that skill? How do we bring some other form of expertise into our operation and then really empower those people to do it? Give credit. You know. Yes. I think just no one can be good at everything, and the person who knows how to build that organization it's like a jigsaw puzzle. The person who knows how to fill in those parts is the person who will win. That is what I believe. Ken WhiteWell, when you talk about that, I think of it's an old movie now from the late 80s early 90s broadcast news. Janice MinYes. Ken WhiteAnd Holly Hunter is the producer, and she knows everything. Janice MinYes. Ken WhiteAnd then she fully believes that and her boss says to her it must be horrible being the person who knows everything. She says yes, it is. Janice MinIt's a burden on her. Ken WhiteYes, I do know everything. He was scratching his head, and she believed she knew everything and had to in that role. Janice MinWell, you know, it's interesting, you know, one of the knocks I often hear on people in various industries someone who just had a meeting with someone or doesn't necessarily care for someone in business. One of the knocks they will often say first is, well, you know that person has smartest person in the room syndrome, and it makes you not want to engage with that person because it's so unproductive a lot of that person's time is spent fulfilling an ego-driven wish to seem like the best. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Janice Min on advice for young women in business in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're looking to improve your leadership and business skills the Center for Corporate Education has a terrific program scheduled for April the certificate in business management. It's a five-day program that covers strategy, accounting, operational effectiveness, communication, and leadership. A great program for the professional who lacks an MBA. For more information, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Janice Min on career advice for young women. Ken WhiteItem number six seems like it could be targeted more toward leaders and bosses, but you share this with up-and-comers, and that is be generous with your praise and friendship without agenda. Janice MinYeah, I think that's a really hard thing sometimes when you're starting out. You feel competitive. You feel like you know that person who I think I might like is a threat to me because they might want the same thing I want, and most of that is typically invented in our heads, and sometimes that other person will get the job you want or will move ahead before you do. But largely, it's, there is a big missing, I think, an undervalued part of conducting yourself in life and in business of building loyalty, and some of that is, you know, A, just being a good person but you know be really just being sharing and giving of yourself. And one of the things I do often is you know you will do public praise in a meeting instead of public humiliation, which goes so much further, which doesn't mean you let transgressions pass. No, but. And then part of it is, you know, I remember just that, you know, a few weeks ago after the Oscars, I took out some people from staff who had worked very hard in the Oscars issue. I took them out to a spa and to lunch, and one of the people in that group said to me no one has ever done this for me before. Like, thank you. And there is a sense that money buys loyalty that you give someone a raise, they are loyal to you. That is just not the case. Giving someone a raise maybe buys you more time before they eventually up and leave. It's that sense of loyalty that you can't fabricate you cannot. People really want to feel like you have their back and that they will, in turn, have your back. And there are countless times in my job where being an editor. There are difficult situations you get into every time. Nobody is ever going to like 100 percent of what you write. And so, you know, I got often get incoming calls about people stories, and you know, largely, I'm on the staff side, and that goes a long way. Like people, you know if they think when a bullet comes, you're gonna duck under the table. They will also duck under the table. Likewise, so it makes a huge difference. Ken WhiteYou know you're talking in your talk. Before we started recording to younger women who are in college and starting out and I think of someone who reports to me. Janice MinYeah. Ken WhiteWho's very young, an entry-level new. She complements me. Janice MinWow. Ken WhiteAnd I think that is amazing the boss never gets right. Janice MinYeah. Ken WhiteRight. Janice MinYeah. Ken WhiteSo for someone who so new to say hey, that was really great. Wow. Does that go a long way? Janice MinYeah, it goes a long way. Ken WhiteIt makes you so mature. Janice MinWell, you know, even like it's so funny, even by the way, it takes a very confident person to do that right. Ken WhiteYeah. Janice MinEven coming off the stage. Well so I remember when we honored Oprah Winfrey a few years ago to breakfast in Los Angeles for the Hollywood Reporter and this is Oprah Winfrey who has interviewed everyone you know from state leaders to President Obama to Rihanna whoever and she said universally when the person's done the thing they ask they would always ask her is how did I do. And she spoke about the value and validation that everybody needs validation. And so even when I'm in that room, and I just gave a speech to this conference of women here, the second I'm done, I'm like did they like it? Did someone like it? And I got nice validation, and I felt really good. And so just those basic human gestures of making people feel that they were valued somehow. They just can make all the difference in the world. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Your seventh point was be courageous. Janice MinYeah, you know most people are hard-wired to be safe. Right. And I think whether it's your family when you're growing up or in your career, your friends. People will often tell you to make the safe choice, and yet you don't know anyone in life who's succeeded without a level of risk that they assumed. So when I say be courageous, it can be very basic things in the office. Stand up for somebody you know and make sure that someone who hasn't gotten credit for a project gets credit. Give someone work who you think is good but is overlooked. You don't have to. You don't have to always conform to the office standard. Part of it part of the courageous part is telling your boss when he or she is wrong and not not in a disrespectful way but being able to disagree. I can tell you, as the boss now, I love when people disagree with me. The most terrifying thing is when people don't, and you think there's a culture of that. And the thing one of the things I hate hearing the most in the office is when someone says well, so-and-so didn't bring that up because they thought you would hate it or you know we never did that because they were sure you wouldn't like it or even the craziest things like you know we heard you hate the color or so we're not we didn't we don't do orange anymore or anything. Like things get invented. Ken WhiteYeah. Janice MinAnd you know, really, to think that there's some kind of chilling effect because people didn't feel courageous or thought I would be upset about something like that is pretty crazy, and you know, there's this very famous story in Hollywood about a woman named Dana Walden who is she now is the chairman of Fox Network's group which is FOX the broadcast channel and also the studio that produces such hit shows as Homeland and the People versus OJ and American Horror Story huge shows on television. And she got her start on her rise because she was at an off-site that Fox was having, and she was a publicist. And the discussion came up by from Peter Chernin, who was running Fox at the time, about how they could do better on certain things. And she spoke up, and she talked about her opinion on certain shows and her opinion what they could do differently. And this person who was sort of unknown became suddenly known by Peter Chernin, and you know, fast forward she now runs she went from publicist to top executive. You know that that is that's an extreme example, but you could make those things happen for you every day. Ken WhiteWouldn't have happened if she didn't speak up. Janice MinAbsolutely. Ken WhiteYeah. And your final point, which is a great one and really resonates. I know with younger people, and I hate to generalize, but millennials often talk about this, and that is, work on your personal life just as hard as you work on your professional. Janice MinYeah. Gosh, you know, you really can I just share this thing that Julianne Moore told us in an interview, and it struck me so much when I was when we interviewed her we did her for a cover of The Hollywood Reporter, and she relayed an anecdote how she was really unhappy in her 30s, and her professional life was taking off, but her personal life was not. And she said she told us I was lonely. I don't think I felt happy. I spent my 20s working hard and trying to get wherever there was, which wasn't really anywhere. It was just a job. And I really wanted a family. So she went and saw a therapist, and the therapist got straight to the point with her. The therapist said she must give her private life it's due, and Julianne told us in the interview. I discovered that was as important as my professional life. I didn't spend the time. I didn't invest. One thing I used to tell my women friends was there's an expectation that your personal life is going to happen to you, but you're going to have to make your career happen. And that's not true. You have to make your personal life happen as much as your career. So I think one of the most important things is, you know, don't like companies or you may feel loyal to your company. Companies are not loyal back to you. And that's a hard thing to accept when you are young or even when you're not young is that you've given so much time and you've seen a lot of heartbreak over situations like that. And so you know, go in with your eyes wide open about that when you start your career, no matter what. But separately make sure you have something to fall back on. And some of it is not even fallback prioritize you know find one of the things I said to the women in the room is find someone you love and find someone who loves you back. That is probably the greatest thing you will ever do in your life. And I, you know, I know Sheryl Sandberg has talked about this a lot. Make sure someone that person wants to be an equal partner to you because that is going to be what enables you to it enables you to not lose your mind completely later if you choose to have children or even if you don't choose to have children don't you can't be subordinate to someone and have a successful career at the same time and separately if you want to have children. And I remember when I became the editor of US Weekly somewhat by surprise because my predecessor left suddenly when I was 33 years old, and at the time, I was trying to get pregnant, and I didn't stop. And so two months later, I had that super awkward moment where you just got the job, and you go in and tell your boss you're pregnant. But I look back now, and I've thought about it often. If I had stopped and said let me wait for a better time, there might not have ever been a better time. You could. In fact, no one has ever had a perfect time in their life. Where they say now is the time to have kids because it never fits in. And then you somehow fit it in. So obviously, there are financial, and you know, life circumstances that change all of that. But do what you want to have because you know one day you know think about your life. I like to tell people think about your life. If you didn't have this child, would you be happy? And I think that is a good way to ensure a level of happiness. Ken WhiteAnd it's so nice to get up in the morning, and you can't wait to go to work. And it's so nice when work is over. You can't wait to come home. Janice MinCompletely. Ken WhiteTo the people in your family. Janice MinAbsolutely. And there's, you know, great thing that you know, I believe, and I'm sure a lot of people have heard it. If you want to get a project done at work if you want to be done quickly, give it to a working mom. Like there is no, I firmly believe it makes you better at your job and more efficient. And I do think women and women are natural born managers in some ways, and the ability to, I mean, the amount of stuff in my head at any one given time is sort of staggering. And kind of in the back of my head, know my schedule all day, and it's every 15 minutes are somehow booked with something, but it does make you it gets you organized in your thinking, it gets you organized in your goals. And it will move you ahead in all sorts of ways and not just at work. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Janice Min on career advice for young women. Min recently visited William & Mary for the Women's Leadership Summit and Stock Pitch Competition. If you'd like to learn more about that event next year, visit Boehly Center at mason.wm.edu. That's B-O-E-H-L-Y center at mason.wm.edu. The date for next year's summit is March 25th, 2017. Well, that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level in your career with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Janice Min, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![David Friedman](images/david-friedman-31-thumb.jpg)
![Building Positive Culture](images/david-friedman-31-thumb.jpg)
David Friedman
Episode 31: March 15, 2016
Building Positive Culture
You may have been a part of some great organizations in your career and maybe some not-so-great ones. Company culture plays a major role in how great an organization can be, and David Friedman helps companies and organizations build positive company culture. He's the author of Fundamentally Better: Building a Culture of Success Through Organizational Values, and he chats with us about the fundamental behaviors and culture that make some organizations great.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, chances are, throughout your life, you've been a part of some great organizations and teams and some not-so-great organizations and teams. For the successful organization, company culture plays a major role. When the culture is positive, people are happy, they perform, and everyone benefits. Our guest today helps organizations build healthy cultures. David Friedman is the author of Fundamentally Different: Building a Culture of Success Through Organizational Values. He joins us to discuss the important role of organizational culture. Here's our conversation with David Friedman. Ken WhiteWell, David, thank you for joining us. You just gave a talk to a number of people here at the College of William & Mary. It was a very interesting talk. You had some leaders, some middle managers, and followers. It is really interesting, and we're glad you were able to join us today. So thanks for being here. David FriedmanMy pleasure. Ken WhiteSo you teach, coach about culture. How did you even get into this? David FriedmanYou know, Ken, it was really accidental in many respects. It was really a process of sort of discovery. So what happened was I went to school here, as you may know, and I was a philosophy major, and people think like how do you go from being a philosophy major to being in business, and what happened was that my father had been in the insurance business and I had worked a couple of summers alongside him when I was in college here, and I got out of school and remember thinking gee you know I didn't necessarily dream of being in the insurance business, but I wanted a chance to be self-employed and to be independent to control my destiny. So I went to work with my father and got into that business. And over the years that I grew that company from two of us to eventually about one hundred and ten employees, you know, I just discovered a lot of things along the way. And what I found was that that the cornerstone of everything that we did, all of our success was based on the way in which we operated, or we call it these days the culture, you know, the way that our people were was just different from everybody else. And so much of it, I remember I had this very distinct memory that in the very early years my father thought incorrectly, so by the way, and I think he'd probably acknowledge this too. My father thought that unless people owned the company, they would never be the way you want them to be. And I had this early recognition that no that you can hire lots of really good people who don't need to own the company don't even want to own the company who could do incredible things, but you have to teach them. That you can't assume that they're just going to somehow naturally be the way you want them to be. You have to teach them. So I began early on this process of teaching people how I wanted them to be, which really is all about culture. And over the course of my career, I found over and over again that the culture that we had created for most of it a little bit accidentally, but the culture that we had created was such a powerful influencer that caused one it caused employees to want to work with us and to come to our company. So we got the pick of the litter. We always got the best employees and cause them to stay with us. And it also caused customers to buy from us. That that it's what led to the trust they had in us. It led to our credibility. They felt comfortable with us. They believed in us. They believed we would deliver the things that we had promised we would deliver. And so it was such a big business attractor. So over time, I began to recognize this, and it really shifted from kind of doing this naturally to thinking about what's going on here and why is this so powerful. It goes back to my philosophy perspective that I was philosophical or reflective about the things that were working and began to say, why does this work so well, like what's going on and how could I be even more intentional about it? And we did a whole series of things to be really, really purposeful and intentional about our culture. And it was just a big part of our success. Ken WhiteAnd people noticed that, right? And so they start asking you what have you found out. And through that, you wrote a book, and now people are asking you share this information with us. David FriedmanYeah. And I tell you, and I mentioned in this morning's talk, that when I wrote the book, I really wrote the book as a closure step. I wrote it as a way of wrapping up my old career so that I could tie it in a nice bow and be finished with that and go do something completely and totally different. But it was the system that we had created to be intentional about our culture, which is around something I call fundamentals which are behaviors that we teach. We'll get into that, but the system that I created around the fundamentals was really the signature thing of my career. That's really what if I look at what did I do in my business career. The fundamentals were the signature of that event of that career. And so I wanted to write a book about that and then have closure to it. But the book led to a whole lot of other things, and here I am teaching that material to people all over the country, and I tell you what's fascinating to me, and I shared this morning, I think I shared it with you before this is so simple and so straightforward. This is not rocket science. And every time I talk about this content, this material that we've created, people walk away saying that's just incredible, that's so simple. You've made the topic of culture which for so many is so abstract. Ken WhiteYeah. David FriedmanYou've made it simple and practical, and sustainable. And I can do something with this, and there's a lack of that when it comes to the topic of culture. Ken WhiteYeah. So what are you finding when you go to a company you're working with a management team? What are you seeing in terms of culture? David FriedmanWell, what I see is that everybody is talking about culture and more so today than ever before. Everybody gets that culture is really really important, but they don't have a clue what to do about it. So what they do is the standard stuff that every book talks about and that every consultant talks about, which doesn't work, which is they go out and they do some big exercise, and they write a vision statement and a mission statement they all spend a whole day trying to figure out what their vision mission is, and they write some set of core values, and it mostly is bland and generic, and we're all going to you know we're going to be the leading provider of X Y Z and take care of all of our stakeholders whatever the heck that is and nobody cares. But now they can check the box that says we got a vision, mission, and core values, and they could put on their website. And if they're really proactive or really progressive, they have everybody sign it, and now they think that everybody is going to live this way, and then they'll go back to work and forget about it, and that's all that people do with culture, and mostly in my experience they don't know what to do about it that it's not really I mean I sound kind of cynical when I say that, but it is what most people's experience is. Ken WhiteVery much so. David FriedmanWhen I go into companies, what I'm working against is their previous history of doing these silly exercises that most of the people, if they were honest with themselves, would acknowledge, oh, that was kind of a waste of time, you know, and so they think to themselves when I first get there they think oh do we have to do another one of these exercises. And when so quickly, I show them a completely different approach. They end up saying thank you. Finally, somebody has made sense of this topic and made it real and actionable and concrete instead of all wishy-washy and abstract, and it's what turns people on to this. Ken WhiteSo you talked a little bit this morning about the recognition of culture and performance. Can you explain that? David FriedmanYeah. You know can I say to people all the time that everything that I teach people and show people is based on one very very simple premise and it's the premise that we would all recognize that the culture in any organization any group of people has an extraordinary influence over the performance of that group that you could take the same people and you put them into one two three different companies in the same industry with different cultures and those human beings will perform differently. And we all recognize that you know we've all been. Sometimes I'm with a group, and I'll say have you ever been on a championship sports team, whether it was a high school team, a little league team, anything? And remember how everybody up their game everybody performed at a different level because they just it just drew the best out of them. And if you've ever been on a lousy team where nobody did any good, and the team stunk, you know everybody sunk to that level that that the culture that's in that group just significantly influences the performance of the group. So we all know that, in fact, you know I do this thing sometimes when I'm with a large group of employees. So these are rank-and-file employees. They're not the leaders, and I'm trying to help them see that this culture stuff isn't that complicated. And I'll ask them I do this thing where I'll ask them. So how many of you in this room have ever worked for some company other than this one and they all raise their hand, of course, and I ask them how many of you have ever worked in a lousy company where it's just a bad place, and three-quarters of them all raise their hand, and I'll go around the room, and I'll ask a few people, so you know Ken tell me about the place you work. What made it so bad, or Bob, what made it so bad where you worked, and I got a bunch of people talking about these bad places, and then I asked the group. So in that lousy place where you've worked. Do you think that affected how you did your work, and they all say oh yeah, absolutely it did? So then I asked them do you think it affected the bottom line. And they all nod their heads. Of course, it did. So then we all know then that the place in which you work, that environment we happen to call that in the fancy places we call that culture. But we all know even the rank-and-file employees. You don't have to have a Ph.D. about this to know that the culture that you're operating in enormously influences how people do their work. And so if you get that, you know that that's the basics if you understand that, and almost everybody would. What that suggests to me is then if I'm a leader wouldn't it make sense that if I could be more intentional or more purposeful about creating the kind of culture or the kind of environment that would have the highest probability of causing my people to perform at higher levels will obviously be more successful. Why wouldn't I want to do that? And yet there are very few companies do. Ken WhiteYeah. David FriedmanThey just think either that it'll take care of itself or that it's just organic and you can't do anything about it, but they don't take control over it. They don't. It's just they just hope it works out, and great companies are intentional about it. Ken WhiteOur conversation on building healthy cultures will continue in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're looking to improve your leadership and business skills, the Center for Corporate Education has a terrific program scheduled in April. The certificate in business management. It's a five-day program that covers strategy, accounting, operational effectiveness, communication, and leadership. A great program for the professional who needs business and leadership skills but lacks an MBA. For more information, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with David Friedman on building a healthy culture. Ken WhiteSo when you work with those great companies who are intentional, what do you tell them? How do you coach them and guide them? David FriedmanSo I really created a simple framework to organize what it takes to be intentional about it. How do you? There's a word I use often. I talk about institutionalizing a culture. And when I use that phrase institutionalizing, what I mean is how do you get your culture to be so deeply embedded in the DNA of your organization that is just the way people are around here. It's just, you know, at our company, it's just the way we do things. That's institutionalized, so it's not just again the statements on the walls. It's how people live. And so when we talk about how do you institutionally what do you do. I use an eight-step framework which organizes the different steps that it takes in order to be intentional about creating it. And the eight steps are really as follows that there are two. There are two steps in here that my experience tells me have a disproportionate amount of influence over our success. If we do these two things, we're going to be 80 or 90 percent of the way down the path. Ken WhiteWow. David FriedmanAnd if we don't do these two things, we're not gonna get very far. So when I explain the eight-step framework, I usually explain all eight steps but put particular emphasis on the two really core things, and in fact, when I usually use a flip chart, I draw this which our listeners can't see. But if they did, I would draw a circle with the two steps in the middle that are the core and then six outer rim steps that represent the other things. So to give you the brief overview of that. Ken WhiteYeah. David FriedmanThe first step and all of it is very straightforward. The first step is that we have to define with tremendous clarity exactly what we want our culture to be because, as obvious as it would sound, how could I go about driving a culture through my company if I don't know what I'm trying to drive? I mean, that's pretty obvious. I often say to people that driving a culture is primarily a teaching function. That's really what is. It's not about putting signs up with our vision and mission, and values. It's about what am I teaching my people day after day after day after day. If I don't know what I'm teaching them, I'm not going to do it very well. So I sometimes even refer to it using that teaching analogy I sometimes referred to as a curriculum. It's to the extent that I have a curriculum around my culture. Now I can get my managers and supervisors to all teach from the same curriculum. And now we can start to get the consistency. So the first thing we have to do, it's just totally foundational, is we have to define what is this culture. And as we do that, I take a very different approach from everybody else in that I actually sound sacrilegious to some people, but I'm just not a big believer in core values, and everybody thinks that's crazy because, you know, core values you have to have that. I talk about behaviors because I think behaviors are much more useful. What are the behaviors that when our people do these specific things? This is really what makes the culture the way we want it today. Behaviors are actions, where values are abstract ideas. So, for example, a value is quality, integrity, honesty, respect. The concepts of behavior is an action. It's something that you actually do. So examples of behaviors are things like I talked about this morning, practice blameless problem-solving. That's an action. Ken WhiteRight. David FriedmanBe a fanatic about response time. That's an action. Do what's best for the client. That's an action. You know, assume positive intent. That's an action. These are actions versus values. And the reason that distinction is so important is that it's very difficult to teach values. It's hard to give people to coach people on values. It's hard to give them feedback about values. But I can teach them how to do things. And so, creating a behavioral definition of our culture is so much more useful for people. It's easier for the company to be able to picture what are the behaviors that you say. If I could get my people doing these things more consistently, boy, we'd be one amazing company. Ken WhiteAnd it leads to that tremendous clarity, right? David FriedmanNow we have the clarity. So the first thing we do is to define the culture but define it in terms of the specific behaviors you want to see happening that you say that's what I'm looking for. That's what I would want to say. I call. I give those behaviors a name. I call them fundamentals because I think they're fundamental to success. So we begin by creating a set of fundamentals. That's the first step. Ken WhiteRight. David FriedmanSecond step which is one of the simplest things I've ever learned in my life. And yet, at the same time, one of the most powerful is a concept that I call creating rituals. What I mean by creating rituals are rituals or things that become baked into the way that we operate. There's some behavior that we do over and over and over again until they become automatic. So a simple example of a ritual that most are familiar with is the national anthem. You go to a ball game, and we start the game with a national anthem every single time. It's not like if they're not running behind schedule, they see if they can squeeze it in, or they don't assign it to somebody and say, Ken, it's your job to try to remember to do it. It's just what we do. It's a habit, is another word for ritual in many respects. When the reason this is such an important concept, as simple as it is, is that in the absence of something becoming a ritual, we're just not good at making things last that we have the best of intentions whether we're talking about on a personal level all the people that set their new year's resolutions and six weeks later aren't doing them or at a corporate level when companies and organizations roll out big initiatives that they're all excited about this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and they really seriously mean to do it. And then two months later, they get distracted, they're busy on something else, and it all falls by the wayside, and everybody has that experience. Well, most people aren't good at sticking with things. Rituals are what enable us to keep things going when something becomes a routine. So if we could use the example that we talked about before the national anthem, if it wasn't such a ritual that was just baked into what we do, it wouldn't happen at every game. It would. People would forget it after a while. But we don't leave it to that. It becomes a ritual. So the concept here is that when something becomes a ritual, it's easy to sustain for a long period of time because it's just automatic behavior. It's just what we do. So the thought is if we could create rituals around how we teach and practice those behaviors, those fundamentals. Now it has a chance to last for years and years and years and years because it's not subject to or dependent upon our motivation and discipline. I say to people all the time this isn't a topic that you can overpower or outmuscle with discipline and motivation. You can't say to yourself, you know what? We're not usually good at sticking with things, but that's stuff Friedman says is really important. This time we're going to stick to it. You're not going to you're going to get distracted unless you build rituals. So to give you an example, what I am talking about. So what we do is we take our fundamentals, and we take the list in my own company. I happen to have 30 of them, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. We take our list, and we focus on one each week, so week number one, all through the week, we're talking about the first fundamental. Week number two, we're on the second one. Week number three run the third one, and so on. At the end of 30 weeks, we go back, and we go back to the beginning, and we do it again and again and again for the rest of our lives. And we do that, and we focus on it during the week through a series of rituals. So an example of one ritual, just to give you a flavor for what that means, is that in our company, every time we have a meeting, it doesn't matter whether it's a sales meeting, a management meeting, a service meeting, a customer meeting, a vendor meeting. If we're having a meeting every single meeting we have, the first agenda item in the meeting is fundamental of the week. Just like you know, you start a game with the national anthem, or some people start a meal with a prayer. We start meeting with the fundamental of the week, and we have a three to five-minute discussion about this week's fundamental. So depending upon your role, you could be in seven different meetings this week, and in every single meeting, we're going to kick it off with the fundamental of the week. That's an example of what I mean by a ritual. So typically this is all stuff I did in my own company and now formalized it. Ken WhiteSure. David FriedmanWe teach others that typically, there are three or four different rituals we may be doing throughout the week, but we're constantly teaching all week long. We're focused on fundamental number one all throughout the organization in a series of rituals. And it just heightens our awareness of it. Next week number two and three, and so on. And when we do this over and over again, it just becomes the way we do things. It becomes second nature. It's such a simple thought, but that's how you make it real. So that's the core. There are six other things that we do. Ken WhiteRight. David FriedmanBut those two things, if we can figure out what are the behaviors that you say would really drive success in your organization. And then, we could create a systematic way to teach it over and over and over and over and over again. It's going to become second nature to people. It's that simple. Ken WhiteAnd there's more information, of course, in the book. Last question or point is this doesn't cost any money. David FriedmanIt's so simple. Yeah. Ken WhiteThese are behaviors your just simply talking about behavior. There's no grand plan where you have to have this gigantic budget to do do do what you're saying. Who is ultimately responsible? Is there a culture officer, or is it when you seen companies? I'm sure it's mixed probably. David FriedmanWell, it is, but what I would say it depends on what you mean by responsible. So let me answer it this way. People sometimes ask me what's the single biggest determinant in success of this. And I would tell them that the single biggest determinant is CEO sponsorship, and what I mean by that is that is this has to be driven by the top. The CEO has to be a passionate believer in the importance of culture and saying to the organization this is important to us. It is not something in my experience that can be pushed up from let's say the HR level. So if the HR person read my book or heard me speak or decided this was important and went to the CEO and Ken, you're the CEO, and says, Ken, I heard something I think this is really important for us to do, and you say to him or her sure if you want to do that go ahead. It's not going anywhere. It has to start with you. Implementation HR is often intimately involved in implementation, but if it's not sponsored at the CEO level, it's not going to work. It has to start there. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with David Friedman, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week David Friedman and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Sharon Wood-Dunn](images/sharon-wood-dunn-30-thumb.jpg)
![Diversity in the Workplace](images/sharon-wood-dunn-30-thumb.jpg)
Sharon Wood-Dunn
Episode 30: March 8, 2016
Diversity in the Workplace
Workplace diversity is an issue that has been with us for years and as the world becomes more diverse, companies and organizations are embracing diversity in order to succeed. Sharon Wood-Dunn is the owner of S Wood-Wilson Associates, a consulting practice that works with companies and organizations to succeed in human resources and corporate culture. She discusses the state of diversity and inclusion and how companies can succeed in those areas.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Workplace diversity. It's an issue that's been with us for years. And as the world becomes increasingly diverse, companies and organizations have learned that they must embrace differences in gender, race, age, sexuality, and other areas if they're going to succeed. Meanwhile, the millennials are bringing a generation to work that is increasingly diverse. In fact, over 40 percent of millennials belong to a minority or ethnic group. So how are companies dealing with the changes in the workforce in terms of diversity and inclusion? Well, our guest today has the answers. Sharon Wood-Dunn is the owner of S. Wood Wilson Associates, a consulting practice that's been working with companies and organizations for over 25 years. Helping them succeed in terms of human resources and corporate culture. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss the state of diversity and inclusion. Here's our conversation with Sharon Wood-Dunn. Ken WhiteSharon, thank you for spending time with us. You're a busy person, and I appreciate you being here today. Sharon Wood-DunnIt is a pleasure for me to be here today. Of course, you know Mason School of Business is very important to me as an Executive Partner. I have spent probably my best days with young people. Ken WhiteThat's great. Sharon Wood-DunnWith students in this institution and I get to influence them in some way. So thank you for the opportunity to be with you this afternoon. Ken WhiteWell, dealing with those students every day, I know how much they appreciate you and the executive partners. It is an amazing it's an amazing program. So tell us what do you do. How do you help companies and organizations with diversity and inclusion efforts? What do you do? Sharon Wood-DunnWell, there's two types of companies that I work with. One, of course, the companies that have already realized the changing demographics in our country. Those companies that want to make sure they're in step with new and innovative business practices as well as technology. And so those companies will ask me to review some of what they have already done and look to help them be more proactive. Now, this is in terms of recruiting the right kinds of individuals and skills for their businesses. It is also looking at ways that they can really touch their employees as well as their customers. And it all does involve the diversity and inclusion issues that we have currently in our country. So that is one type. They are proactive, and they've done their homework, and they want to enhance their business. The other type of companies that I work with are more or less either they've had employees who have complained that their jobs are not what they thought it would be when they were hired, or they feel that in some way their rights have been violated through a hostile workplace environment. And that also centers on the either the lack thereof of inclusion or the lack thereof of diversity in the workplace. And in that case, I've had attorneys call me because they want to avoid lawsuits and they want to be able to make the best out of a bad situation in that case. And so we worked very hard to make sure that we're encompassing all the needs of the employees as well as the managers and the company heads in that area. Ken WhiteSo literally, two different types of groups seems like a little more proactive versus maybe a little reactive, right? Sharon Wood-DunnAbsolutely. And that's exactly the way it is. Ken WhiteInteresting. Well, you know, in the past, when you talk diversity and inclusion, it seems like many companies introduced it. Sharon Wood-DunnYes. Ken WhiteAnd then it's for some, it just sort of ended. Where is it today? What's going on today? Sharon Wood-DunnThat's an excellent question. Back in the 60s and the 70s, and the 80s, most companies had a big commitment toward diversity, but my belief is at that time, it was really an introduction. We needed to understand what the different dimensions of diversity were. How did race and gender and sexual orientation, and ethnic heritage how did all of those dimensions fit into the workplace because they were available to be hired? But how would they actually work within the given corporation or organization? So the focus then, and I was a part of that, with AT&T. The focus then was to educate was to make sure that we were tolerant. I don't necessarily like the word tolerant, but that's what it was then and then really just to understand or try to understand how all of these differences could coexist within the structure or the culture that was already there. And so I believe they did a fair job of trying to make that happen. But as you know the reality is we need a little bit more than that. Ken WhiteRight. Sharon Wood-DunnIt's not just getting the numbers of people in underrepresented jobs or not just not putting women in traditionally jobs cited for men. It was all of those factors. But how would all of them work together to produce a product? To enhance the company and to enhance the careers of those individuals. So I can appreciate what was done back in the 60s and 70s and 80s, and of course, as you know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Title 7 you know really encouraged government contractors to have these programs in place and a lot of emphasis on training. And so I was a part of that. I did a lot of training back in the 70s and 80s regarding that. But here it is now. You know, we have strikingly information from our Census Bureau that tells us this country and the world at large is changing has changed and will continue to change. And so when I look at companies right now who are proactive in realizing what they need to do or at least attempting to bring individuals into their ranks at all levels to make the transition and going forward the success that they want in the workplace. So I'm delighted at this point because the word inclusion really begins to resonate more so than diversity in terms of hiring and filling positions and accepting or even understanding the differences. Ken WhiteInteresting. And what happens when you're at an organization and the mission says one thing, the culture says another? How do you deal with that? How do you guide them? Sharon Wood-DunnSo often do we find that, well, you know, usually though there that means there's a breakdown in leadership in some way because the mission is something that most companies spend a lot of time and effort to articulate, and they actually believe that once they have a mission there and goals and objectives that people are going to follow suit. What happens is that we see this at the top, and as it goes through the ranks, there's something that gets in the way. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Sharon Wood-DunnWhat gets in the way is actually the culture. And so when we look at culture, when we look at defining culture, I have a very simple definition. It's basically the way we do things around here. That's our culture. Ken WhiteThere you go. Sharon Wood-DunnYou know, and so, of course, they will look at what they are doing and either say, well, we haven't had any issues here, or we're making our numbers. Ken WhiteRight. Sharon Wood-DunnWe're successful. Why would we need to change our culture? So in some ways, it's a lack of vision. As we look forward as to what is already at our fingertips but truly I think the constant effort in getting our numbers. The constant effort in making money sometimes will just override the very easy way mission and values that we proclaim that we have. Ken WhiteOur conversation on the state of diversity and inclusion with Sharon Wood-Dunn will continue in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you are looking to improve your leadership and business skills, the Center for Corporate Education has a terrific program scheduled in April. The certificate in business management. It's a five-day program that covers strategy, accounting, operational effectiveness, communication, and leadership. A great program for the professional who needs business and leadership skills but lacks an MBA. For more information go to wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Sharon Wood-Dunn on the state of diversity and inclusion. Ken WhiteIn your experience, do most professionals, the people you meet, and maybe those you don't work with. Do they understand that you get the best out of everyone when you have an inclusive culture? Sharon Wood-DunnWell, in theory, they do. You know, I can't tell you that I've been to any company that does not say that, and it is just the practice, and let's be honest, if we've been doing things one way and it's working. You know what is the incentive to change? Unless we are really, we really understand that change is coming, and we need to be ahead of that, and we need to address that. Ken WhiteIf a listener is saying you know, I just don't feel like I'm being included, and it's because of a diversity or inclusion reason, what should they do? What advice do you have for that individual? Sharon Wood-DunnAnd, of course, I do work with those individuals all the time and there's a few things going on there. The difference is in terms of age, or even experience comes into play. Of course, I advise individuals to use the methods or the guidelines that companies have in place to address issues that are not of their liking or where they feel they are not doing the best in their jobs. And I tell them to or ask them to make sure they speak with those people that are really involved in what's going on with them. Let them know that they are not they feel they are not being utilized as they should be. Let them know that at one conversation at a time, give them specific examples of where they feel they have not been included or where this violates even the job description that they have that says they should be doing this and that, and yet they are not given the opportunity to do so. Ken WhiteRight. Sharon Wood-DunnMost times, when someone, an employee, can calmly articulate what it is that's going on with specific examples of what's happened, most times the management, the supervisor, the executive will take a look at it and make some changes over a period of time. Ken WhiteRight. Sharon Wood-DunnNow we know no change happens overnight. And so patience is involved as well. But in the most egregious cases if that is the case then of course the legal options or opportunities are there as well. If it's a violation of any of the employment or civil laws, state or local laws, then absolutely that needs to be addressed fairly differently than just having a conversation. Ken WhiteA document, like you, said, and use the right channels. I mean, that's the way. Sharon Wood-DunnAlways have guidelines. I've had cases where companies have anonymous guidelines online. You can go one anonymously online, make a complaint or praise someone as well. Ken WhiteSure. Sharon Wood-DunnNot just complain. Ken WhiteYeah sure. When you and I spoke earlier, actually, before we started to record, you know you said we've come a long way, but we're not quite there yet. And a lot of this has to do with millennials. What did you mean when you were when you're telling me that before we recorded? Sharon Wood-DunnYes, that is so true. You know, we know basically how to bring people into an organization and give them a job. However, for that individual to on a daily basis work through the. Culture that already exists and feel as though they are contributing as they thought they would or would like to. That is where we have the issue that is sometimes what's going on. So when we're talking now about multiple generations coexisting within an organization, you can get someone like myself. I'm a baby boomer; I'm not too sorry to say so. My whole mode of communicating interpersonally is a little different than I even see with my sons, who are certainly representative of the greater group that we're now having into the workplace. So I might even say you know it's wonderful if I could hear your voice rather than read your texts but they're more comfortable texting. So when it gets to how we work out our everyday activities, there are some differences there, and we need to acknowledge on both sides what is expected in a position that's going to make you successful in this organization or in this company. And what is it that you have to do that might be not too comfortable or not exactly what you would like to do, but how can those two differences come together so it works for the betterment of each other as well as the organization and ultimately the company? Ken WhiteAnd we've talked about millennials on this podcast a couple of times now and in that group as affecting diversity what do you see when you see them? What kind of comes into your mind? Sharon Wood-DunnWell, you know, let's look at some of the numbers because if the numbers are really staggering when you think of those being born between 1980 and 2000. Ken WhiteRight. The Millennials. Right. Sharon Wood-DunnRight. They represent more than a quarter of our population of the U.S. population. This is coming from the Census Bureau back in 9th. I think it was 2014 which was the last one that was taken. They outnumber the baby boomers, you know, and so here we have baby boomers and others still in the workplace, still in decision-making positions, many of them. Working with this new group who's seeing and acting and hearing things a little differently but because they are generally speaking, more educated, generally speaking, more driven to success because they've experience success a lot through their parents, those that have been very successful there. And so now they're thinking they're going to be millionaires, you know, much sooner than others, and their daily activity in their mind doesn't necessarily mean they have to be there from 8:00 in the morning to 12:00 at night. Ken WhiteRight. Sharon Wood-DunnThey want a vacation. They feel I need me time and they feel they can get the job done in less than half of the day. Ken WhiteSure. Sharon Wood-DunnAnd do other things, you know, and so it doesn't mean that they are not interested that they don't have the commitment. They are also not looking at staying with a company for the 20 30 years that myself and some other baby boomers have you know so their mindset is different. Yet it is absolutely welcoming in the sense that they have a greater sense of where things are going in business. They remember they have studied and so they know the global marketplace. They know technology even though baby boomers might have discovered technology to a degree. They have taken it to the highest heights and they're still doing that. So they have so much to contribute, and we really need a meeting of the minds between those two forces to get the best, you know, the baby boomers can bring the leadership in terms of being able to communicate culture and being able to communicate business disciplines and the others can come in and say well yes that's true. But let me tell you, let me look at it this way. You know, what do you think about looking at it this way, and that is weird? That's the beauty of that. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Sharon Wood-Dunn on the state of diversity and inclusion and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Sharon Wood-Dunn, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Mary Gentile](images/mary-gentile-29-thumb.jpg)
![Giving Voice to Values](images/mary-gentile-29-thumb.jpg)
Mary Gentile
Episode 29: March 1, 2016
Giving Voice to Values
How do you address ethical issues in the workplace? Mary Gentile is the Author of the Giving Voice to Values program, which helps organizations and professionals identify ethical issues in the workplace and hone their ability to voice concern and create change. In this episode, we talk about how leaders can communicate and problem-solve using the Giving Voice to Values system when an ethical issue arises.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Applying ethical behavior to everyday business life can be challenging, especially when it's tied to the bottom line. But when leaders have the tools to openly discuss and address ethical issues in the workplace, positive outcomes are likely to occur. Our guest today is the author of Giving Voice to Values GVV. The program helps professionals hone their ability to identify ethical issues and voice constructive concern when placed in ethical situations. GVV was first taught in business schools. Now it's used in businesses and organizations across the world. Mary Gentile is the author of Giving Voice to Values. She joins us today on the podcast. Ken WhiteMary, thank you for being here today. Giving voice to values. What is that? Mary GentileWell, I'm delighted to be here, Ken. Giving voice to values is a new approach, an innovative approach to values-driven leadership development. You know, I created it as a way hopefully to transform the way we talk about leadership and values in business schools. What's happened over the last ten years or so is that this approach has really caught on and moved well beyond business schools. It's being used all over the world in companies and business schools. Now we're starting to branch out to law schools and engineering schools. But the heart of it the you know if you don't remember anything else about giving voice to values. The thing to remember it's about asking and answering a different question when it comes to values-driven leadership. So instead of asking the typical question, which is what is the right thing to do in any particular situation. That's a good question. It's an important question, but giving voice to values asks once you know what's right. How do you get it done effectively in your organizations and hopefully in a way that maintains the relationships with the people you need to work with and is not, as they say, a career-limiting move? So it's really much more about action, problem-solving, implementation than it is about, strictly speaking, ethical analysis. Ken WhiteAnd why did you start it? What. Where'd it come from? Mary GentileWell, I started it because I'd been working in this field for quite a while. I spent ten years at Harvard Business School. When I left there in the mid-90s, I started consulting to other business schools and organizations around values and leadership, and ethics, and I frankly got, I had a crisis of faith. I began to I was basically disillusioned and discouraged by the impact of what we were trying to do with all good intentions because we tended to approach ethics as if it was entirely a cognitive thing. It was all about if you knew what was right, then everything would be hunky dory, and you know, in fact, what I was seeing that, sure, there were situations where people weren't sure what was right. But there were a lot of situations where people actually did have a pretty good sense that there's something dodgy here, but they didn't necessarily feel like they had any choice. And I said, oh boy, if we could make an impact there, we would have gone so far down the road, you know. And so I was discouraged because I thought the way we were approaching it was limited. I didn't have another idea until I came up with GVV. Ken WhiteSo is this under the heading of ethics leadership following communication? Where do you put that? For those of us who need to categorize things. Mary GentileRight. Right. Well, people will categorize it where they will. I can tell you where I categorize it. I call it values-driven leadership development. And I do that because what I find is if you label something ethics, people tend to think of it as a set of rules, a code that's outside themselves. It's all about constraints on action. People who build enterprises people who are successful in business, constraints on action is not what they're all about. They're really interested in can do. And so, by framing it around values, it's really more about something that's aspirational that comes from within. That's about the stuff you actually care about and maybe don't always feel like you can implement. Ken WhiteSo are many of your clients. Are they more leaders, or are they more people who report to leaders? Mary GentileIt's both. So it's sort of interesting, actually. Many of the in a business school, of course, we're talking about students. Ken WhiteRight. Mary GentileBut I designed the program to appeal to faculty because I knew that those they were the gatekeepers, and I never met a faculty member who didn't care about these issues, but they didn't necessarily feel like they knew how to teach around them effectively. When it comes to businesses, they will usually come to me. Individuals and business will usually come to me and think this is about empowering and directing the actions of their middle managers and their lower managers, and people will even say look, you know we wouldn't get to be senior leaders if we didn't know what our values were and how to act on them. What tends to happen is as people begin talking about giving voice to values in their organizations, they realize there's actually an important role for this for senior leaders and a lot of times for senior leaders. The issue is. Actually, it's a threefold thing. On the one hand they, they need to learn to voice their values to their senior peers because these are people that they can't really antagonize. These are people that they need to collaborate with. And so that's a skill. It's not about how ethical they are, but it's about how effective they are at talking across at that high level. The second thing for senior leaders is they need to think about how do I build a culture that will enable this in my reports. But the third thing, and the one where I've gotten the most traction with leaders, is how do I hear it when my reports come to me with a values issue. You know it's never good news. It always comes at a bad time. Sometimes it comes with a price tag, you know. And so there are a kind of two components here. One is self-management. You know how do I avoid killing the messenger, right? Because that goes a long way to silencing your organization. And that's exactly what you don't want. And then the other thing is how do I give a message to the manager who raised a values issue with me that I'm taking it seriously that I'm glad they came? But I need to do my own due diligence and you give that message in a way that they don't feel brushed off because often, as leaders when we want to make sure that what we're hearing is actually true that the individual has a whole story that they're not they don't have their own axe to grind. Sometimes when you're trying to hold back a little, the person who brought the message says, yeah yeah, she doesn't really want to hear this. She's not gonna do anything. Ken WhiteYeah, interesting. Mary GentileAnd so we've reframed the experience for leaders to be that way. I was recently worked with a major multinational corporation, and we were piloting a project in one of their regions, and the leaders there were really quite. I thought innovative and a little courageous because they said let's have the conversation together with the middle management and the leadership team in the room at the same time. And what we did is we had the leaders talk about how can you raise these issues with me in a way that makes it easier for me to respond effectively. And we had the middle management talking about how can I raise them effectively and what do I want from the senior leaders. And then we debrief together, and it was such an exciting session because it really was, you know, an implicit. I didn't have to ask for it. But this implicit sort of I'll do this if you do that kind of conversation going on it was very empowering. Ken WhiteWhat are some of the issues? Are there themes or repetitive issues you come across in various businesses? Mary GentileYeah. So it depends on the industry you're in. It depends on the region you're working in. There are certain issues that you hear again and again, you know, having to do with pressures around sales, pressures around sales reporting, pressures around, you know, balancing our desire to meet our quotas with our commitment to our customers that sometimes gets into quality issues you know or how far are we going to push. A lot of the issues end up being interpersonal issues where people feel they're they don't know how to communicate in a way from both angles from below and above in the organization about sensitive issues in a way that you still feel respected. So senior management sometimes will feel like it's expressed as insubordination, and the lower level managers feel like senior leaders don't want to hear what they have to say and don't respect them that way. And so there's this real challenge. And then when you go global, especially if you're working with a multinational, if you're in an emerging economy setting, they feel like corporate doesn't care. Corporates usually, you know, somewhere in the US or in Western Europe, and they don't care, you know, and they're not listening to the ground. That's how they feel. And yet then, when they end up having, you know, quotas to fill, and they feel that this product doesn't work for this environment, they feel set up. And so it ends up creating this antagonistic. So a lot of GVV, I mean, you know, we're talking about values, we're talking about ethics, but a lot of times, it's really about being able to function in a way that's going to make you more effective for the bottom line. Ken WhiteSure, yeah. Mary GentileSo it's a been kind of exciting journey that way to see those lines get crossed. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Mary Gentile on giving voice to values in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're looking to improve your leadership and business skills, the Center for Corporate Education has a terrific program scheduled in April. The certificate in business management. It's a five-day program for professionals that covers strategy, accounting, operational effectiveness, communication, and leadership. For more information, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Mary Gentile on giving voice to values. Ken WhiteSo when a middle manager or someone who reports to a middle manager may go in to meet with you one of your workshops, they're going in asking, you know what's in it for me. What is in it for them? What do they do? What are they looking for? Mary GentileYeah, yeah. I'll give you an example. I was recently in Africa in, I won't name the company, but in a major corporation in one of their sites, and I was doing a reconnaissance trip, you know, where I was trying to identify what the issues were. And so I was doing interviews and focus groups with middle managers. And you know, you can imagine I walked into the room, and this was to set up a, you know, what they were seeing as an ethics training quote unquote. And you know, so people kind of have their heads down, and their eyes are clouded, and they're looking at their phones, you know, and all you have to do is set it up acknowledging that it's hard to do this. Acknowledging rather than coming in saying I'm here to help you be more ethical, I'm here to make you less corrupt, or whatever the issue is. Instead, to say you know, I know you have values; I know they're not always easy to act on. So what I'd like to do is hear about times when you've tried to act on your values and you were successful, and we can talk about why that was true. Hear about times when you tried and you were unsuccessful, and we can talk about why that was true. Hear about, well, I call them enablers and disablers. What enable do to do this effectively when you did what disabled you when you were unable? So the whole thing is you're coming from rather than a policing or even preaching perspective but more from an enabling perspective. So what I've found with corporations is that you know, often their ethics and compliance people will reach out to me. But increasingly, they're seeing this less as an ethics and compliance thing and more as leadership development. Ken WhiteWow, very interesting. Mary GentileAnd that's where I want it to go. Ken WhiteYeah. And you say global, you're doing multinational what kind of a role does that culture from various countries? How does that? That's gotta mess things up, doesn't it? Mary GentileYeah, yeah. When I first started doing this business school, faculty in the US and Western Europe said this might work here. It's never going to work in Asia, Africa, South America, China, India. I actually do a lot of work in those areas. GVV giving voice to values I call it GVV is now being used on all seven continents, including the Antarctic, and yes, of course, there are cultural differences, but there's been great reception, and I've learned that it has to do with a couple of things we acknowledge context. We don't pretend that your context is the same as mine. We start from a position of respect, as I was saying earlier. We start from the position of saying look. I'm not here, Mary Gentile, to tell you what your values should be. I'm here saying I know you have values, and they're not always easy to act on. I want to help us develop strategies, tactics, tools, levers, skills, scripts so that you are, in fact, better able to act on the values that you want to act on. Then I introduce them to something called the giving voice to values thought experiment, which is really at the heart of this work where I don't give you a scenario and say what should you do or what would you do. I give you a scenario where there's a protagonist who's already decided what they think is right, and I say how could he or she get it done in that environment. What what are the pushback? What's the they call them the reasons and rationalizations? What's the pushback they'll encounter? What's at risk for everyone involved, including the person they're trying to influence? Where are the levers? How could they reframe it? So the whole conversation, none of it is ethics, really. None of it is philosophy, certainly. The whole conversation is implementation. I think that's why companies have been so attracted to this approach. They're used to presenting their values and ethics training as a set of rules. And then there's some scenarios, and you discuss whether this is over the line or not. And with GVV, that's not what we do. I mean, they need to know what the rules are. But that's easy to communicate. You can read it you can do it online. With giving voice to values, what we do is say okay. We know what we want to do here. We also know that in this context, there's going to be some specific barriers to that. Ken WhiteYeah. Mary GentileOr maybe you just have a boss who's difficult, or maybe you have a customer who really pressuring you and asking for a quid pro quo or whatever it is. How could you handle that in a way that's going to be effective for all the parties? So I think that's a lot of it. Ken WhiteAnd so that's the bulk of what you'll be doing throughout, say, a day with a company that sort of. Mary GentileA lot of what I do with companies is I teach them the approach first of all. There's a set of questions, and it's basically a reframe. You know, it's like asking a different question people will automatically default to debating whether it's wrong or not. So you have to keep bringing them back to. No no. This is about what, if you thought this was the right thing to do, how could you get it done. And then I have, you know, I try to have custom scenarios that are relevant to their organization and engage them in solving them. The great thing about giving voice to values for the trainer or the faculty member or for me is you don't have to have the answers. You have to have the right questions, and you have to have the ability to keep bringing the conversation back. I remember doing a program a few years ago in Australia with a group of public sector CEOs. They were CEOs of public sector organizations, so you know, child welfare and nutrition, you know, and we had a bunch of scenarios, and we asked them, and I introduced the GVV method, and then I gave them these scenarios, and at first they were very skeptical, but then they started working on them, and for them, the big issue was usually that their boss who was an elected official was asking them to do something that was going to get that person elected again. It was popular, but they had these CEOs had the deep knowledge of their area, and they were really committed to the public good and knew that sometimes what was popular was actually not going to be in the services of the public. And so they had to find a way to play that line. And so we had some of these scenarios, and they started working on them. And once they got into it, they came up with all these great approaches, and when they shared them, you know, what we pointed out is look, you know, all the things you used to resolve these issues which would have turned into scandals if you hadn't. All the tools you used were the very tools that got you promoted to be a CEO in the first place because you had a command of power and influence, you knew how to negotiate, you're very persuasive, you can reframe problems, you know how to enlist allies, you can build partnerships, and you know once they recognized these are the skills I have. But sometimes, when we talk about ethics, we put everything aside that we know how to do as managers and leaders, and we think this as a test of character. Ken WhiteRight, sure. Mary GentileGo, no go, am I a good or bad person? Ken WhiteYeah. Mary GentileAnd we actually dumb ourselves down. And so what this is about is actually saying no use the same skills you use for anything else you know but use it in the service of a values-based position. Ken WhiteWe're seeing so many millennials come into the workforce now, do they? And it's a generalization. Of course, we just had a recent podcast about millennials, and you hate to generalize. Mary GentileI know, but we do. Ken WhiteWe do, yeah. Do they view values differently than the boomers? Mary GentileYeah, it's kind of interesting. There's been a lot of research, and I don't know who you were interviewing, but there's been a lot of research suggesting that this generation has kind of got this sort of sense of both I can do anything that's kind of a youth characteristic anyway but also that they should be doing something that's you know socially responsible, environmentally responsible. Everyone has their own theories about it. You know, I think some of it is, you know, climate change is sort of people are seeing this may impact my life you know in the, in the near term nearer term than my generation, but for whatever reason there tends to be this kind of sense of you know bigger purpose at the same time. You know, there's a kind of naivete sometimes about how you're going to get that done. There's; also we've also a lot of the research about this generation suggesting that they kind of want, you know, steps they want to be trained, you know, they don't want you to just throw them in there. And so one of the nice things about GVV is that you can tie it to any values that they're committed to, but in fact, there is process, and they get to practice, and they get to play with it. Some of the faculty who teach younger students who use this approach have really tied it to. You know something they might be encountering. I worked with the director of athletics at Babson College, for example, and we worked with the captains of all the various teams, and we said, look, you know, this is supposed to be a leadership position. What are some of the leadership challenges that you're facing as the captain of your team? And they were things like substance abuse and harassment, and bullying. Ken WhiteYeah. Mary GentileBut they didn't necessarily feel equipped to deal with them. And so, for them, this was very empowering. So yeah, you know, there are some distinctions, but I think that for millennials, the trick is to tie it to something they're excited about, and then they see it as enabling them rather than again a set of thou shalt not. Ken WhiteRight. If a listener is interested, you have a book they can start right there, right, or the website. Can you tell us about both? Mary GentileAbsolutely. Yeah, yeah. The book is Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What's Right. It was a Yale University Press. The website is just givingvoicetovaluesthebook.com, and if you go there, there's videos, these interviews, there's articles. The book is there there's a whole curriculum that you can link to it's all free. We have a series of online interactive modules that are social core based lots of materials. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mary Gentile on giving voice to values, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level in your career with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Mary Gentile, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Hector Guerrero](images/hector-guerrero-28-thumb.jpg)
![Past, Present, and Future of Big Data](images/hector-guerrero-28-thumb.jpg)
Hector Guerrero
Episode 28: February 23, 2016
Past, Present, and Future of Big Data
Big Data has been the hot topic in business for the past few years. Businesses and organizations are hiring people with experience in data management more than ever, and business schools are adding programs in data and analytics to get ahead of the curve. Dr. Hector Guerrero is a Professor of Operations and Information Technology at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. We chat with him today about what Big Data means, how it got started, and why it's the future.
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Hector Guerrero: Past, Present, and Future of Big Data TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies and tactics that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. For the past few years, it's been the hot topic in business, and it's not going away. In fact, it's becoming more important than ever. Big data. Companies of all sizes are embracing big data, and businesses are seeking qualified candidates who are trained in the discipline. To assist, business schools are adding programs in big data and business analytics to get students and professionals up to speed. It's the future and an area of opportunity for job seekers, professionals, and companies and organizations. Dr. Hector Guerrero is a Professor of Operations and Information Technology at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Prior to joining William & Mary, he taught at the business schools at Dartmouth and Notre Dame. Guerrero has worked with a wide range of clients, including IBM, Lockheed Martin, Arthur Andersen, and countless others. He's been teaching statistics and business analytics for decades and has a unique perspective on this rapidly growing field. It's past and future and especially what it means for you. Here's our conversation with Professor Hector Guerrero. Ken WhiteHector, we can't pick up a newspaper or read a web story, listen to a newscast without hearing the words big data, or for the novice and for so many people who are confused about what this means. What does it mean? What is it? Hector GuerreroWell, it's a very complex term, a very mysterious term, but in general, it's about the acknowledgment that the world now can capture huge amounts of data, and people are beginning to ask the question. Now that we've captured this data, what do we do with it? How do we find power in it? How do we find profit or cost reduction? What is it that we can do with the data once we've captured it? Ken WhiteYou've been teaching this literally for decades. What was the beginning? Where did it all start? Hector GuerreroWell, very, very humble beginnings. Let me tell you I remember the first stats course that I taught as a graduate student at the University of Washington where I was getting my Ph.D., and you know, the mothership, so to speak, of all this stuff is traditional probability and statistics and probability and statistics eventually evolved into just statistics because the word probability was a bit offensive to a lot of people in the sense that it was complicated. But in those days, what we could do with analysis and analysis of data were these little miniature little things that we could do on the board with a piece of chalk and a lot of time spent on one example simply because of the mathematics required you to spend time doing the calculations. Lo and behold, the personal computer becomes available. And at first, it had limited power, but it was certainly much more power than a piece of chalk and a blackboard. Ken WhiteSure. Hector GuerreroSo we began to do things with data that were far more interesting than they had been before. And there was more time for real application as opposed to just talking about the theory as the laptop, and personal computers became even more omnipresent. The things you could do began to really expand quite dramatically. Then about 15 or so years ago, when the first classroom technology hit, then it was a marriage between classroom technology and the personal computer. It wasn't enough for everyone to have a personal computer in the room and me to say well, here's some data. Let's analyze it. What did you get? What did you get? When classroom technology became available, then we were all participating in it at one time on a big monitor in front of us. And over time, personal computers became more powerful, more capable, and we were able to take larger chunks of data and do more interesting things with them to where today we are able to process massive amounts of data and find interesting predictive sort of things in that data, and we can do it real-time in the classroom. A couple of professors and I have developed this thing we call a pressure cooker in a classroom. And a pressure cooker is a real-time event where we give students a large body of data, and we ask them a few questions, and they can literally go to work on the data real-time and present what they get in 10 15 minutes. Ken WhiteWow. Yeah. So back at the beginning, when you were literally teaching probability and statistics, were companies able to use this when people graduate with an MBA or a business degree? How were they able to use this at work? Hector GuerreroWell, usually that kind of activity took place in a department. Often the IT group. Why? Because they were the keepers of the keys to the kingdom. They had the computers. Ken WhiteRight. Hector GuerreroAnd so you needed to know something about big computers and programming and the like to be able to analyze data. So you went to them hat in hand asking them to do something, and maybe they would do it, maybe they wouldn't do it, but in general, what has happened is that that wall has been knocked down, and you don't need to ask anyone any longer to do these things for you you can do it yourself. So to answer your question more directly. We've always had these techniques. They were harder to use because of access to computing power. Today the expectation is that any MBA that comes out of a program, any good undergraduate that comes out of a business school program, will have top-notch analytical skills that they can use on a desk-based machine without having to go anywhere to ask anyone for help of any sort. Ken WhiteAnd what kind of programs if someone is a novice and wants to learn what kind of software. What kind of programs might they use? Hector GuerreroWell, the ubiquitous software, of course, is excel. And I'm a big big fan of excel. Excel has its limitations, but certainly, you can do very sophisticated data analysis on excel. There are also add-in packages that you can add in there. What's become popular of late when we begin to talk about data science and some of our students actually becoming data science scientists is that there are there's freeware there's available software out there that anyone can have. For example, there's a program called R which is a very powerful language for doing data analytics and it's kind of a build-your-own sort of a system you learn a number of commands you write this language, you know, we're going back to that era of computing but with much easier interfaces to work with than ever before. Of course, you can buy big statistical packages like SaaS, for example, that are available and you can become very clever in using that software. We try to introduce students to statistical packages. I use a package called Minitab in the classroom, which is a very powerful package that's very easy to use. And students find that they can begin to do fairly large-scale analysis very quickly. Ken WhiteWe'll have more of our conversation with Professor Hector Guerrero on big data in just a minute. Our podcast is made possible by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary. If you're looking to expand your business and leadership skills, the center has a program in April for you. A certificate in business management is a five-day program featuring instruction in executive leadership, effective communication, managerial accounting, operational effectiveness, and business strategy. To learn more, go to wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Hector Guerrero on big data. Ken WhiteWe're starting to hear, in fact, William & Mary is one of those schools, the Mason School of Business, with master's degrees now in analytics and business analytics. Where are these taking this type of program? These type of graduate programs and this type of instruction. What's the effect that's going to have on business? Hector GuerreroWell, one of the things we've seen with these programs is that industry is asking for people to be subject matter experts on their way into employment. And so this title that I mentioned earlier, data scientist, is a title that fits within that realm of a data business data analytics program. So people want individuals that can step into a role for doing data analysis at a very high level with very specific sort of training. One year's worth of training generally is what it takes. Ken WhiteWhat type of individual likes that? If our listeners are younger and trying to figure out career-wise, what do I want to do? Like personality wise who are the students who seem to excel? Hector GuerreroThey seem to be individuals that are interested in technology. One of the reasons for that is that data analytics today is the marriage of kind of applied mathematics and computer science. Computer science has become a very large component of data analytics with something called machine learning, computer algorithms, computer statistics, and predictive statistics of all sorts. So it'll probably be someone that has an interest in mathematics and technology simultaneously. But of course, there's always the application element of it. Someone who is very keen in marketing, for example, and has that kind of interest will apply it in that area. Someone who's interested in finance or accounting will apply it in a slightly different area. Ken WhiteAnd the jobs are just everywhere. Companies are desperately looking for people who understand big data. Hector GuerreroThe big programs that are now started fairly recently starting are finding 100 percent rates of employment for their students. Students typically get three or four job offers are paid handsomely right out of these programs. And to some extent, we're beginning to see some MBAs come back and say this is a kind of the last piece of the puzzle that I need. I need this subject matter expertise to marry to my general business acumen, and it will make me far more valuable in an organization. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt the dual degree. Get the MBA and maybe a one-year masters in analytics. How is it changing business? I mean, you've done this a long time. How is this? It's all we read about. It's all we hear about. How is it changing? Hector GuerreroWell, all this data that is being captured is finally being put to use, and people are beginning to ask very difficult questions and are finding that they might be able to find a solution to that. Analytics is all about prediction and about being able to take data and adequately predict behavior. Whether it's with behavior of a consumer behavior of an organization, or individuals in an organization, and so that's what that's always the focus is how can we use this data to help us understand what's going on and then to help us predict what might happen if we take a particular action in our organization. Ken WhiteAnd it doesn't matter the department. Hector GuerreroNo, it doesn't. No. You're seeing it being used in all areas of business, whether it's human resources or whether it's accounting or marketing certainly gets a lot of attention. Finance operations, all of the traditional silos of business, have a stake in business analytics. Ken WhiteYou know, it's interesting in doing the podcast and just working here at the college. We meet CEOs and business execs on a daily basis, and when you ask them what are some of the issues you're facing. What what's top of mind for you? Analytics just comes up time and time again, and it seems when I follow up and say why is that. It seems that a lot of companies aren't quite sure what to do with it and how to get their arms around it, so if you're a business leader, what would you recommend to those business leaders? Hector GuerreroWell I mean that's the first thing that happens. You hear all the buzz about data analytics in the background, and you feel you feel a little wary that maybe you're missing something. Ken WhiteYeah. Hector GuerreroYou don't know something that somebody else knows. Ken WhiteRight. Hector GuerreroSo the first issue is that discovery. There is this thing out there; I need to know what it is. Once I discover what it is, then I can begin to possibly use it in my organization. So I think businesses are well suited by, first of all, trying to get a grip on what data analytics is in their world. For example, if you're an online retailer, you need to find out what kinds of tools and techniques are being used to analyze customer interaction with your website for example and you can do that fairly quickly and get kind of a shallow understanding, but eventually, you're going to have to go more deeply. And if you're going to create a group or a department or get that expertise internally, you're going to have to really become well versed in what was going on in that world because they're going to be commitments to be made in terms of capital equipment and costs for programming or consultants. There is a lot of money that can be spent on this. Ken WhiteAnd I think when we hear when most people hear big data or we read the stories, it always seems to tie into huge companies. Fortune 500 can a medium size a small size business benefit and get into it. Hector GuerreroSure, I work with a small business here in the area that retails Spanish foods online. A company called tienda.com and they're doing a superb job with kind of homegrown sort of data analytics and fairly sophisticated stuff that they are able to purchase from consultants and outside vendors, and by necessity, they're having to take these tools and do things to make themselves not only more profitable but more cost efficient also. Ken WhiteInteresting you use the words by necessity. It's not really an option anymore, is it? Hector GuerreroNo. If you're not doing it, you will pay a price eventually because your competition will eat you up in terms of their ability to do a more efficient job than you. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Hector Guerrero of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at www.wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Professor Hector Guerrero, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe and productive week. |
![Bob Williams](images/bob-williams-27-thumb.jpg)
![Leading vs. Managing](images/bob-williams-27-thumb.jpg)
Bob Williams
Episode 27: February 16, 2016
Leading vs. Managing
Successful organizations need both leaders and managers. The skill sets of each of these roles vary greatly, and each one requires a different type of person. Bob Williams has had a long career in leadership positions and now teaches leadership and management to corporate clients and business students alike. Listen in to learn the characteristics of leaders and managers and why both are important to organizations.
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Bob Williams: Leading vs. Managing TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Are you a leader or a manager? Successful organizations need both, but the roles vary greatly, and each requires a particular skill set, mindset, and personality. Bob Williams spent much of his career in leadership positions with the DuPont Company, San Diego Gas and Electric, and Sharp health care. He teaches leadership and management to corporate clients, executives, and business school students at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss the characteristics of leaders and managers and why both are important to organizations. Here's our conversation with Bob Williams on leading versus managing. Ken WhiteThank you so much for taking the time to do this. Bob WilliamsThanks for asking me. Pleasure to be here. Ken WhiteLeaders versus managers, we sometimes use the terms interchangeably. They're very different, aren't they? Bob WilliamsThey're very different. And actually, you have to grow into both of those jobs. And generally, if you think of an organization as a pyramid, put that mental image in your mind. What you find is that managers inhabit our area below the line, which takes care of the operations of a business or an organization. And leaders spend an awful lot of time, if they're effective, trying to figure out not where they are where they need to go. And the managers maintain them where they are so they can have that luxury of thinking about the future. Ken WhiteIs it safe to say most managers would like to move up to become leaders? Bob WilliamsYeah, I think that's very safe to say. At least in the business experience, I have most people like to do that. But sometimes they like to do it for the wrong reasons. Lots of times, they do it obviously for monetary reasons, but to really make the transition effectively, you have to move from a thought process that singularly monetary. Now be realistic. We all want to make more money in whatever job that we have. But when you cross that invisible barrier that I spoke about as it relates to the triangle, when you move across that into the leadership realm, you have to have a pretty strong fixation about being selfless. You have to think about developing other people because you frankly have to have somebody to delegate to. So there is there's a selflessness, but there's also a very specific business purpose here because leaders, I could make a case for the fact that they, spend most of their time motivating and asking other people to do things that they think have value. Ken WhiteSure. Bob WilliamsAnd if they do that effectively, the people they're asking or delegating to will also think it has value. Ken WhiteRight. Bob WilliamsSo they can delegate more and more and more, and it's effective for an organization. Ken WhiteSo let's back up what are the characteristics of a manager. Bob WilliamsWell, there are several, and I don't mean this to be all of them, but I think managers, first of all, love process. They love the idea that if they knocked down A, B follows A, and then comes C after B, and they love that progression because it's predictable. Uncertainty is not their friend. Uncertainty is an enemy. So they dignify the status quo as a result of that. They also have a certain amount of enjoyment that they get from bureaucracy because you can also make a compelling case that bureaucracy is a group of people who are checkers or checking the checkers, which means again that you're dealing with many cases certainty and double checking that everything you're doing is going to be right. So the other characteristic you see in a lot of managers is they are risk averse. They don't want to take a risk that changes the boundary conditions of what they know. Now if you're in a business that's relatively stable that has an environment externally that doesn't change that much. You're okay with that. I think what's happened since 2008 with the Great Recession is it's changed all these business models, and it's because all these pressures came to us externally and blew those business models up. That doesn't exclude the banks and some things that they did, but it was a contributor in the velocity of change is so much faster now. So that's why I say I think you need both. You need both leaders and managers in an organization. One is looking up the windshield, saying where do we need to be before the world gets there. That's the leader. And other people are essentially driving it from the present day and out of the rearview mirror. This is where we've been. This is my process. This is how I do this. I can't be wrong. Ken WhiteAny other characteristics of leaders? Bob WilliamsYeah, I think they have excellent communication skills. It's very important. They have to have a almost a marketing mentality where they sell what they believe has great value to people that, by their nature, don't like uncertainty. That takes a very persuasive communication capability. I think another one is that they're not risk averse, but they are rational risk. They aren't risk-crazy but given a certain level of uncertainty, it doesn't stop them from making the attempt to change something. They don't fear failure. Failure for them as a leader is something that is rational, and I'm gonna take the risk, and if it does fail, I'm going to do two things. I'm going to do something else, but I'm going to learn and not repeat that mistake. So it becomes a learning mechanism for them. For a lot of managers, it's a disaster. They just hate it, but for a leader they say okay, we did what made sense at the time we did it. Let's move on and let's learn from what we didn't put didn't work and try something else. And the driver for all that, Ken, I think, is that all of these things, their competitors, the external environment is in constant change. And if you're not changing with it or anticipating it, which is even stronger, you're in a lot of trouble. Ken WhiteThat has to take an incredible amount of passion. Bob WilliamsYeah. Ken WhiteTo embrace the change to know the competitive landscape and all the communication, you got to be pretty passionate to be a leader then. Bob WilliamsYou have to be passionate. You have to be competent. Both of those things have to be in there. What you don't want is somebody that's passionate and incompetent. I mean, that's the worst combination. That's like having energy but not knowing what you're doing because you'll just sink an organization under those scenarios. So who you pick to be a leader is one of the most critical jobs of the current leadership. That includes boards that includes people that are already in those leadership positions. One of the biggest mistakes that can be made is to pick the wrong people at the most senior levels of an organization because you cannot oftentimes correct the mistakes that they make because they have so many resources at their command. If they haven't thought it through and aren't agile about the way they think about the world, it'll bring a company down. So succession planning and picking the right people is absolutely critical. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our conversation with Bob Williams on leading versus managing in just a minute. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you are looking to improve your leadership and business skills, the Center for Corporate Education has some terrific programs scheduled in the upcoming weeks. Finance for the non-financial manager, rapid cycle innovation for healthcare professionals, and a five-day certificate program in business management. All those programs are on the calendar. For more information, check out the center's website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Bob Williams on leading versus managing. Ken WhiteSome of our listeners are leaders. They want the big job. The big one. What should they be thinking about if an offer comes their way? What is it about the organization that is making the offer should they consider? Bob WilliamsFirst of all, I think they should start with the end in mind. I think they should say look, if I take this job, what would I do differently. Why does it have value? And who would I want to surround myself with? If I take this job to help me accomplish what I think has this. So one of the most important things is they have to always be thinking even while they're managers they have to learn from people that they are not led well by. There are things to be learned by people that run into managers that aren't just necessarily the best. Ken WhiteYou bet. Bob WilliamsAnd there are things to be learned, especially by people that seem to have the right mental set, and they should learn from them. But do your own independent thinking. What do you want this company or organization to be ultimately, and can you help them get there? And if the answer to those questions is I know what I want, and I think I can help them do it. You should take the job. Ken WhiteYou teach Maxwell Bob WilliamsJohn Maxwell, yeah. Ken WhiteYeah. Can you share some of that with us? Bob WilliamsYeah. The reason I like him is because he has this level five leadership concept, and I like that for two reasons. One is it is a nice five-step process which I was just saying managers dignify, and you're going to get most of your leaders coming out of that managerial class, so it's a nice transition. They love process, so the move to leadership having a process helps them measure. That's a good thing. And the other reason is there are characteristics for each of these levels. For example, a level one leader is one that is in that job because they've been appointed to that position. I want to follow you because of where you are in the hierarchy. If you've developed in that level one position, you get to the level two, and that's the permission level. Now that I have the position, you've earned enough trust so far in me that I want to follow you. There's something about your ability to communicate and do all those other things we talked about earlier that I like. The signal seems strong. I want to follow you. So you're a level two leader if you suddenly have to get a permission to say okay, I'm going to follow you. Level three, I follow you because you did great on level two, and you know what you're getting results. And I like to be able to get results because if you get results, that helps me too. Ken WhiteSure. Bob WilliamsSo now your progression is to level three. Level four, you know what I want to develop in my job. I want to learn from you. You have been successful in one, two, and three. You're smart. You know what? You're competent. So now I'm going to take you and promote you. Notice I'm having the worker or the follower promote the leader. This is where servant leadership comes from. Ken WhiteRight. Bob WilliamsSo at level four, I'm saying, look, those first three levels, you were awesome. Now I want to learn from this, and I want to develop, and everybody wants to develop. I want to be better than I am today if you're motivated and ambitious. And finally, level five, which is the greatest of the five levels, is all those things that you've done for me, all those things that you've taught me, all those things that you moved through from position to get to level five. I'm at respect for you. Now that does not mean you have to be popular. Somebody said once that if you want to lead and you want to be popular, you should get a pet. And I think that's probably right because you're going to have to make choices, and that's what level five does. If you have respect for the person that's leading you. You follow them a lot on faith, they take you to a future that is not knowable, but you are totally confident that based on their past experience and your experience with them, they can get you there. So you proceed on faith because you respect them. That is the holy grail of leadership. That is where you have arrived when you have that. Because you can make bad choices, you can make good choices, you may take power from one place and put it in another place, somebody loses, somebody gains, but it's okay because I respect your decision-making. Ken WhiteRight. Bob WilliamsAnd that's a great situation to be in. Ken WhiteSome of our listeners want to be that ultimate leader want to be in charge. They have the passion. They can communicate. They're competent. They'll embrace risk. They've got it all. How do they get there? What advice do you have for them to get to that point where they have that opportunity to be the person? Bob WilliamsI think first of all you have to train somebody to take your place. And the reason that you have to train somebody to take your place, and this happens in a lot of organizations that are very hierarchical. They carry themselves and cover themselves with turf. They work in silos. One of the reasons they work in silos is they protect their turf. Well, if you're really good in your silo and you're protecting your turf, I'd be crazy to move you out of that. Ken WhiteRight. Bob WilliamsSo what they don't realize is that by not training someone to take their place, they shorten their career platform. Everybody plateaus at some point in any organization. You take the lid off that platform. If you are really adding to the value of the organization by training somebody. You're training your replacement. And if you do that, you can move up, but I'm not going to move you if you're really good at what you do and you've protected your turf to the degree that put me at risk if I lose you. So you've got to be able to do that. Now, what's a leader have to do in order to accomplish that? They have to hire, and they have to hire really well, and they have to have people that are competent that they can delegate to. If you've got that and you're smart, you can nurture a whole organization very quickly. Hire wrong, and you got a problem. The second thing is you have to ask as a leader is if I do these projects that we've never done before, will the customer really care? And if the answer is, the customer won't care. Save your money and do something else because that's the source of all revenue. And the third thing that you have to really be able to do is be introspective and recognize that you don't know all the answers. You have to be able to pull people together and be able to say I don't know. Can you think about the transference of value you give other people that report to you when you look them in the eye and say I don't know what do you think? That says humility. That says reality. That says grow with me. That's powerful, really powerful. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Bob Williams on leading versus managing, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level in your career with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Bob Williams and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Jena Burgess](images/jena-burgess-26-thumb.jpg)
![Millennials and the Workplace](images/jena-burgess-26-thumb.jpg)
Jena Burgess
Episode 26: February 9, 2016
Millennials and the Workplace
In 10 years, Millennials could make up as much as 75% of the global workforce. They are considerably different from previous generations, so companies and organizations that hire millennials have to learn to adapt. Jena Burgess is CEO and Founder of Coach Jena B., and she works with millennials, companies, and universities on millennial impact and how they will change the workplace.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, never before have so many different generations worked together professionally. One generation, in particular, is having a significant impact on the way we work and the way business is conducted. The millennials. According to some projections, in ten years, millennials could make up as much as 75 percent of the global workforce. They're large in numbers, and they're considerably different on many fronts from previous generations. As a result, millennials and the organizations that hire them have to learn to adapt in order to succeed. Well, Jena Burgess is CEO and founder of Coach Jena B., an early career success consulting firm. She works with millennials, companies, universities, and organizations on, among other things, millennial impact. She joins us on the podcast today to talk about millennials and the workplace. Here's our conversation with Jena Burgess. Ken WhiteJena, thank you for taking time to be with us today. This is a cool topic, and you are right in the middle of it right in the midst of it talking with millennials and companies. Thank you very much for being here today. Jena BurgessThank you for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation. I don't think we get to have it enough, so any opportunity that I can have it. I'm excited to be there. Ken WhiteOh, great point. So we hear so much about millennials and the generation, and it is a sweeping generalization, but the generation, who are they? Jena BurgessSo millennials, there is a variety of different statistics out there in terms of date. But for the most part, it's anyone born after 1980 up until 1995. So your oldest millennial is around 36 right now. So which is always an interesting piece of the conversation because folks always assume millennials it must be these new hires coming into the organization. But the reality is these are likely your first or second-year managers. Ken WhiteYeah. Interesting. What do we know about them in terms of work and career and their hopes and dreams, and desires? Jena BurgessSure. Well, there's simply a disparate experience depending on industry and background and demographic just around the country. However, some key things that we do know is that they're absolutely looking for purpose and meaning at work which is a definite differentiator for this generation versus others. They're really looking for training and development. That is something they expect early and often. Feedback has been another hot topic for millennials versus other generations. How often they want feedback? How detailed they want that feedback? So there are a variety of different areas, but those three buckets, I feel like, have been really the hot topics around most companies. Ken WhiteAnd for many of their bosses, those were the last things they were thinking of when they first started a career. Jena BurgessExactly. These are the things that you work your way into. Ken WhiteYes. Jena BurgessYou know I establish. I learn the ropes. I do what I have to do. I keep my head down. Then eventually, I'll find kind of my purpose. I'll be able to use my strengths at some point in that I'll find meaning and, around that, get my feedback promotions, all of that good stuff. We have flip-flopped that model and expected earlier and more transparency around when we're actually going to get it. And I say we because I am a millennial. I'll be very upfront about that. Ken WhiteSo when you're talking with organizations, how do you approach that? Jena BurgessIt just depends on the organization. You know, I find it has to start with your recruitment process, so by way of background, I was actually in campus recruiting for a number of years for different organizations, from technology startups to Fortune 500 to the Big Four accounting world. And what I noticed is the recruitment process really lays the foundation for what folks expect during their time at an environment or, you know, at a new organization. And if you're recruiting, let's say, you know what, I have a company I want the best. I'm only going to go to the Ivy League schools. Liberal arts, perhaps. I'm hearing all these folks, but they don't match actually what my needs are at the organization. So we're already starting off at this conversation that doesn't match right. So I think that organizations have to first think, depending on which industry you're in, who is the right hire for my company, and it can't be recruiting at just my alma matter because I went there. Ken WhiteRight. Jena BurgessBecause our c-suite went there, it has to find organizations and universities that match personalities, skills, and expectations for their companies. Ken WhiteOh, that's great advice. So how do companies find out about those good matches? Jena BurgessSo there's variety of different assessments research you can do internally. When I work with organizations, I say alright, let's figure out where your hires are coming from. You can look at the majority, the most successful through performance reviews, and say, really, what are the universities and colleges that do well here? If you have robust campus recruitment process. For a lot of companies sometimes they, haven't started being strategic around their campus recruiting process. They're lucky to have hires come in. They say hey, you want a job for the summer. Great. We'll teach you the ropes, you'll learn the way, and we'll see if it works out. However, it may not be the right hire, and that assessment really needs to happen early and often. Ken WhiteSo a millennial comes in, and there's oftentimes, and you hear it, and I hear it. There's this communication gap between the generations. It can be really funny, actually. Jena BurgessThe telephone game. Ken WhiteBut it's incredibly frustrating. Jena BurgessIt is, it is. I mean, communication is a hard skill no matter what age you are, no matter where you are. We're all looking to better understand each other. And communication is only as good as it is received. So the challenge is you have generation that's been communicating not only through technology but just in a way that is not necessarily as detailed as it incorporates a certain amount of etiquette to it. They're pretty straightforward. They don't really understand why process needs to get in the way all the time. They say well. This just needs to be done. Can we do it? Ken WhiteYeah. Jena BurgessAnd so you have this mismatching of generations who kind of understand politics understand how to create an environment to help people kind of get to communication. These generations are coming, and they're ready to communicate with you, and they have no problem telling you what they're thinking. Ken WhiteThe title of their boss or the hierarchy just doesn't seem to matter a whole heck of a lot. Jena BurgessNo communication, especially between the generations, is also about code and using certain words and phrases that match their understanding of the world and understanding of their experiences. And right now, we have a vocabulary that's not in sync. The generations, you know, our Xers, boomers, and traditionalists have been using language that's been very corporate-friendly, very process friendly. You have millennials, Gen Ys, iGen using language that's more purpose driven efficient. You know, I love the saying there's no shortcuts in life. However, for these generations, yes, there are shortcuts in life because it's been coded. Ken WhiteYeah. Jena BurgessEverything has gotten to be immediate gratification, and I actually can solve that problem faster if you think about it. So the way they communicate and the way they think is, in fact, different. Ken WhiteYeah, very much so. I was talking to a millennial yesterday who was very frustrated with her boss, and she said the only way I can communicate with her is face-to-face or by phone. Who does she think she's kidding? Jena BurgessRight. Ken WhiteShe's so frustrated that she couldn't fire off a text or whatever she wanted to do. And so when you run into when you're working with companies and they have those issues, how do you, how do you go about fixing it? How do you guide them? Jena BurgessSure. You know, I don't think there's a one size fits all. I don't think there's a playbook to this. I think it's really unique to your organization and the tone that you want to set. So if you say listen, we're a company that really does value customer service, speaking face to face, building rapport, relationships matter for them, for example, then that may be just part of your culture, and the hires you bring in really need to understand that and be open to that. And there are plenty of millennials and Gen Ys, Gen Zers who do value that, then I go back to this recruitment process. Are you finding those students? Or are you going to your top technology schools in the country with the best engineers and the best process makers and hiring them and expecting them then to now build this rapport and have this mentality that you had? Ken WhiteRight. Jena BurgessSo they do exist. I don't ever like to lump generations together to say this is the only way they operate. Ken WhiteSure. Jena BurgessBut it does take a little bit more work on the front end to find the right hire. Ken WhiteIf you find you're a part of an organization that doesn't do that kind of work on the front end, I'm sure many don't. Jena BurgessRight. Ken WhiteAnd you're in a team environment. You're frustrated. How do you deal with that? Jena BurgessI love to do programming in terms of wellness and learning, and development. I find that when you can create a conversation, take folks away from their desks, get them all in a room, and learn something new together. Not only does it level set everybody's emotions and the things that they're going through in their day-to-day, but you also start learning from one another in their own experiences based on the activities that you choose or the topics that you choose. I think that's an easy fix and something that I've seen be really successful, and everybody gets to learn. It's great when senior leadership can be in the room as well with your new hires with your, you know, first-year managers all having conversation, and maybe it's positivity at work. I can only tell you how many conversations and examples come out of just that phrase. How can we be more positive at work today? What are your challenges? Why do you find that you end up being negative towards Friday, and the challenges and things just from the perspective of the different generations that get talked about in that conversation is so interesting. And that awareness is really key. Ken WhiteAwareness leads to understanding. Jena BurgessExactly and then creates a conversation which helps us then say what's our communication plan moving forward and what are some the trends that we see. So we know where to start. Ken WhiteInteresting. Ken WhiteWe'll have more conversation with Jena Burgess on millennials and the workplace in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're looking to improve your leadership and business skills, the Center for Corporate Education has some terrific programs scheduled in the upcoming weeks. Finance for the non-financial professional, rapid cycle innovation for health care professionals, and a five-day certificate program in business management. These and other programs are on the calendar. For more information check out the center's website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Jena Burgess on millennials and the workplace. Ken WhiteHave we seen a divide like this before? It seems like in the media, and when people talk, whoa, we've never seen. Have we seen anything like this, or is this truly unique? Jena BurgessYou know, I've definitely read and seen different things in research where you could compare, for example, the generation X experience with them being a little bit more mistrustful of organizations, much more direct in their communications, for example. Generation X loves email, in fact. So they're not all that different. But I do think there's this careful realization of maturation versus generations. And I think that for some of us, we forget there's a process, and we quickly become our parents, so to speak. We say what's going on with these generation? What's up with these kids today? So that's the maturation process, and in that, we end up just joining the ladder buckets that we didn't realize we join one day. But then, the flip side of the conversation is technology. Technology has rapidly changed our ability to understand this world. And when you have digital natives, and that's all they know. Yes, I do think we have not seen that before. The idea of immediate gratification, the ability to meet all of my needs immediately, is completely, in my opinion, undocumented at this point. I can text an emoji to Domino's and get my favorite pizza delivered without having a conversation. Without putting any information in, I can just text literally an emoji. I mean, that is a dramatically different experience than any other generation. So yes, I do think it's unprecedented in terms of technology. But then, on the other side, it's really just fact that most folks need to go through their maturation process and realize what they don't know. Ken WhiteAnd if that millennial is talking about, I can send, I can text an emoji to Dominoes. Her boss might be saying A. I don't know what an emoji is. No one delivered pizza when I grew up. You know you either made it, or you didn't even eat. I mean, wow, what a wide expanse in work. It's unbelievably interesting. You spent a lot of time with millennials and coaching them as they go into the workforce. What are some of the things you try to instill in them? Jena BurgessSure, for millennials, and I spent a lot of time at colleges, universities, or through internship programs or new hire programs, and my favorite thing to share with millennials is give yourself time to become the person you're meant to be. And to me, that's really important because when you're a millennial, and you have access to so much information, you're so strong about your beliefs what it is that you want out of this world. And you know how to communicate it. You forget that, again, that maturation process is going to happen for you. And if there are things, you don't know until you experience it. And so when you come out, you know, guns blazing, and I'm ready to go hit the ground running asking for exactly what you want. You need to be aware that those asks are going to look different five years from now, and they're not even more different ten years from now. So you have to give yourself time to go through the process before showing all of your cards. So I really try to work with millennials on managing their expectations. Understanding what it is they actually want from work and being really clear on that so that when the other things happen that aren't so friendly or that you weren't necessarily expecting out of your work experience. It doesn't throw you completely off your career track. I can't tell you how many students I work with at universities that say I really wanted to be in this career. However, I know I did an externship or an internship I couldn't stand the way that people were treated. I really didn't like the rules of the environment, and I have to kind of level set for them. That was one place, one location, one specific company. You can't bucket that into everybody's experiences. And now, with technology, everybody tweets about their experiences or they're on group chat saying don't come to this company. Don't do this. It's awful. And that becomes the truth. So they don't give themselves time to actually experience the world for what it is before they actually enter it. So again, back to this idea of give yourself time to become who you're meant to be kind of allows them to level set. All right this is where I am today and I need to kind of figure out what the future looks like when I get there. Ken WhiteReally great advice, but when you're 21 or 22. It's tough not to be in a hurry, isn't it? Jena BurgessIt's really tough, and that's a robust conversation for sure because the rush and leap-frogging and the job hopping Ken WhiteYeah. Jena Burgessis something that really needs to be understood for what it is, and there's a couple of different things that contribute to that experience. So, for example, for my generation, I graduated right in 2009. Things were not friendly. You were graduating with a salary that was not even close to what you're paying annually at your university. My first job was twenty-nine thousand dollars a year something that most students today not experience so Gen Z will be a little bit different in that in that sense but then not only was I not making nearly what I had invested but I had to wait quite a few years before I was ever going to see that dollar back in my pocket again. And so I personally was very impatient. I job-hopped four times through my career before starting my own company, and honestly, it became a survival mechanism as well. I can't. I don't have the time to sit here and actually not be able to pay or afford life. I have to able to figure out how can I make a living being a communications major one, not having a technology or engineering background. Ken WhiteRight. Jena BurgessTo be able to kind of make a living and start living the life that I was hoping to have after my investment. So I think a lot of folks forget about that. Is, you know, a lot of millennials did graduate into this, you know, recession where you were not getting paid what you needed to get paid. I was working at a startup, a technology startup on Wall Street, and we were hiring MBAs, folks who had tons of experience, great candidates, and paying them what we would pay an entry-level candidate who had none. Ken WhiteRight. Jena BurgessBecause we could right, which I don't know if it's appropriate to say, but the reality is we have to think about these truths and understand that the hopping and the impatience piece is really us trying to level set some of our experiences as well and get back to where we need to be. Ken WhiteInteresting. But I think job hopping or moving is a heck of a lot more accepted now than it ever was before. Jena BurgessYou know it is, and it isn't. I see the both sides of it. Obviously, for someone who has done it, I've managed to get a job, so I was successful in my job hopping. However, I did face a lot of scrutiny, and I did get that question every time I sat in the interview and said I noticed that you've been a couple places. Tell me more about that. Having them really understand that, well actually, my first job, after being there for six months, they decided to lay off 500 people because of the recession. My job was no longer necessary, and I got demoted. So I need to go to the next place. Ken WhiteSure. Jena BurgessAt the next place, the business model changed because they decided to move the algorithm to being all technology-driven to not include any people. So my job got changed. Ken WhiteSure, yeah. Jena BurgessEverywhere I went, my job got changed, which is a fact of life. And I think millennials need to understand that, too, that you need to be incredibly adaptable and know that in a global economy, what you get hired for may not actually be what you end up doing. Ken WhiteRight. Jena BurgessI talk to students quite a bit about that. Ken WhiteAnd employers. I'm not so sure millennials all know that employers understand those changes they understand business models change and so forth. Jena BurgessThey, you know, there's a bit of catch-up on both sides, and what's great about millennials is they're the most flexible and tolerant generation that we've seen, and they're really open to change. They are really open to diverse experiences, not to mention just diversity in employees and experiences in the workforce. So we can take advantage of that, and I don't feel that employers are having that conversation of how can I take advantage of them being so open-minded versus how come they don't think like me. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Jena Burgess, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level in your career with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Jena Burgess, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe and productive week. |
![Graham Henshaw](images/graham-henshaw-25-thumb.jpg)
![Entrepreneurial Thinking](images/graham-henshaw-25-thumb.jpg)
Graham Henshaw
Episode 25: February 2, 2016
Entrepreneurial Thinking
More companies and organizations seek employees and leaders who have an entrepreneurial mindset. Graham Henshaw is the Executive Director of the Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center at William & Mary. He helps students, professionals, and organizations understand and embrace entrepreneurial thinking, and today on the podcast, he'll discuss why you need to as well.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Entrepreneurial thinking words we hear often. As more companies and organizations seek employees and leaders who possess an entrepreneurial mindset. They want people on the team who see the big picture and the possibilities in the marketplace. People who are persistent, self-directed, and willing to take some calculated risks. For the non-entrepreneur embracing entrepreneurial thinking can lead to success. Graham Henshaw is the Executive Director of the Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center at the College of William & Mary. He helps professionals, students, and organizations understand and embrace entrepreneurial thinking, and he joins us on the podcast today. Here's our conversation with Graham Henshaw. Ken WhiteGraham, thank you for joining us today on the podcast. We appreciate your time. You and I have talked about this often, and I'm excited to have you on the podcast to talk about entrepreneurial thinking. How do you define that? Graham HenshawSo I think the place to start is to realize that it's far more than just startups. So entrepreneurial thinking is really a set of very broadly applicable skill sets and mindsets. And there's actually a lot of really interesting research on this. But the four skill sets are opportunity discovery, the ability to spot opportunities where others really don't see them. Failing wisely this is, you know, being comfortable with the small failures that help you stay away from that one catastrophic mistake. Improvisation being able to observe what's happening around you and adjust course. Course correct to make forward progress and collaboration, realizing that you need multiple perspectives to create truly breakthrough innovations. So those are the four sets of skills. And then, on the mindset side, they're really there are four counterparts to the skills. It's an openness to risk. So rather than trying to avoid risk at all costs, there's an openness to it that you're willing to take risks where you might fail but learn something from that failure and move forward. There's a tolerance for ambiguity here. You're withholding that need for immediate closure. You can put yourself in scenarios where you may discover those opportunities through successive iterations that sort of leads us right to the next one of persistence. Other people call this grit, but there is something that drives you forward. And often, we find in entrepreneurship, it's actually much more than money. If there is a mission, we find that this persistence lasts and then. Finally, it's self-direction. You're not looking for someone to tell you where to go. You're actually experimenting and in the market, and you're unfolding that next step through your experiments. So those are the four sets of skills and the four mindsets that really do characterize entrepreneurial thinking. Ken WhiteThis is fascinating. So how do are companies teaching this? Are they training their employees and their leaders and executives how to think entrepreneurially? Graham HenshawI think that they're seeing the benefit of it. I don't know that there's a there are a lot of opportunities to have a course on entrepreneurial thinking, for example. But I do think that there are ways that you can think about an entrepreneurial course or topic through a different lens. So, for example, you know, we have courses where you know, we're teaching people about some of the tools that you can use in entrepreneurship. A business model canvas is a tool that entrepreneurial thinkers can use to make progress on an idea that they have. But it's a tool that forces you to think in this way that we've just described. It's a tool that makes it apparent that you have to go through iterative cycles. Yeah, so you asked if companies are aware of the importance of this and are they training. The answer is yes. It might not be explicitly called entrepreneurial thinking, you know, many, many instances, you'll see increasingly organizations understanding the importance of design thinking. And so there are companies all around us that are adopting that as a method of both finding problems, the right problems to solve, and then creatively solving them. When you really unpack that design thinking methodology, you see the entrepreneurial thinking methodology at work. And so you know, I think you know companies see the need for being able to spot new opportunities right to grow markets if they've been in the market long enough they know that they've got to improvise. And so I think these are skills that are obviously important to companies and to the employees that are in those companies. Ken WhiteSo the skill set seeing opportunity. I think that's something that can be taught certainly, and some people who have that's just sort of that's the way they see things but failing wisely. Wow, that. How do you learn that? What does that entail? Graham HenshawSo there's a researcher actually named Saras Sarasvathy at Darden. And she talks about this concept in her words. It's the affordable loss principle. And so you think about, you know, what is it that you could put out into the market or what could you do that you're okay if that fails. So it's thinking a little bit differently about failure firsthand. The other thing that you can do is to just increase the cycles that you think you're going to go through in order to try to get an innovation or get something. Bring something to fruition. I think there's this notion that we want to only submit the final draft, and so again, there's a mindset shift here where we have to be okay putting something in front of somebody that isn't completely finished. When we realize that we can do that and learn from what they say to the failing wisely is really more about learning. It's about doing something that you have a hypothesis might be the right thing to do. But being open to that customer or that key constituent telling you you're slightly off to failing wisely is really about learning. So we can teach that, though, by giving students the opportunity to work on projects that can't be done in just one iteration. It requires that multiple cycles through the process. Ken WhiteWe'll have more conversation with Graham Henshaw on entrepreneurial thinking in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're looking to improve your leadership and business skills, the Center for Corporate Education has some terrific programs scheduled for the upcoming weeks. Finance for the non-financial professional, rapid cycle innovation for healthcare professionals, and a five-day certificate program in business management are all on the calendar. For more information, check out the center's website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Graham Henshaw on entrepreneurial thinking. Ken WhiteIn your experience with entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, executives, business people. How do people react to failure? Are they afraid of it? Is that changing because there's a lot talked about in failure? You know we hear fail fast, you know, and as you say, fail wisely. What's the pulse out there? Graham HenshawThe pulse is that when you say it the first time in a course or a workshop, you get raised eyebrows. And I think people are immediately thinking about the culture of the organization in which they work and that, well, you know, failure is not accepted where I work, and so this is going to be very difficult, but I think when we unpack how you do that where it's a the goal is learning it's not to just churn out stuff that we know won't work but when the goal is learning they can start to see that this might be something that that our organization can wrap our heads around. It takes a cultural shift. I think to apply some of these entrepreneurial mindsets. And so sometimes it might just be out of necessity that you know they adopt some of these principles. Yeah. So the failing wisely one is a really interesting one both with executives that I work with entrepreneurs and students alike. And we just have to get them over that over that hurdle that has been something that's become ingrained in a lot of people. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. Graham HenshawAnd I think we just need to give them experiences where they can see the value of doing that. Once they see firsthand the value of putting out what we call a low-resolution prototype and getting feedback on that from a key constituent and seeing how that directed the next step, people start to become believers in that in that process. Ken WhiteIt's tough to have that idea. You love that idea, right? It's going to change the whole company. Wow, look what's going to happen. And you do share that with someone. The feedback is you're not even close. We need to go this way. How do you bounce back from that? I you know that, I guess, has a lot to do with tolerance and persistence, right? Graham HenshawIt does, but it has a lot also to do with how you went into that conversation with that person with that customer or that other key constituent. If you went into it thinking that you were going to sell them this amazing idea, then you will be absolutely destroyed when they tell you that that was not the right idea. Ken WhiteYes. Graham HenshawBut if you went in there to learn and you learn something from what they said to you, then you've actually succeeded. So it requires a perspective shift on why am I in front of this customer. Am I trying to sell them my idea, or am I trying to learn more about the direction in which I should go next? Ken WhiteSeeing opportunity, failing wisely, being willing to improvise, and collaborate, we're not necessarily born with the ability to do that. So how does someone listening to the podcast how did they learn those things? How do you get to the point where those skills are a part of your skill set? Graham HenshawSo the way that we think about it in the Entrepreneurship Center is to curate these hands-on experiential opportunities for our students and anybody that we interact with. So we have coursework and other co-curricular experiences that allow students to get up close and personal with these types of skills. See it in action or try it on themselves, something that we say as it relates to design thinking. We say that design thinking is best learned by doing it. I think, in many ways, that's the same way with entrepreneurial thinking we have. To we have to go through these cycles where we spot an opportunity, and then we figure out some direction where we're gonna go next. Likely that fails. Through that failure, we improvise, and along the way, we realize that we don't have all the ideas we need to get some different perspectives. So I think we have to create these opportunities for students to actually try it. That's, I think, a critical way to learn these sets of skills. Ken WhiteWhen you talk to executives, CEOs, and company leaders, how important do they think entrepreneurial thinking is when they're looking at employees and people to hire and colleagues? Graham HenshawVery important. You know, I think that there was a recent study, an IBM study, where they looked at what are some of the most important things that CEOs are thinking about as they think about sort of managers in the future and the ability to deal with ambiguity is one of those big things. And you know, they realize that the problems that they're encountering in their companies are not very well-defined. There may have been a time where those problems you knew what the problems were. But today, we see more and more what we call here wicked challenges wicked problems that it's hard to define what they are. They have these rippling effects of. If you create a solution here, it might create some other downstream effect. So so, executives see they see that the landscape is changing. These problems that they're encountering are changing. And so then there are a set of skills and a way of thinking that are needed in order to exist and to succeed in this new reality. Ken WhiteWhether I have the skill set and the mindset or not and but I want to embrace this. I want to try. I want to improve. Where do I start? Graham HenshawYou start with your perspective. I think the most important elements of entrepreneurial thinking is to have an open mind to have a growth mindset. So Carol Dweck is a researcher that talks about fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets, and you know the research around growth mindset about the ability to jump into things that you might not know the answer to or you might not be good at but doing it anyway and realizing that that experience actually opens you up to learning something new and being able to potentially be successful but not necessarily certain that you are. To trying to adopt a growth mindset, I think, is a really critical element. The other thing really about entrepreneurial thinking and entrepreneurship, in general, is that notion of opportunity discovery, and I think to do that requires a diversity in perspective that I think you need to be intentional about. If you are so deep in one sector, I think it becomes a little bit harder to innovate than if you start looking outside and opening your perspective up to be inspired by what's happening in maybe an industry that doesn't have anything to do with what you're doing. And so I think, you know, those are some things I think you can you can start with, but the very next thing would be to just try it. There's no substitute for trying to go through a cycle of applying these tools, and you learn as you do it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Graham Henshaw, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level in your career with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities of the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Well, thanks to our guest this week, Graham Henshaw, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe and productive week. |
![Pam Suzadail](images/pam-suzadail-24-thumb.jpg)
![Online Learning](images/pam-suzadail-24-thumb.jpg)
Pam Suzadail
Episode 24: January 26, 2016
Online Learning
Higher Ed is being changed by technology—many business schools are offering fully online MBA programs. Pam Suzadail is the Director of the Online MBA program at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business, and today she chats with us to discuss online learning and it's future in education.
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TranscriptKen WhiteThe College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, just about every business and industry is dealing with change caused by advances in technology. One field that's experiencing considerable change thanks to technology is higher education, and in higher ed, the world's top business schools have taken a leadership role in bringing technology into the curriculum. In fact, now several highly ranked business schools, including William & Mary's Mason School of Business, offer fully online MBA programs. Technology is having a considerable impact on business education and higher education. Pam Suzadail is the Director of the online MBA program at William & Mary's Mason School of Business. She's been in the distance learning space for 15 years. She joins us on the podcast to discuss online learning and its place in higher education. Here's our conversation with Pam Suzadail. Ken WhitePam, thank you for being here. Thanks for taking the time. I love talking to you about online education. This is your area. It's a fascinating area, and you spend much of your time in the MBA space, of course. What types of programs are out there regarding online MBAs? Pam SuzadailAll types of programs exist now, and it's evolving every day. The programs are primarily designed for adult learners, although some schools like William & Mary are now offering courses undergraduate courses for their undergraduate students or students from other schools. When schools are designing programs, the faculty really need to make a decision on whether the program is going to be a blended format or hybrid format or whether they want to go totally online. And then once they decide to go totally online, that's when you start making decisions on whether it's going to be synchronized, asynchronous, whether you're going to have a residency component. And the other features that you see in online or any MBA program. There's tradeoffs. So these are strategic decisions that need to be made with the faculty and with the administration. Ken WhiteSo there is not real there's no one definition for an online degree, is there? There seems to be a lot of variation. Pam SuzadailAbsolutely not. And that's one of the reasons why I really like the field because it's a really you can start to be really creative in what you put together. Ken WhiteOne of the words you mentioned was blended. What's that mean, for example? Pam SuzadailBlended means that there is a significant on-campus requirement or, you know on, site requirement. Doesn't necessarily have to be on the campus. Something like our Flex program has the facility in Newport News at the Peninsula center. So you know, programs like that could start to integrate, you know, online components to it to become blended. Ken WhiteGot it. So there could be face-to-face classes and then some that are online or maybe one class that involves both. Pam SuzadailRight. Exactly. That's right, and when you said there's no real definition even with blended, I mean you could have, you know, 50 percent of the class could be, the 50 percent of the class itself could be online, or you could have 50 percent of the classes be online. And then the other 50 percent be on campus, you know, be face to face. So yeah. There's really no definition, and you know, I just got back from a conference, and they kind of went through some of how people think about the differences between these programs, and there still really isn't any clear definition across the industry which I think is really fascinating at this point there really isn't anything that defines what exactly is online and what exactly defines blended. Ken WhiteSo let's talk about a more or less fully online program where someone can stay at home and study. We're launching, or we have launched, William & Mary in the Mason School, an online MBA program. What does a student get there? What what does that consist of? Pam SuzadailSo I mean, online programs are really the same as far as the education that you're getting. You should be getting the same education as you're getting in your face-to-face programs. They're not watered down. One of my favorite things it's not an easier path to an MBA. In fact, a lot of times, it can be more rigorous. You know the way it works. You know, students log into the website, which we call learning management system, and they know they log in to the site and they log into their class. They get into their class, and whatever that assignment might be for the day or for the week is what they'll be working on. Assignments vary from discussion boards. There's collaboration in these classes. They'll watch some video, and as you know, we just discussed, video is becoming less critical in these programs where there's really becoming there's been a lot of research on how matching learning objectives to the actual activity that the students participating in and video is really starting to not be as prevalent. Students their attention span has been reduced. I'm seeing no 30-second retention spans on video. So there's other ways to engage students. Ken WhiteBut the student is sitting in the office at home, log on, go from there. Pam SuzadailYou could be sitting anywhere. They can be sitting on the train. They can be sitting waiting for the airport. You know I completed my MBA online, and I did a lot of my work waiting for the plane. Ken WhiteYeah, why not, right? What a great idea to use your time. Pam SuzadailExactly. Ken WhiteWho's attracted to an online degree? Pam SuzadailMostly working professionals, but really at the end of the day, it's people that cannot commit to that face-to-face time and don't think about it. I don't think about geography. It's more about that time commitment. So really, an online student could be next door to the school, but they just can't make it to class every Tuesday night. Ken WhiteRight. Pam SuzadailRight. And so it's more about that time commitment. Ken WhiteIn the online program here at the Mason School that you're leading. What's the class profile? Who are some of the people in there? What do they do, age, experience, and so forth? Pam SuzadailSure. So we have our first cohort was 50 students, primarily from the state of Virginia. We had 60 percent from the state of Virginia, about 80 percent from the region, and 20 percent from outside of the region. We have an average work experience of 12 years, and they are coming from primarily there was three industries and career areas that they were coming from. It was government, consulting, and financial services, so that made up 50 percent of the class. These are really high achievers in this program. We have a diplomat in the program who's in Beijing right now. And so they're just very. They're high achievers. They've been very successful in their careers, and they're really looking at this as a credential that they just don't have and that they need it to get to the next level. Ken WhiteYeah. Now, this is new for faculty. You know when we think faculty. That's someone who stands up in front of a large group and facilitates or lectures. So what has it been like for you and your career? This isn't new you. You've been doing this for quite a while. What's it like to train a professor to move into this new mode of delivery? Pam SuzadailSo first, I mean, you have to make sure that you get a faculty member who wants to. Right. There's no it's really difficult to tell a faculty member to that they need to teach online. So that's the first step is you've get somebody who's a faculty member who's very interested in learning about it and teaching online. The second is schools really need to have a fully robust faculty development program for online. And so, and there's two parts of that. One is about developing your class to go online. And then the second part is actually delivering the online content. So there's really two parts of that development. Once you have that faculty develop pretty quickly or adapt pretty quickly, and they really really enjoy it. And it's interesting what fascinates me is when they start seeing how they can improve their face-to-face classes on what they're learning in the classroom. One thing that with online learning, it's really the first time that faculty are working with teaching and learning professionals and how to best deliver their content. You know face to face classes faculty don't go through development training, really. They are content experts, and they get into the classroom, and they teach the content, but nobody ever really sat down and told them or helped them kind of figure out how they were going to deliver that content in a face-to-face environment. So when they start working in the online, they have that professional that's working with them, and they can really start start start seeing how that can improve their face-to-face classes. Ken WhiteWe'll continue our discussion on online learning with Pam Suzadail in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're looking to improve your leadership and business skills, the Center for Corporate Education has some terrific programs scheduled in the upcoming weeks. Finance for the non-financial professional, rapid cycle innovation for healthcare professionals, and a five-day certificate program in business management are all on the calendar. For more information, check out the center's website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Pam Suzadail on online learning. Ken WhiteYears ago, when we first started to hear about online education in higher ed, people would roll their eyes right. There was this stigma. How has that changed? How have you seen that change? Pam SuzadailIt's definitely changing. When I first started, there was very few schools in online, and it wasn't widely accepted. I remember talking to career recruiters, you know, job recruiters, and they weren't even considering online students at that point. So I think as more schools have been, more quality schools have been launching programs. And also as the technology has just advanced to the point where it's actually improving some of the learning outcomes. I think it's definitely becoming much more accepted. The other piece of it is that graduates of these programs are now getting into the workforce, so they know the quality of what they can you know what you can get in an online program, and so they're able to advocate within their companies for these students. So it's definitely changing. Ken WhiteAdvocate just by their performance alone. Pam SuzadailExactly. Ken WhiteThey don't even have to talk about it. Pam SuzadailExactly. Ken WhiteIf they're getting it done, people, people realize. When you get an online MBA or an online degree on your resume, may do you say it's online, or do you just simply list the. Does it matter? Pam SuzadailNo, you know I don't. I wouldn't say that it matters, but you don't have to list that it's online, and I wouldn't recommend that you do. I mean, the MBA is an MBA. It doesn't matter how it's delivered. And it's this should be the same MBA as you're on-campus programs. So there's really you don't put face-to-face MBA on your resume. Ken WhiteRight. When professionals are thinking about an MBA or some other type of a graduate online degree, what do they have to do to prepare in terms of do I need my transcripts? Do I need to take the GMAT exam? What do I have to do? Pam SuzadailWell, for William & Mary, we have the same admissions requirements as we have for our other programs. And I think that is something that is important. I mean, the school wants to make sure that you're accepting the same quality of applicants as you would for any of your programs. So that includes transcripts from all of your colleges. That includes essays. There's an interview required for the online MBA. There's an application, obviously, you know, that you have to fill out. GMATs are required, and they still remain critical. Being able to assess math skills is important. However, many programs are now offer waivers, and William & Mary does as well. But again, it's still really. We offer a waiver, and other schools do, but it's still critical that it's some way you're able to assess the math skills. MBA still is a quantitative degree, and so the students need to be able to come in and be able to be successful in those math classes. Ken WhiteBehind the curtain, what actually happens? I mean, you don't just start this. You know you're at a traditional campus, and now you have an online program. Do you have partnerships, or how does it actually work? Pam SuzadailSo it's all of the above. Think about it as a startup office that's very much a very entrepreneurial kind of spirit that you have to develop and how all companies launch. I mean, that's how you think about how you're going to launch an online program. So if you have to get into a partnership, if there's some infrastructure that you need to develop, maybe a little bit of both. So schools have to look at what their resources are and what their long-term strategy is and then decide on which kind of direction they want to go in. Ken WhiteIf I'm if I think, I might be interested in an online graduate degree or any type of a degree online, as the prospective student as they're referred to. Where do you start? What are the steps you should take? Pam SuzadailSo the first thing is to do your research really. I mean, again, there's a lot of new programs being launched every year. And you know it's really critical that you find a program that's the right fit for you. You know, at William & Mary, we'd love to have everybody be interested in our program, but at the same time, we know we want to make sure that the students would be successful in a program as do other schools. So you really do want to understand your research understand what your options are. The next thing is look at your own support at home and in your office. It's not. I think I said this earlier it's not an easier path to an MBA. It really isn't, and there isn't a time where you need to be on campus, so you really do need to have a support structure in your personal and professional life that's giving you the time and the space to be able to complete something like this. It's a time commitment. Ken WhiteYeah, that's big. That's a big ask. When you say time commitment is there a number? How much time do I spend out of class? Do you get that question? And if you do. What do you say? Pam SuzadailWe do get that question for our classes, and there's definitely guidelines the state and the credit rating agencies have guidelines for the number of hours that a student should be of instructional time that a student should be participating in for each credit. So for William & Mary, our program is for our classes are four credits, and so students are spending about 20 hours per week. Ken WhiteOh, okay. You mentioned accrediting agencies. I'm thinking that's a good way to determine quality, right? Pam SuzadailAbsolutely. That's the first thing that determines quality is looking at the accreditation. So for business schools, you absolutely need a program that's AACSB accredited. The next thing that I will look at for quality is the faculty. So looking that it's the same faculty, some schools you'll see won't have their own faculty teaching in their online programs. So you want to make sure that the online program is an extension of the school and not just kind of this separate entity that the school's putting out there. Ken WhiteWhat do you see as the future? Like you said, you just met with a bunch of colleagues, and just a few days, it was a jam. Right. You just talked about all of it. What's what are the hot topics what's coming down the pike in terms of online graduate education? Pam SuzadailWow. I mean, I think the competition is heating up for sure. I mean, there was this is a small seminar conference that I was at. There was about 35 people in attendance from, you know, senior leadership to faculty to administration, and they, I would say less than half of the people in the room were in the online space right now. So these are schools that are definitely thinking about it. They have plans to go online. The other schools that were in the room are in online and planning to grow it. So number one, the competition is heating up. Ken WhiteYeah, it seems like everybody wants to get into this space. Is that necessarily a good thing? Pam SuzadailNo, I don't think so at all. Absolutely again, this is a strategic decision for a school. I do think that most schools should start to really pay or, if they haven't, most closely pay attention to or start thinking about the teaching and learning aspect of it, though. I think teaching effectiveness is critical across platforms across programs. It's not just about online. It's about face-to-face as well. And so online is kind of helping us start that conversation in a lot of schools. Ken WhiteGoing back to the prospective student, you know you mentioned some really great advice. Make sure you have the support at home and at work. You're going to look at so many hours, say 20 hours or so per class. What about cost? Are online programs a little less expensive than where's that land? Pam SuzadailAbsolutely not, and actually, a lot of schools will charge a premium for the online course because of the flexibility and the convenience factor. So they're not less expensive. Ken WhiteInteresting, because I've heard some people who make the assumption, oh, since I'm not using the facilities, it might be cheaper. But if you're talking flexibility and, of course, all the technology that goes into it. Pam SuzadailWell yeah, I mean when you're not in the classroom, but there's a huge cost structure to it because of the technology behind it. Ken WhiteYeah. So if I, if it kind of sounds interesting to me, I might want to pursue this. What should I do? Pam SuzadailCall the admissions office right. I mean, so you know, go online, go to the websites, take a look at, you know, take a look at the information on the website. Most schools have some sort of form to fill out for more information and start that process. There's phone numbers to call. That's the first step really for any program. Ken WhiteAnd ask all the questions. Pam SuzadailAsk your questions and again make sure you do your research because it again it's time commitment, it's financial commitment is a time commitment, and everybody wants to be you know we want you to be successful. You want to be successful, so you really want to make sure it's the right fit from the beginning. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Pam Suzadail, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level in your career with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Pam Suzadail and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe and productive week. |
![Cris Wineinger](images/cris-wineinger-23-thumb.jpg)
![Leadership in the Non Profit Space](images/cris-wineinger-23-thumb.jpg)
Cris Wineinger
Episode 23: January 19. 2016
Leadership in the Non Profit Space
Most professionals spend some time in the non-profit space during their careers, fundraising for organizations or helping to manage them. Cris Wineinger has been helping non-profits function at a high level for 25 years, and she joins us on the podcast today to discuss the ins and outs of fundraising, and how to lead in the non-profit space.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. At some point in your career, if you haven't already, you'll become involved in fundraising for a non-profit organization. Whether you're asked to lead a campaign at work or as a board member or a community leader, most professionals spend some time in the non-profit fundraising arena. For some, it's exciting and rewarding work. For others, it's the last thing they want to do. Well, Cris Wineinger has been helping non-profits function at a high level for 25 years. She provides organizations and individuals with guidance in terms of Non-profit Management and fundraising. She joins us on the podcast today to discuss the ins and outs of fundraising. Here's our conversation with Cris Wineinger. Ken WhiteCris, thank you for joining us. You're busy. You're going all over the world, it seems. But thank you for spending some time with us today here on the podcast. Cris WineingerThank you. It's great to be here. Ken WhiteTell us about your background in terms of what you're doing these days and how you got there. Cris WineingerWell, I am a consultant to non-profit organizations. I've done this for goodness. I haven't counted it in a while, about 25 years, and I got started doing this in this field despite the fact that I have an MBA, but I came out of graduate school and was living in Bermuda. So like so many of us, Bermudians went into banking and realized two things very quickly. One, I really don't like banking, and two, more importantly, I was really bad at banking. Really bad at banking. Ken WhiteThose are two signs, then, aren't they? Cris WineingerYeah, it was kind of telling me something. So I was actually approached by some investors who were getting ready to build Bermuda's very first National Gallery of Art. A gentleman had passed away and had left a magnificent collection of art with the proviso that they build a museum. And so, my first non-profit gig was to help fund and build the Bermuda National Gallery. And from there, I went on to be the executive director of a few non-profits and then, from there, went into consulting. Ken WhiteAnd you've spent considerable amount of time with capital campaigns and putting those together for organizations. When you're getting ready to do that, what are some of the first steps because so many executives and listeners to our podcast will be involved in fundraising at some point in their career? So how do you start off that campaign? Cris WineingerWell, I think before you even call somebody like me. The first thing you really need to have is what we call a compelling case for support, a really good reason to do this. And what I mean by that is, let's say you're contemplating a new building. You need to be able to answer pretty much one key question. What will that building allow us to do that we can't do now? If you can answer that in a compelling way, then you have a really good reason to do a capital campaign. Ken WhiteCompelling in terms of the organization or others. Cris WineingerOh, good question. No compelling in its ability to change lives. Ken WhiteOh, very interesting. Cris WineingerSo it isn't just that we need this building in order to offer this program. It's we need this program in order to change lives. Ken WhiteSo this is pretty big stuff. It's got to be big in order for you to even attempt to take that step. Cris WineingerIt doesn't necessarily have to be big, dollar-wise. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerBut it needs to be compelling in its ability to change lives. Yes. Ken WhiteSo when you're out fundraising, I think one of the things when I talk to people about fundraising who haven't done it, they tend to think it's almost begging. How do you? What would you say to folks who see it that way? What is it really like? Cris WineingerWell, let me put it this way if you're begging, you're asking really badly. Would be the first thing I would tell you. But really good successful fundraising is focused on the donor. We always talk about donor-centered fundraising, and what that means is before you even ask a donor for his support, you spend a lot of time having conversations with him when the ask is not in the room. And the reason you have those conversations is so you can understand what is important to that donor. Every donor has their own philanthropic priorities. Those things they want to see happen in the world. And so you want to be in a position where you are actually inviting the donor to do something that's already very important to him. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerThat's a successful ask. And that's not begging. Ken WhiteRight. And the donor knows, I mean, they know why you're there. Cris WineingerYeah. The best part about that is when the donor makes his gift. He feels really good about what he's just done. He doesn't feel like he's had his arm twisted and that he's trying to find a gracious way of getting you out of the room. And by the same token, you feel really good about having made an ask that was comfortable and successful. And if you do it that way, chances are he's going to support you again. Ken WhiteRight. So good fundraising is a win-win situation. You just hit on something that I hear from fundraisers in higher education and other places that once someone gives, the likelihood of them giving again increases. Is that fairly standard? Cris WineingerWell, that depends on how well you engage them in your organization between gifts. So one of the biggest mistakes I see fundraisers make is the only time their donors ever hear from them is when they want something. So if, instead, you report back to the donor on a regular basis about what his investment is helping you to do, then you are more likely not only to get a second gift but to get a larger gift. Ken WhiteYou hear the term donor fatigue. How how does that come in? Cris WineingerI do hear that a lot from non-profits and my thought on that is this, I don't I think we do have a lot of donor fatigue out there. I don't disagree with that, but I don't think we have donor fatigue because people have been asked too much. I think we have donor fatigue because people have been asked badly. Because we do have situations where the only time a donor hears from a non-profit is when they want something. Because we're not having conversations with donors when the ask is not in the room because we're not engaging them in the work that we do, and we're not in those situations. We're not reporting back on what their money is helping us to accomplish. Ken WhiteThat's interesting because I'll often hear people say, especially in a higher ed space, alumni. That's the only time I hear from the organization is when they want money, and that's not true. The organization is trying to communicate, but they're not connecting. Have you run into situations like that? Cris WineingerYes, and I tell you what perception is everything. So you may think that you have communicated with them, but if they don't remember it, then you didn't. Ken WhiteOh, that's a great point. Cris WineingerAnd so you need to rethink how you're communicating with them. One thing I'm always teaching non-profits to do is when you have a new donor ask him how and when he'd like to hear from you. What's the best way to communicate with you? Do you prefer that we communicate with you through email? Do you prefer the written letter? Would you like a visit from us once a year? Let the donor be in charge. Ken WhiteHow simple. I mean, that's other-centric communication. That's perfect. Cris WineingerYes. Ken WhiteYou and I mentioned before we recorded or you mentioned the investor versus the donor. What do you mean by that? Cris WineingerWell, I think it's important that we think of our donors as investors, and if they're investors, a good investor, a successful investor is looking to determine what's my return on investment, so if I've given you one hundred thousand dollars what have you done with that hundred thousand dollars. What has been your return on investment? And there's actually a formula you can use, and instead of ROI return on investment, we talk about SROI, the social return on investment. And so if when you think that way, you're really able to demonstrate to the donors how his dollars are making a difference. How his dollars are helping to solve a social problem that's very important to him. That's treating someone like an investor. If you treat them like a donor, you're simply trying to determine how many times can I ask successfully. Ken WhiteSo you have to make the case, as you said right up front. You've got to have the right case for support. Cris WineingerYes, you do. Ken WhiteThen you're making the connection which is cultivating the donor. We often hear that. Then you get the gift, and it's not even close to being done, then it's all the communication back. Cris WineingerOh, well yeah. Because once the donor makes a gift, that's not the end. That's the beginning of your relationship with that donor. And so how well you continue to engage him in the work that you're doing and how much you continue to learn about what's important to him, that's going to make for a lifelong relationship with that donor. And if you really do it well when he passes on, he'll remember you. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerAnd definitely in his will. Ken WhiteWe'll have more conversation with Cris Wineinger on the ins and outs of fundraising in just a minute. Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you're looking to improve your leadership and business skills, the Center for Corporate Education has some terrific programs scheduled in the upcoming weeks. Finance for the non-financial professional, rapid cycle innovation for healthcare professionals, and a five-day certificate program in business management are all on the calendar. For more information, check out the center's website at wmleadership.com. Now back to our conversation with Cris Wineinger on the ins and outs of non-profit fundraising. Ken WhiteIn those various steps, is there a certain place where some or most organizations seem to sort of fall off the track? Is there one they don't quite get as good as the others? Cris WineingerI think one area that they sometimes do forget is recognizing that in fundraising, and I have never ever seen a campaign that breaks this rule in all the years I've done this. And I got a lot of gray hair. But every campaign I've ever done, I would say that 90 percent of the dollars they receive come from 10 to 15 percent of the donors, period. And so it is vitally important that you know who those 10 to 15 percent of those people are and that you know what's important to them and that they've heard from you on a regular basis not as an ask but on you reporting back to them. And on you asking for their feedback and their input and their advice. That's the part that so many non-profits lose sight of. Ken WhiteWhat about the other 15 percent or so? Do you still try to communicate with them? Cris WineingerYou mean the other 85 percent. Ken WhiteOr 85 percent, right, yeah. Cris WineingerIt's okay, my math. I'm lousy with numbers. It makes me a great fundraiser. I'm also really bad with names. Ken WhiteWhat about the bulk? I mean, you're looking at all these thousands of people, but so many organizations are pummeling away trying to reach them with messages too. Is that worth the time and the energy to do that? Cris WineingerThe short answer to the question is yes. Of course, it's always worth engaging the broader base of your donors because that broader base of donors that's where you're going to find your major donors. So you always want to be working on that broader base of donors. But the thing to recognize is that if you're looking for a return on your investment as a fundraiser, it's going to be at the top of that gift chart. So that's where you're really going to make your money. Ken WhiteYou told me a story earlier about legacy and leadership. Could you share that story with us? Cris WineingerOh yeah. That was a good story. This was a few years back, and I was working on a non-profit with their capital campaign, and we were looking for a chairman of the campaign, and we knew exactly who we wanted to chair that campaign. And he was a very successful, very high-level executive who was actually getting close to retirement. And so I went to see him with the chairman of the board, and we had a great conversation, and he was trying to decide if he was going to chair this campaign or not. And so I asked this gentleman if I could be frank for a moment, and he said okay. And I really took a great risk because I said to him you've had an incredible career in this company. But I would say to you that two weeks after you walk out of this door, not very many people, not the broader base of people, are going to remember the CEO of this company. They're going to know who the new CEO is for sure, but what they will remember is that you built that new hospital. What they will remember is that you brought a new level of healthcare to this community that's been desperately needed for some time. Luckily for me, he agreed with that. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerAnd but that was really a conversation about leadership versus legacy. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerAnd when we were doing the campaign with him, I remember him often saying to people, to fellow executives, he would say like you, we're the busiest people on the planet. He said, but healthcare is really important to me, and so I make time in my schedule for that. He was a great chairman had a very, very successful campaign. Ken WhiteWow. What is it you like about fundraising? Cris WineingerI like that fundraising, or maybe I may broaden your question if I can. Ken WhiteSure. Cris WineingerI like for me working with non-profits. I feel like I have the ability to watch the world change. Ken WhiteWow. Cris WineingerIn a good way. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerAnd I get to see direct results. And for me, that's very motivating. I love it. Ken WhiteIf someone you mentioned, you know you call on folks CEOs and other people if one of our aspiring leaders is listening to the podcast and has not been approached about a role in a fundraising effort but now suddenly is being approached what should they expect. What should they ask? Because this is this could be a considerable amount of time that they don't always have. If they're being asked to give to this effort. Cris WineingerI think the first thing they should ask themselves is, is this something that's very important to me? Is it very important to me to see this change happen in the world? And do I believe that this project is going to make that change a reality? So he's really got to ask that very high-level gut question first. I think the second thing he should ask himself is it's actually a question that many donors ask themselves, but do I believe that that organization can do what they say they're going to do? So if their goal is to raise 20 or 30 million dollars to build a new facility. The second thing he should ask himself is, do I believe they can do that? Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerSo he's going into a campaign that is realistic. And then finally my third piece of advice would be make if you do decide that you would like to do this and I hope you do by the way. If you're listening to this and you're contemplating, I really hope you do it. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerBut make it very clear to the organization how you like to work. So I've worked with chairmen of campaigns who can only give me three hours a month. But I'll tell you what, if I know they can give me three hours a month, I'm going to make those three hours count. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerI have worked with other campaign chairman who prefer to meet with me every single Monday morning and go over where we are in the campaign and how it's doing. Done. So what's really important is that they let the non-profit know how they like to work, and it's up to that non-profit to use their time efficiently and effectively. However much they can give. Ken WhiteIt can really be fun when you get into a campaign as a volunteer, can't it? Cris WineingerOh it, it is. It is a lot of fun, and it is incredibly rewarding. And as you know, as you watch the money come in, and you watch yourself get closer and closer to the goal, it is so so motivating. And the best part is when you actually take over that goal. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. Cris WineingerIt's a high you get addicted to it. Ken WhiteDo you have a good fundraising story that you can share with us that was turned out to be a positive outcome? Cris WineingerI got 25 years in this business. I have enough stories to write a book, and that should never be published until long after I'm gone. Well, how about some fun ones? I think one that was really quite startling to me. I was a young fundraiser, very new in the business, and I was doing a campaign for an organization, and a donor called me and said I understand you're doing a campaign for x, y, z organization. I'd like to talk to you about that. Will you come to my office? Now I knew this gentleman to be a very wealthy person. And so I'm a young fundraiser. Let me tell you, I was in his office in a nanosecond. I dropped everything. I should have had three speeding tickets. I was at his office. Now I walk into his office, and he said tell me a little bit about the project. So I started to tell him about the project, and after about three minutes, he stopped. He says okay, I've heard enough. I'm going to make a gift. This gentleman wrote me a check for something in excess of a quarter of a million dollars. Ken WhiteWow. Cris WineingerI was, for once in my life, speechless. Ken WhiteYes. Cris WineingerBut I couldn't resist asking him. This is an extraordinary gift. I know you're not a donor to this organization. What compelled you to do this? I'm thinking of my book. Ken WhiteYeah. Cris WineingerI got to write this down. Ken WhiteRight. Cris WineingerAnd he looked at me, and he said well, as it turns out, I'm in the middle of a rather sticky divorce, and I don't want my wife to have the money. My first thought was should I take this check? And I thought, yes, we're going to do a lot of good with this. Ken WhiteTake it and run. Cris WineingerAnd I was still speechless. Ken WhiteWow. My favorite story is I know a fundraiser in the higher education space who is a guru in higher education fundraising, and in his first job, he wasn't getting it done. And the President of the institution said if you don't raise a million by the end of summer, we're gonna have to let you go, and it was the next to the last day of the summer, and he hadn't done it. And there was one donor capable, and he called him. And when the gentleman picked up the phone, the stress and the pressure hit the fundraiser, and he just started to cry. And the guy and the donor's on the phone what's wrong, what's wrong. He goes I'm going to lose my job. I get a million dollars. He's fine. I'll give you a pledge the million you got it. And he saved his job, and he went on to have an unbelievable career in higher education. So I'm sure there are all kinds of really fun stories out there what's up next for you. What are some of the projects you're working on, and what's ahead for the new year? Cris WineingerWell, oh my goodness, we have a lot going on. One thing that I have found very interesting is that the landscape of fundraising has changed dramatically as a result of the recession. And I don't believe it will ever be the same again. But I think a lot of good has come out of it. So I find myself these days working with many non-profits, not necessarily to do big capital campaigns but teaching them how to engage major donors. And how to build a foundation of support that they can count on for years to come as opposed to the one-off projects. The other thing I find myself working on these days is perhaps the other side of the table, and that is helping foundations to build strategic plans so that they're giving. They like to think giving strategically as opposed to responding to the requests that come in. And I have found myself facilitating some really fascinating discussions with foundation board members and helping them to answer the most basic question, which is what do you care about. And then building giving strategies around that, I thoroughly enjoyed that. But I will tell you when all said and done, I'm a fundraiser at heart. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Cris Wineinger, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you get to the next level in your career with business and leadership development programs that specifically fit your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Cris Wineinger, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe and productive week. |
![Leif Murphy](images/leif-murphy-22-thumb.jpg)
![Leadership in Healthcare](images/leif-murphy-22-thumb.jpg)
Leif Murphy
Episode 22: January 12, 2016
Leadership in Healthcare
For many small towns, the local hospital is the heart of the community, being the largest employer in the area. Leif Murphy chose his career because of that small-town hospital and is now Executive Vice President and CFO of LifePoint Health, which operates over 70 hospital campuses in 20 states. He has a unique perspective on leadership that he shares with us in this episode.
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Leif Murphy: Leadership in Healthcare TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, if you've ever lived in a small town, you know the important role the local hospital plays in the community. For many small towns, the hospital is the heart of the community. In addition to providing local healthcare, it's often the town's largest employer, and it pays taxes that keep the area up and running. Well, that small-town hospital had an effect on Leif Murphy when it was time to choose a career. After earning his MBA, Murphy decided to work in healthcare. Now after 20 years in the business, he's Executive Vice President and CFO of LifePoint Health. An organization headquartered near Nashville, Tennessee, that operates almost 70 hospital campuses in over 20 states with the goal of making communities healthier. Murphy has been on the leadership teams of several healthcare organizations, in addition to holding the title of CFO. He's also been a CEO, and that experience gives him a unique perspective on leadership. And he shares that perspective with us today. Here's our conversation with the Executive Vice President and CFO of LifePoint Health, Leif Murphy. Ken WhiteLeif, thank you for being with us. We're sandwiching you in a couple of tough audiences. You've met with some undergrads a little while ago. You'll meet with some masters of accounting students. Thanks for taking time to talk with us today. Leif MurphyKen, I am very excited to be here. It's been almost 20 years since I graduated from the MBA program, and it was very exciting to come in as a daytime professor and help out with a couple of classes. Ken WhiteDid you ever see when you were in the MBA seat as a student? Did you ever think of yourself coming back in the future and doing that? Leif MurphyI can honestly say I did not. Ken WhiteWe're glad you're here. You've been a part of a number of leadership teams throughout your career. What makes a good leader? Leif MurphyI believe Ken that to get people fully engaged in the mission, the vision, and the values of an organization, people need to park under a bright blue sky. They need to work in an environment where they feel productive and where they feel like they are making a real contribution. So as I think about leadership creating and being a part of a place where people want to come to work and where people are aligned on the mission, and the vision makes it very easy for people to make an impact. So as I think about leadership, a good leader creates that environment and creates that alignment. So in regard to specific things that I believe help on that front, one and probably first and foremost is communication, and I believe that good leaders communicate well and they communicate well both internally and also externally. And I think that having alignment in what is being discussed what's being described across the organization and outside of the organization is very important, and consistency there, quite frankly, makes a leader's job easier. I think second, from a great leader's perspective, helping people understand what their roles are and helping keep them focused on the key things that are going to make a difference for the organization are very impactful in helping to ensure that an organization is successful and making sure that a leader is successful and I think that lastly the best leaders that I have worked with they are people that acknowledge good ideas. They recognize hard work, and frankly, they highlight the contributions that each individual makes inside of the organization and aren't always focused on themselves or on the accomplishments of the company itself. Ken WhiteYeah great. Now you also lead the organization but also the executive team that the leadership team. How do you approach leading the executive team? Leif MurphySo as I look at my teams of folks and the people that I am working with on a day-to-day basis. I start in the details. It's always been a fundamental tenet of how I will do my job, but I don't micromanage people. And one of our management pillars today at LifePoint is talent development, and if we've hired the right leaders and they're on board with the culture, then they need room to show that they are capable of accomplishing the tasks that get us from point A to point B. And if I am in the way if I am micromanaging, it does not give them an opportunity to really demonstrate what they are capable of doing. I think is an extension of that same empowerment. I challenge people not to bring problems without solutions, and that is something that has been near and dear to me throughout my career. And I believe it's a direct way of asking people for ideas and new perspectives. That is very beneficial to an organization, and then lastly, from my own personal perspective and how I approach leadership, I am very accepting of our leaders when they make mistakes. And if we're going to encourage leaders to solve problems and bring ideas to the table, we need to be prepared for the fact that some of those decisions will wind up as mistakes. Now mistakes, for me, should cause us to go back and look at policy and look at procedure and evaluate where were the holes in our approach to that decision-making process. And it gives us an opportunity to be better. And what I'm not saying is that if there is a mistake, and it is a reckless mistake that doesn't require some form of remedial training or even going beyond coaching to sometimes more harsh consequence. But in my experience, that is very much the exception. Ken WhiteYou've worked with many leaders over the course of your career. Chances are there's been a not-so-effective leader along the way here or there what makes a leader not so effective. Leif MurphyI think it goes back, Ken, to the things we just talked about. So poor communicators, leaders that did not give me a good sense of the vision and the mission for the organization. They didn't give me a sense for how I fit into it. My contributions weren't recognized in terms of how I was helping us to progress along that roadway. Blame cultures have been cultures that I've never been excited to be a part of. I've always wanted to park under a bright blue sky, and I've wanted to work around people that I enjoy. Ken WhiteYou work in a high-growth enterprise. What are the challenges associated with leading in that space? Leif MurphyIn a high-growth organization which, I have been fortunate to be a part of several times. The things that we just discussed in leadership become even more critical. It is essentially about communication. It's about making sure that for us in healthcare that physicians, that employees, and that communities are engaged in what we're trying to achieve. It is making sure that the buy-in is there as we add new markets to our company at LifePoint. I'll give you what I think what's been an innovative approach at LifePoint in terms of how we integrate in a high-growth environment. About five years ago, learning from mistakes that we had made in previous integrations. We developed a transition services division with a dedicated team of individuals that provide in-depth coordination of the resources that we have at LifePoint and bring those resources to a particular market in the post-acquisition environment. That team is involved in every aspect of due diligence in strategic planning and integration, and then that team is responsible for the operations of the hospital for the first few years that it is under LifePoint ownership. I think other important pieces of managing growth is having executive leadership on the ground, meeting with employees, meeting with physicians, meeting with community leaders every step of the way. So that we can ensure transparency and that we can help make sure that each one of the stakeholders is highly aligned in the mission and the vision, and the values that we're bringing to the table in the marketplace. Ken WhiteIt's interesting that feet on the ground because so many CEOs we talk to on the podcast talk about that. I need to be out there. They say I want to be with not just folks on the payroll but customers as well and everyone who has a role. Do you enjoy that piece of your job when the feet are on the ground getting out with the folks who work for you? Leif MurphyI do. I enjoy that very much. I spend probably 50 to 60 percent of my time in the field, working with new communities, working with transactions on a pre and post-integration basis, and then working with the leadership inside of our markets. Ken WhiteFor-profit and not-for-profit. Any differences in leadership in those two areas? Leif MurphySo, Ken, that's that's a great question, and it's one that I have been asked many times, as you can imagine, in healthcare and particularly in health systems. There are more not-for-profit systems than there are investor-owned for-profit systems. At the end of the day is, I think about leadership. Good leaders think strategically, and they make decisions based on effective strategies, and both types of organizations must create a return. They must generate value in the community, or else there will be no mission without margin. So I see those two things being very comparable and the leadership attributes being very similar across both organizations. Ken WhiteHealthcare reform means I can only imagine just constant change and in your space. How do you manage that and communicate all of that change? Leif MurphySo, Ken, you're absolutely right. We're dealing with lots of changes as a function of reform. Much of that change is very, very positive change. Where if we look at ourselves as a health system, I think it would surprise most people that 20 percent of the emergency department visits that walk in the door have historically gone uncompensated. Upwards to 8 or 9 percent of the admissions into a hospital have gone uncompensated. So reform has brought some very positive tailwinds by bringing coverage to those individuals either through health insurance exchange premium support or in the states that have expanded Medicaid, also covering those folks that are at the lowest income points inside of our communities across the country but along with that there is a lot that has had to get done operationally. It's things around readmissions. It's things around new quality metrics. It is things around the development of what are very complex areas of billing and coding and just basic administration. And so for us is we have if we had tried to tackle those complexities at LifePoint, we have worked to leverage our resources. And we've done it through a hospital support center where we have essentially created a hospital without patients. And we have subject matter experts in each of the areas where our hospitals need help the most. So there those are areas around quality, areas in safety, contemporary practice guidelines across the different medical specialties. Things like reimbursement, things like risk management across the board, we have experts that our teams in the local markets can reach out to and use as a resource to help them move through this very complex web of change in a reform environment. Ken WhiteThat is so much change. This is a wide spectrum. What you do is wide. It seems to me. What is it you like about this? What gets the passion going? What gets you fired up? Leif MurphySo I grew up in a small town. I have spent my entire life in healthcare, and our mission at LifePoint has been to make communities healthier. And it has been to keep care close to home. And so, it is not uncommon in the markets where we operate for us to be the largest employer. We'll be the largest taxpayer. And so we're integral to the success of that particular community. Interestingly as you've mentioned, Ken, I had a chance to participate in a classroom here earlier today, and with a roomful of kids, I was able to start naming the markets where we own and operate health systems knowing I wouldn't get a single hand recognizing the names of the places where we are. So we're making an impact and bringing real quality, bringing real safety to communities where they don't have to get in a car and drive two or three hours for care. They can have that care close to home. Ken WhiteAnd anyone who has lived or grown up in a community like that understands that role. Leif MurphyThey do. Ken WhiteAnd it's huge, isn't it? Leif MurphyIt is. It is critical to having a successful community. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Leif MurphyIt's I think about it, and I think about the things that make a community successful, not just having healthcare but having healthcare to be able to recruit new businesses. Having a community where people are able to retire and essentially be confident in the healthcare that's being delivered inside of that marketplace. Ken WhiteYou see up-and-comers, young professionals, aspiring leaders, aspiring executives. What are you seeing out there as you do day-to-day activities? Leif MurphySo I am energized when I can work around young professionals that are hungry in their careers in the things that they have ahead of them to accomplish. On the positive side, what I have seen change over the last couple of decades is a real emphasis on work-life balance. And I think that that balance has become a real priority in most young professionals and in their lives. I think it's a good thing, but it means that you need to be very effective while you're on the job. It means to me that you have to run efficient meetings, you need to be on time, you need to work productively with specific goals set for every day. And I think that the kids and the generation that I am working with are doing that very effectively. On the negative side, I think that many young professionals have lost some of the social graces of our older generations and how they present themselves and how they communicate. And if I were going to offer a piece of advice, I would offer young professionals that they be very present in the meetings where they participate. That they leave their electronic devices behind in those encounters and that they engage with the people in person, and start to develop their intuitions around how their organization is being perceived in a particular environment. Ken WhiteWe talked about that here in our MBA program about being an other centric communicator. It's not about you. It's about the person with whom you're speaking and that, and you're seeing it probably just as much as anyone that the different generations in the workplace. What are you observing when millennials are talking to baby boomers and vice versa? What are some of the issues and lessons you see? Leif MurphyYou know, I think the biggest is that the tendency to look to your device, and so whether that's multitasking with email or monitoring the markets or trying to be responsive to all of the different claims on your time at every minute in time and that becomes very difficult and sometimes disruptive as you're trying to communicate and build relationships. And so that's an area of coaching for all of us. It's been one for me. I participated in an executive leadership team offsite one day, and the presenter came in and gave us each a little glass token and it says be here now on it. And it's a reminder that sits on my desk that while I'm in a meeting, while I'm on a telephone conversation, I'm going to work hard to be here now. Part of the conversation that I'm engaged in. Ken WhiteGreat advice. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Leif Murphy of LifePoint Health, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Leif Murphy, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Phil Heavilin](images/phil-heavilin-20-thumb.jpg)
![New Year, New Job](images/phil-heavilin-20-thumb.jpg)
Phil Heavilin
Episode 20: December 29, 2015
New Year, New Job
For many people, the New Year brings the start of a new job search or new career challenge. Phil Heavilin has served as a career coach for the past ten years and can help you create a strategy for seeking a career in business. Phil is the Director of Career Advising & Education at the Center for Career Management at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business.
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Phil Heavilin: New Year, New Job TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, for many professionals, the new year means a new job search, whether it's a move to another organization or to another industry. This month countless professionals are gearing up for a new career challenge before making the jump though it's important to have a strategy, and our guest today can help with that. For the past ten years, Phil Heavilin has served as a career coach after working with professionals in the legal sector. He now spends his time with professionals seeking careers in business. He's the Director of Career Advising and Education at the Center for Career Management at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. He joins us with advice and guidance on launching a job search in the New Year. Here's our conversation with Phil Heavilin. Ken WhiteWell, Phil, first of all, Happy New Year, and thank you for joining us. Looking forward to the discussion today. Phil HeavilinHappy New Year, Ken. Ken WhiteSo this is a time for many people when they think, you know, I need to think about my job, my work, my occupation. What do you hear at this time of the year? What happens in your line of work? Phil HeavilinThis is a natural time for us to all be thinking in a reflective manner. It's the end of the year. We have a lot of time behind us. 2015 is just coming to a close. We're coming up on 2016 for many industries, maybe not for finance, but many industries, there might be a downtime for us to really have that moment to consider. Where am I, and where do I want to go? And so this is really a great opportunity for any professional to take stock and really consider what it is that I want to do moving forward. Do I like what I'm doing? Do I enjoy the work I'm involved in? Do I feel fulfilled? And if not, what considerations should I make before I make that next transition? Ken WhiteYeah. So what, where do you even begin? I'm not happy. I think I think I want to try something new. So where do I start? Phil HeavilinThat's a perfect question. And the place you start is right here, and I'm pointing to myself. It really starts with yourself and considering do some self-reflection and really take stock in what is triggering these emotions. What is it that is making me feel like I need to make that transition? Maybe I'm no longer fulfilled in the work that I'm involved in. Maybe I hit a ceiling in terms of that work. Maybe I've done all I can. Maybe the company culture or the organizational culture isn't exactly in line with my own values any longer. Maybe it's a salary question. Maybe I'm prepared to take that next step and want to take a leadership position and earn that extra salary for my family. And it's family considerations as well. Maybe I started my career as a single individual, and now I have a family. What do I need to do moving forward to secure a position that is much more accommodating to my family life? Ken WhiteSo if I've asked those questions and then I have determined I want to step up, I want a leadership role, for example, or I think I want to change industries, then where once you've done that that as you say self-reflection where do you go from there. Phil HeavilinIt's really important for people to be thoughtful about that next move. Oftentimes people will jump into, you know, maybe a program or a job and really didn't think about really think about what it is that they wanted to do, and that can backfire if you're in a position that you're unhappy about and you're just surfing the web looking for any kind of job posting that is going to help you get out of the position that can be detrimental. Think about what you want to get into rather than what you want to get out of. And that's a mindset that's really important to have because what you might do is you might actually make a lateral move doing something similar in a different company. Sure, it's a change. It's a different job, but you might realize, hey, I don't really like this either. And so the one factor that you didn't like about your current situation might have followed to the next job, and you want to avoid that because, by golly, you're gonna be in the same situation you were in before. So I really recommend once you identify an option is really to find a professional, find those individuals who are working in that area, working in that company, and really reach out to them and have a frank conversation, you know, take them out for coffee, take them out for lunch, and find out exactly what is it that they do you know give me some feedback give me some advice. This is where I think I'm kind of lacking in my current position. This is my thought going forward. This is why I'm reaching out to you. Am I on the right track? Am I off base? Can I get some feedback from you and that can be very helpful. Ken WhiteAnd I'm thinking 99 percent of the professionals out there are more than happy to do that. Phil HeavilinAbsolutely and that's why when I'm working with individuals, really tap into your, you know, your alma maters alumni network. Many of colleges and universities do offer career services for their alumni, whether it's through the career management center or through the alumni department. I would certainly reach out to those individuals because I think that's when you're starting to reach out to people you want to start with those individuals you have something in common with because that's going to be immediately build trust between you and that person who you don't know. So when you reach out to that individual, you can indicate that you maybe are also a graduate of that school or maybe you went to the same high school or anything you can find in common to break the ice. That individual on the other end is going to be much more receptive to having a sit down with you or a conversation, and that's one way to kind of make that meeting happen. Ken WhiteSo you do that. Self-reflection, you realize the whys, and I think that's great. What do I want to get into? Not what I want to get out of, and all the things are falling into place. And you've met with some professionals. This sounds like a pretty good move. Phil HeavilinYeah. Ken WhiteI would think most people immediately then think resume. Phil HeavilinExactly. Ken WhiteOh boy, what do I do? It's been years since I've done one. I don't even remember half of the dates and so on. So what's the next step with the resume? Phil HeavilinYeah. So you've done your due diligence right and you've gone and you've met with people in the functional role or industry that you're interested in. You think you have a specific job you want to target. Now it's really about how can I change my resume, my LinkedIn profile, my cover letter. It's really start developing that marketing plan where you're going to now do some outreach and really be more strategic where now it was information gathering. Now it's I'm actually targeted, and I'm going to focus on a particular position. The resume is still critically important. You know, I'm still waiting for the day recruiters will just say just send me a link to your LinkedIn profile. Hasn't happened yet, but I think someday it will. Ken WhiteRight. Phil HeavilinYou know most professionals especially if you get into a role for several years they haven't touched their resume in that amount of time. Ken WhiteSure. Phil HeavilinAnd a lot, especially nowadays, a lot of things change year to year, even from quarter to quarter, about what companies want to see on the resume. Technologies are coming on a regular basis. And so if you have experience using different software packages, you want to update that resume as soon as possible, so it's really important that professionals take stock, look at their resume content, and then make sure that it's up to date and again career services offices can assist you with that. So definitely reach out to those professionals. And once you have something that you feel good about and Google is great, you know there's definitely some online tools that students can use or alumni, or professionals can use to find out what's appropriate for a resume now. Make those changes and then go back to those individuals who you were networking before and just get their feedback. Give it to them, see what they think, and adjust it accordingly. But yeah, this is really the time. Even if you're not actively seeking a position at this point in your career, please go back to your resume. You won't regret it. Go back to it include the accomplishments that you've you've experienced over this past year. Make sure it's included in the resume, even if it's a quick documentation. You don't have the wordsmith it right now, but just put it in there make a what I call an inventory resume, just jotting down everything so that if you find yourself in a position where you are laid off, or maybe you are in a position was presented to you then you can react quickly and swiftly, and all you have to do is make some edits and some small changes and send it out. Ken WhiteYou mentioned LinkedIn because we've gone through the steps now the resume looks sharp. I've shared it with a couple of professionals who say, you know, go for it. Most likely, before I start applying, I should probably look at my LinkedIn profile is that correct before I start applying. Phil HeavilinYes absolutely. The LinkedIn profile is absolutely essential for the job search but even not so much a job search. But just as part of your professional profile. Ken WhiteSure. Phil HeavilinYou know many of the individuals who have LinkedIn profiles known as passively they're passive candidates. So these are individuals who have an interest in networking with other professionals in their field because, who knows, maybe something comes down the line that might they might be interested in. They are contacted via LinkedIn. So it's really important to have a strong LinkedIn profile. What I love about the relationship between resumes and LinkedIn is there's things on LinkedIn you can't do on a resume and vice versa. I love the fact that in the United States that it's taboo to have a photograph on your resume. Ken WhiteRight. Phil HeavilinBut of course, at the top of your resume, hopefully, you have a link to your LinkedIn profile, and you know, tell me what's essential in your LinkedIn profile. Well, it's a photo. And so there's things you can do on the resume that you can't do it in the LinkedIn profile, vice versa. So they're absolutely complements of each other, so once you get that resume ready to go and reviewed. The next step is then to go to your LinkedIn profile make sure that you are speaking to each other make sure they're sending the right message. If you have that job that you're pursuing, you've got the keywords, you've got the skills that they're looking for, what they want. You've gone back to your documentation, you're making sure that you have those keywords, you have the experiences that are relevant to what they're looking for, and they're highlighted prominently in those both of those two resources. Ken WhiteCover letter. How important are the are those today? Phil HeavilinCover letters are an interesting thing. Many people ask for them, but everybody I speak to says I don't really read them, Phil. But I think with the cover letters, if they asked for them, you want to obviously provide them with one you don't want to be discounted because you didn't submit one. So if you're going to do it you really should do it well. And what I like about cover letters is I like to include the same header on my resume as I do on my cover letter, so there is this consistent branding between the two documents. I really like to take from the job descriptions. What skills what experiences they're asking for? And then I'll use that same language and I'll put that in the cover letter. But more importantly, I think it's candidates really need to pull out very specific examples that they have from their past experience that really illustrate those particular skill sets because that's what's really what recruiters are looking for is tell me how you're different, Ken, tell me how you're different Phil and those experiences. That's what makes us individuals, and that's what's going to help us stand out from others. Ken WhiteThe results so don't just say I managed this unit at this company from this date to this date. What did you do while you were there, right? So very results-driven resume. Phil HeavilinAbsolutely. You know, the results is probably the single most thing that is missing from a resume or a cover letter. You know, on a resume, you start with that action verb. You tell me what you did. And so many people forgot to tell me, okay, so what. I always ask people so what was the significance. What was the impact on the company? Did it drive their sales? Did it streamline their process, and if so, what percentage and it might not have even been an impact in the company? It might have been the work had an impact on your own development. So if you gave presentations you can say how that you know developed your own public speaking skills and different. GMAC has a survey where they have about 20 or so different criteria that their recruiters are looking for from candidates in oral communication skills is at number two. And so that's an important piece to put on your resume. But those results are always missing. So when I'm working with individuals, I'm always asking that question, so what as a prompt to tell me what the results were of that particular accomplishment? Ken WhiteYeah. And you mentioned GMAC, which is the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is a business school kind of organization, but it has a website that has a ton of career focus. They're phenomenal researchers and as you said they constantly question research or employers and employers say these are the skills we're looking for. I'm sure this is probably a question you get because I get it, and I am by no means a career coach like you, and that is. What about gaps in my resume? I was either unemployed for two years, or I went home to stay with the children for a few years. What do you do with those? Phil HeavilinYou always want anticipate what questions people might have when they look at your resume. And if you do have a gap that's going to raise a flag for the individual who's reviewing, they're naturally going to ask what did you do in that timeframe. And you need to have a response for that. You can't just say well. I binge-watched on Netflix. We can't do that. Ken WhiteRight. Phil HeavilinSo, for example, if you're an individual who perhaps you were out of the workforce for several years raising a family and you want to come back into the workforce. There's tremendous value in that experience that absolutely in that experience section of your resume I work with individuals on we're gonna, we're gonna put that as a position. It might have been a volunteer, but it's probably one of those toughest volunteer positions you're ever going to have. So raising a family, running a household, time management, event planning, coordination, budgeting there's a lot of skills that you can articulate with in a discussion with a recruiter, and they love that you know they just want to hear from you. Just explain to me what you did in that period of time that was that can bring. That was that helped you develop skills that are now valuable and transferable to what we're doing in our business. If you can articulate that, recruiters will love that and appreciate it. Ken WhiteYeah. Even if an individual or a professional is employed, a job search is a taxing exercise, isn't it? It's hard to stay up, it's hard to stay focused, and positive and you do a lot with MBA students. That's they're really focused on that big opportunity, and I know you're an emotional coach as well as a career coach. Phil HeavilinYeah, that's right. Ken WhiteHow can people stay up? What are some of the what's the mindset they need to be in? Phil HeavilinYeah. Yeah, you're right. The job search can be a taxing process. So we coach them on some of the tactical strategies to get noticed and be successful, but also it's managing the emotions, it's getting geared up and getting excited about the job search and and and it can you know other than the consternation of being unemployed. It can be fun to go out and meet individuals and get that information and learn from professionals in the field. I really encourage people to enjoy that process because I really love meeting people and I learn so much from having conversations with other professionals and there's a lot of value in that. So I really encourage individuals to really get jazzed about going out and meeting with people because there's so much value there. Really have is a strong support network around you. For example, going back to the you know someone who might be coming back into the job market, let your family know and make sure that they understand this is where I am now. I'm ready to, you know, maybe the kids are in school. I'm ready to re-enter the job market and let everybody know so that you now have that support system behind you. They're cheering for you. They're looking out for you. They're giving you leads. And what I think when I work with individuals when they're at the most depressing point of the job search it's when they feel like they've hit a brick wall. It's when they feel like, okay, I'm not getting calls back. I'm not getting any kind of responses from my resume and so that during those times is when we reconvene and we really think about other strategies we can use. Maybe there's other alumni maybe other contacts we can reach out to that you haven't tried before. Maybe these other companies or other opportunities maybe didn't consider, and that can oftentimes open additional doors that can snowball very quickly into opportunities coming their way. Ken WhiteYeah. And not only that, then you've got to deal with rejection because you're certainly not going to get every job you apply for. Phil HeavilinThat's right. It's a sales position. So you have to get used to hearing no. Ken WhiteYeah. Phil HeavilinBut if you keep pressing forward, if you have the grit. It always works out. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with career coach Phil Heavilin, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Phil Heavilin, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White wishing you a Happy New Year. |
![Taylor Reveley](images/taylor-reveley-19-thumb.jpg)
![The Role of the College President](images/taylor-reveley-19-thumb.jpg)
Taylor Reveley
Episode 19: December 22, 2015
The Role of the College President
Taylor Reveley is the President of William & Mary. Like the CEO of a company, the president must consider areas such as customers, bottom-line, the media, technology, and more. In this episode, we talk about the leadership and skills needed in order to be a college president and the challenges and opportunities that college presidents face today.
Podcast (audio)
Taylor Reveley: The Role of the College President TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Amazon Music/Audible | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, like the CEO of a large company, today's university president focuses on a number of important areas customers, the bottom line, staff, competition, technology, media, and the list goes on. Today's university president is on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This demanding job requires considerable skill, expertise, and energy. For Taylor Reveley being the President of the College of William & Mary is a challenge he loves. Reveley's been President of the college since 2008. Prior to that, he was Dean at William & Mary's law school for a decade after practicing law. Being a president runs in the family. His father was a college president, and so was his son. He joins us on the podcast today to discuss the role of the university president, its challenges, and rewards. Here's our conversation with Taylor Reveley. Ken WhiteThank you for taking time. It's always always a pleasure to talk with you. I appreciate you taking the time to join us today on the podcast. Taylor ReveleyOh, it's great to talk Ken. Ken WhiteSo university president not only that but the President of William & Mary. What an interesting job. What is it you do? Taylor ReveleyWhat do I do? Well, it's an incredibly multifaceted and complex job in all reality. Let me just mention of few that I think are absolutely crucial to getting it done. The first is you got to figure out how to work effectively with the governing bodies, particularly the Board of Visitors, who's good counsel when you couldn't get it, and consent is essential if you want to lead the university productively. And if you don't have that sort of good counsel and consent, your presidency is going to run aground briskly. Second, you've got to be able to recruit and retain very able lieutenants. You've got to surround yourself with people of compelling ability and energy because, otherwise, your reach is very, very limited. Third, you've got to see to the finances of the place. If you can't ensure financial stability for the university and, to the extent feasible, prosperity for the university, you greatly limit what it can do and the state of morale. Fourth I think the President has a dominant voice and agenda setting for the university in figuring out where it ought to be going and how best it can get there. Now there are a lot of other people involved in that endeavor as well. And you know it starts with individuals goes to departments, schools, universities as a whole. But the presidents really got to help lead that process. Fifth, you really are a talking head for the university. You are constantly talking. Sometimes I realize as I'm talking why don't you just shut up? Let other people talk. But you do spend a lot of time communicating on behalf of the university or just making appropriate remarks in one setting or another. And that's important. If you can't do that, it really takes a bite out of your effectiveness. Sixth, one of your role is, or at least in my judgment, ought to be to cut through the inertia and the bureaucracy. Any large organization tends to accumulate over time but perhaps, particularly academic organizations. Somebody has got to cut through it and make it clear that things need to move along reasonably quickly, and the common sense ought to always be the standard that is at least consulted as one of the crucial criteria for decision and then, of course, finally part of the President's job is to really help the university seize its major opportunities and sometimes its minor opportunities and to effectively meet its crises, ideally anticipate that one's coming, and get ahead of the curve. Now there are a lot of the things you do too. But those are seven fairly meaty ones. Ken WhiteDo you have a typical day? Taylor ReveleyNo. Now it all depends. I mean, at one end of the continuum is spend the day traveling. Getting particularly if your university is rooted in the colonial capital in a small burg. You got to go elsewhere to get your paws on. A lot of people, you need to get your paws on. So some days you're traveling a lot and trying to read and work while you're doing it. Other days you got, you've got just relentless meetings. You go from one meeting to the next. Some days you actually have some time to think to pull together your to-do lists and think about how they're coming and where you need to poke most next. Some days you're spending a slug of time really thinking about the next major set of remarks or, in the word of minor remarks, you've got to give because they tend to come often in clusters. I mean, we just had one week in October when I had to speak 20 times in different settings and make remarks that were appropriate to the occasion. Some long, some short, and some days when you think you're going to have a relatively placid and productive day, something comes in through the window or under the door or over the door that you just got to deal with, and it was the scheduled L but you gotta work on it. Ken WhiteRight. Taylor ReveleyAnd it usually falls in the crisis category as opposed to the really succulent opportunity category. So the days vary. Ken WhiteThe role has changed dramatically in a relatively short period of time, and you're the CEO of a large business with constituents of all types. How have you seen the role change over time? Taylor ReveleyWell, I think one of the starkest changes in recent years has been the loss of the Mandate of Heaven by American higher education when it comes to political and media reaction to colleges and universities. For a long time, basically, the political and media reaction to universities was favorable. Now it is relentlessly critical. Often the criticism is very ill-founded as a matter of fact or policy. But a lot of political and media heat being put on colleges and universities. Much of it undeserved. Some of it clearly deserved. Second, the rise of the social media which can create a crisis out of nothing overnight. That then spreads like wildfire, and you got to spend a lot of time and energy putting the fire out when there shouldn't have been any fire, to begin with. Ken WhiteRight. Taylor ReveleySo social media arm have become a powerful force. I think the decline in funding, particularly for public higher education, is also a relatively new phenomenon. There has been a dramatic decline in the capacity and the will of state governments to put the sort of financial wherewithal in their public colleges and universities that they used to put. Next, it seems to me that society as a whole has developed an unfortunate pattern fairly recently expecting colleges and universities to solve ills that set the society as a whole which the society as a whole really hasn't been able to effectively engage such as mental illness and emotional anxiety such as sexual aggression by no means is all of the sexual aggression that goes on in American society happening on undergraduate campuses, such as race and each of these instances and many others. Colleges and universities have a very important role to play, but they're not the only actors in the game, and they can't solve it for the country all by themselves. That's relatively new. I think, though, it's only been present to some extent. Another big difference, I think, is just the pace of presidencies. They really are the jobs relentless. Don't take it if you're not prepared to put up with the pace and then longevity in the old days' presidents could serve for a long time. Indeed the first president of William & Mary the one who talked King William and Queen Mary into creating William & Mary via a royal charter signed in London on February the 8th, 1693. The first guy lasted 50 years. Indeed he had written into the Royal Charter that he would be President for life but bad job security and the stamina of a bull elephant. He proceeded to live for 50 years and died in harness in the President's house. Ken WhiteWow. That's not in your contract, a 50-year gig. Taylor ReveleyAh, no. Ken WhiteNo. Your background is interesting in terms of a college president. So many folks have come up through the faculty ranks. They were a dean, a provost, a president. Your background is law. Can you talk about that and how you made that transition? Taylor ReveleyWell, as some of the law school professors here told me before I arrived on campus. Now, remember you're a traditional law school dean meaning you didn't come out of the womb with the academy. Rather you emerged from a big law firm. Yeah, I did come from a different background in that sense, but my father was a professor and administrator and, ultimately, college president. So I grew up very near or on college campuses and knew them well, and I was very interested in what dad did. So I heard a lot about it. I also enjoyed many aspects of school and did well at it. So I wasn't the academic experience was not alien to me. And early on I got starting in my third term in law school got interested in what's called a war powers meaning how is authority divided by the Constitution U.S. Constitution between the President and Congress over the use of American force abroad and at one point had done sufficient research and writing in the area I think to know at least as much about it as anybody else in the country and for a brief moment probably more and ended up writing a densely researched footnoted and scholarly book on the subject. So I had tasted that, and I've been on a lot of before I got here got to William & Mary a lot of school boards. I was on Princeton University's board of trustees for 14 years and Union Seminary in Virginia's Board for nine years, and St. Christopher's school, where my wife and sons went, for 12 years. So I've seen a lot of schools from the board perspective. And I had come to know a lot of presidents very well. So yeah, I came to William & Mary straight from 28 years practicing law, but I had a lot of trafficking with the academy. Ken WhiteYou touched on it a little bit, but what keeps you up at night? What are some of the things that you think about? Taylor ReveleyWell, the main thing you think about when the phone rings in the middle of the night is what's gone wrong. There's a building on fire. There's a kid hurt. Somebody did. That's the main thing you think about at night though you do occasionally. At least I occasionally find myself waking up in the middle of the night and thinking about a difficult situation or difficult problem with which I've been wrestling that day. And no, barring divine intervention, will still be with me the next day or more. But on the whole, I don't think you can do this job and well or with any staying power if you spend a lot of time worrying and agonizing over things because there's just too much you can worry and agonize over. It will drive you nuts and you'll drive everybody else nuts. So if you find yourself in that situation best to get out of the kitchen let somebody else do it. Ken WhiteRight. Fundraising is a big piece of your job. I'm not so sure that I think people who know higher education get that, but I'm not so sure the general public quite understands. That's a gigantic piece of what you do. How do you approach that? Do you enjoy it? Taylor ReveleyWell, it is a huge, huge element in a president's life. And if you're not game to do it, don't take the job. And sometimes, trying to elicit the grace of liberality spur the philanthropic juices in other people is an enormous delight. And sometimes, it is just a huge pain. Fortunately, like more often, it is that sort of thing that most people don't have a natural inclination to do. Most people don't like looking other people in the eye and asking for lots of money. You just rather not do that. But you get used to it. Then after a while, it grows on you, and after a while, you become absolutely shameless at it. You will ask for lots of money right between the eyes. First guy I ever asked for a million dollars. This was a long time ago, and I was asking not for William & Mary immediately had a heart attack and died. No causative relationship, I'm sure. But it was a chilling beginning to my philanthropic career I thought well maybe I asked for too much. He didn't have it right there on the spot. Yeah. Fundraising is key because, of I said a few minutes ago. If you can't ensure the financial stability even better prosperity of your institution, you fail, and philanthropy is a key element in colleges and universities. Financial futures, whether they're public or private. So you gotta do it. Ken WhiteYeah. Taylor ReveleyAnd if you don't want to do it or you're no good at it. Get out of the way. Ken WhiteRight. You love this job, and the students just it's like Elvis walks in the building. Taylor ReveleyStudents have been incredibly nice to me it's just wonderful. Ken WhiteThat's gonna be the highlight. Or is that the highlight? Taylor ReveleyYeah, it's great. I mean, it just makes life so much sweeter. Ken WhiteYeah, and I just recently you had your Santa suit on, and you're out there and getting them fired up for Christmas, and there is just a gigantic group out there. Taylor ReveleyThe kids love the Grinch, and after reading it eight times, I've gotten really good at reading the Grinch. Ken WhiteWhat is it about students? I mean I'm sure you don't get to spend nearly as much time as you'd like to with them. What is it about them that is so exciting? Taylor ReveleyWilliam & Mary students are smart, hardworking, involved in a zillion different things, ambitious but also seriously interested in their academic work. Which is not always the case at highly selective schools, and they tend, with rare exception, to be really nice. To be genuinely collegial people with whom you can agree or disagree. Agreeably. So just a good group of kids. Ken WhiteWhat else do you like about the job? What makes you excited about what you do? Taylor ReveleyI think the thing you the thing I like the most about this is William & Mary is an iconic American institution in which I can really personally believe and be committed to and want to help drive forward. I think it would be very difficult to do what you gotta do to be an effective academic president these days if you didn't genuinely respect and love the institution. Just makes everything worthwhile. And if you can see that you're having an effect on it, you are, in fact, doing more good than harm for a great institution that itself does a lot of good. That's enormously satisfying. You don't get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say is what I'm going to do today actually going to matter. You get up, and you look, and you say am I going to do more good than harm today but not worry about well, it's going to matter. Now that's very nice. And that is not always the case even in very high-prestige, well-compensated jobs. But it is true being President of this particular, extraordinarily unusual school. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Taylor Reveley, President of the College of William & Mary, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Taylor Reveley and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time happy holidays. |
![Mike Burniston](images/mike-burniston-18-thumb.jpg)
![The HR Environment](images/mike-burniston-18-thumb.jpg)
Mike Burniston
December 15, 2015
The HR Environment
Mike Burniston is senior partner at Mercer, a global consulting leader in talent, health, retirement, and investments. He helps his clients approach and manage their workforce decisions. In this episode, we discuss the challenges facing HR today, how millennials have shifted the conversation and more.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. In today's fast-changing competitive business environment, human resources is a critical function and profession. While human resource professionals have been working to attract, develop, and retain talent. They're also focused on several other critical areas, including managing salaries, reducing and managing costs, dealing with health care and retirement plans, utilizing technology and social media, and facing a generation of millennials who are embracing portable employment. Mike Burniston has been a human resources professional and leader for over 25 years. He's senior partner at Mercer, a global consulting leader, and talent health, retirement, and investments. He and his colleagues help organizations strategically approach and manage their workforce decisions. We sat down with Burniston recently in New York City and discussed the challenges and opportunities facing human resources professionals today. Here's our conversation with Mike Burniston, Senior Partner at Mercer. Ken WhiteMike, thanks for being here. Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to join us today here in Manhattan. Appreciate it. Mike BurnistonGlad to be here. Ken WhiteSo you've been in this space a long time and especially working in the H R space. How are HR executives spending their time today? Mike BurnistonWell, I think based on the conversations I have with our clients and, you know, HR executives would probably characterize it in three buckets. You know, first and foremost, strategies around attracting talent from sourcing all the way through, you know, exiting and everything in between the lifecycle of talent strategy. The second is actually doing that delivering on those services what it takes to actually make that happen efficiently seamlessly. You know operational excellence, whether it's using technology-enabled solutions or just unique strategies. So that's the service delivery piece, and then the third is not surprisingly driving cost either out of the organization reducing cost, eliminating costs and that, you know, that's just the reality. There's not a business function that doesn't have that accountability. So three big areas and certainly the strategic piece being the one that most HR executives would like to be spending their time. Ken WhiteRight. But when you and I talked earlier, the whole the cost issue is just huge. How are professionals in the HR field dealing with that? What do they face today? Mike BurnistonSure, it really a lot depends on the type of organization, right? So if you're a well-established, mature large company, more likely than not, you still have you're still carrying defined benefit pension liabilities even if you froze a plan or haven't frozen a plan. So and if not managing defined benefit liabilities, you've got a health care spend based on employer-sponsored health care plans. You got a health care spend that just continues to go up even despite the Affordable Care Act. Big percentage of the total labor cost wrapped up in retirement and or health care expenses. So this gets serious attention, and certainly, finance executives are peeking into those expenses and liabilities like never before. So big topics. And then, on the other hand, if you're not a mature organization that has any of these legacy plans and you're either a relatively new company, or you've gone through a restructuring, or you tell you name it, you may not be saddled with a defined benefit pension liabilities, but you still have the health care cost issue, and you might have done some things differently than some of the older more established companies, but you still have expenses to manage and no doubt in many organizations you still have costs associated with just the talent acquisition side as well. Ken WhiteRight. On health care and retirement, is there a number you know when we hear so we're going to offer so-and-so two hundred thousand dollars what amount then goes to retirement and health care? Is there a formula in the business? Mike BurnistonNo, it really is going to vary a lot on the combination of the sector. It's going to vary based on type level of position. I mean, a lot of these are all qualified plans, of course, so there's equal participation, but as a percentage, you know, look, the reality is like anything else, we want to manage our fixed costs as well as we can. Right. So what's the most fixed cost is salary. And certainly, we haven't seen salary increases much beyond two, two and a half, three percent if most in most industries. So you got that being managed pretty well. You got annual health care expenses going up, you know, anywhere between 4 and 8 percent a year. And it's been pretty steady, and we feel good about that, right? Employers say wow, guess what single-digit increases in health care. You know that's a win. Pension liabilities are, you know, really a function of interest rates and the census, you know, what is our employee population look like. And the recession has not helped pension plans now is coming out of the recession. You have the phenomenon of interest rates and fund performance working to your advantage, but there's nothing like our market crash that can change the position of a pension plan pretty quickly. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Mike BurnistonPretty volatile expenses. Ken WhiteWhat are HR professionals faced with in terms of attracting great talent? What are they looking at today? It seems so different with social media, of course. I mean, where are they looking to find the people? Mike BurnistonWell, you know, I think probably the most challenging aspect of talent acquisition is really think about it from two perspectives. On the one hand, the continuing decline of STEM skill workers. Right. So finding people with critical skills, particularly in industries where science, technology, math skills, engineering skills are all really valuable to the success of the enterprise. So that's a shrinking pool. And at the same time, I've got all these things I just talked about right all these things I'm trying to pull all these levers try to maintain cost. I can't step outside of the boundaries of my peer group, particular if I'm a publicly traded company, right? I can't pay my people 50 percent more than my peer group because analysts are going to whack me for that. Ken WhiteSure. Mike BurnistonI'm not gonna be I'm gonna be penalized for that performance. So what can I do to substantially differentiate my organization as a place to be? In a situation where the labor market is tight. Same employers going after the same people. And I'm trying to do that in an environment where a generation of workers are coming and saying. I'll try you out for a couple of years. Try me outright. I spend all this effort, and you're going to try me out. I would like you here at least three, four, five, six, seven years, and we know that from data that you know millennials are not interested in four or five, six, seven years at least not to talk about. So it's a real challenge to do all that. So the here and now is let's try to define the value proposition that gets us some advantage emphasized the things that really make us stand out. It's why so many organizations, you know, look to Google as a benchmark, right, and a CHRO of Google writes a book, and everybody reads it and says, let's try to do what Google does, although he'd be the first one to say if you just mirror my practices they might not work for you right. It's a combination of things like any recipe. So I think, you know, I think, the biggest challenge of acquiring talent is figuring out what is it that we offer. Emphasize those things and just continue to pound it into the organization. And how you do it right. So you and I, I don't know about your experience, but when I was still a student at William & Mary in the business school. I remember typing my resume and typing out individual cover letters and sending them out in the mail, and I'd get responses right from employers typed out, and you could tell which one were forms in which one we're actually thoughtful, you know, personally written. Well, imagine that in the world of social media now. So how do I, as an employer, just like a consumer brand positions itself, you know as, how do I get you to drink Pepsi versus Coke? It's the same thing. How do I get how do we attract your interest to my organization? So lots of stuff going on. Ken WhiteYeah, no question. Mike BurnistonIt makes it really challenging. Ken WhiteSo you acquire the talent, then it's retaining people. What are some of the strategies you're seeing with your clients? What are some of the issues? Mike BurnistonThe e-word engagement big topic, right? So it's one thing to get them in the door. It's another thing to capture their head, heart, and mind. You really really make it so that I'm getting the most out of my people and I'm giving them the experience they're looking for, and that that brings in the same customer-centric issue. So like a consumer brand, the employment brand has to play out even when people join. Now with all due respect to anyone who's listening to this in the world of technology, most organizations are not known for the technology-enabled Workforce Optimization systems and solutions. I assure you you could find somebody in almost every company that's going to complain about their IT-enabled solutions. Right. Ken WhiteRight. Mike BurnistonSo that experience has to be perfect, right? Whether I from an HR perspective, I go to enroll in the annual health care enrollment process right, and I introduce online tools to do it. Well, if the system crashes or it's just a really lousy user experience, that's hard to then say I want to engage with you, right? So employees get frustrated if I can't do it on my smartphone. I'm not going to sit here in the office and do it on my desktop until, you know, 8:00 or 10:00 at night, trying to roll my health benefits right. Ken WhiteYeah. Mike BurnistonSo that whole issue is part of that engagement, not to mention just creating a culture that attracts people and keeps them. Ken WhiteSo developing talent is something the HR execs are certainly they want to do retain the talent, and control the costs. What would they like to be doing? I mean, these are things that they're sort of forced to do on the other side. Where would they like to be spending time? Mike BurnistonYeah. You know, it's interesting. I reflect on a Chief HR executive who I've known for quite some time. Big employer in the world 60,000 some employees. Clearly, a top-notch Chief Executive, chief HR executive known by reputation would say to me that even in his organization, where I'd rate their HR team as being really solid, some of the best people in the field he would say that we do a really good job in my organization. In this case, his company when our business leaders say I need 15 UX program user experience technology experts. I need 35 brand marketing people, and you know, just rattling off the specific functions and roles they need. And by tomorrow, by golly, our HR team will have the talent ready to go, you know, locked and loaded, and here they are. What we don't do really well is what he would say is we don't know five years from now what we're going to need. So somebody can articulate. I need 15 of them or 18 of those. But who's defining what them and those are? Right. So how do I anticipate from a workforce planning perspective, not only the volume, because that's kind of easy when you think about it? Right. It's tied to growth, and you know, I kind of figure out the ratios, and I know what I need from a capacity standpoint, but it's the skills, and you know, the great example that is somebody 25 30 years ago or maybe it's 40 years ago said you know if we put this magnetic strip on a piece of plastic we can execute a payment, a transaction. Well, what kind of skills do you need to figure out how do you do that? Well, in the payments and transaction space. Right. Financial transactions. Ken WhiteSure. Mike BurnistonWhat is it that's going to be 15 years from now? You and I are probably not going to have a bank account. Checks will be completely wiped off. We may not be using a piece of plastic anymore. So what is it? And now, what do I need now to figure it out because it's going to take some time to figure out what those are. So that's the role that HR executives are struggling with is that if I'm really going to add value, I've got to be that business minded. Ken WhiteRight. You've got to have a good crystal ball. Mike BurnistonLike anybody else, but if you can figure out sort of the connection between organizational capability and organizational needs from a skill competency perspective, you know that's the holy grail for a chief HR executive. So may not lead the way to it, but at least punch it your own way to figure out, you know, I see where the business is going. Ken WhiteSure. Mike BurnistonSo fascinating stuff. Ken WhiteYou mentioned millennials, and you briefly mentioned the baby boomers getting ready to retire. What's going to happen? I mean, we've got some people who 65 is not old anymore. And then you've got millennials, as you say, a ten-year stint. No way. And that's not what you're thinking. What's your crystal ball say? Mike BurnistonYeah, well, you know clearly the as the population ages, the workforce ages, and interestingly you know, the great recession paused if not stalled retirements for logical reasons, right? 401K balances get depleted. You know, people see their expenses outpacing their projected income, so they work longer they put it off. Now that we're seem to be out of the Great Recession. You know I think there's a different phenomenon which is people saying you know I'm not so sure I really want to do this thing called retirement. They may want to control their time more which employers are starting to realize because with a real talent drain and, as I described it, at least with the critical skills. How am I going to replace all these people so quickly? Right. So maybe I want you to hang around a little bit. But guess what, retirees or retiree eligibles who don't really feel like they want to retire may not want to work, you know, a 40-hour week or, you know, who's kidding who 50 60-hour week. Ken WhiteSure. Mike BurnistonAnd may want to do it on their own terms can be highly productive but may say I need some flexibility. Ken WhiteYeah. Mike BurnistonSo I, you know, just in the last week, I must have had three conversations with three different clients about revisiting flexible work policies. And I don't mean. You know, working from home, per se, you know that the policy is straightforward and simple enough it's what is it that we need to do differently to actually engage with a workforce that says I don't want those terms. And if you can't give me those terms, I can go down the street and go someplace else. Because by the way, my employment has become really portable. That's another issue that we deal with from an HR perspective because I can't differentiate so much right, and I've made all these defined benefit benefits become defined contribution. I've made it really easy for you to move. So I've got to come up with a way to be more flexible come up with more adaptive work arrangements. Ken WhiteYeah, it's interesting to have a millennial and a boomer in the room at the same time and talk about careers, and we see that a lot of times with our Executive Partners, who are often retired execs at the Mason School talk to our MBA students and an Executive Partner maybe 30 years at one company and the student says I can't even imagine. Do you think millennials, and I hate to generalize anything like that, but for many of them, a short tenure less than five years seems like a pretty good idea. You see that changing. How do you see that affecting work? Mike BurnistonWell, you know, I have two daughters that have entered the workforce, you know, graduated from college have their first jobs. I've seen firsthand this interest in I want a job that, first off, I like. I want to like what I do. Second of all second, I see in both of my daughters the interest in having a job that they can define a purpose of the organization. And you know, and the third thing, and I have to say this is not a at all to suggest that they're not highly productive high performing people. They want to have fun. And if you can't have at least two of those three things, then the demerits start to add up against the employer. With a talent, you know, people in the labor market with talent that sees their opportunity as I'll go to the next best thing. Now if they can get all two or three of those things in one place, I don't know if they'll wake up in 4 or 5 years later, they're in the same place or not. So you know, I think it's sort of a generality to say what the survey data and research tell us tells us, which is they're not looking out much beyond two or three years. And as a parent, how would I advise them? I you know you talk about the executive partners. I think it's really hard for older people in the workforce to advise entering people coming into the, you know being recruited because I think the experience is very different, right? And depending on when you joined an organization and what circumstances were there were, you know, my personal story is I was influenced very much by a story by my grandfather who was injured on the job with the first employer that he had after he came to this country. And those are the days where there were no employee benefits. But the president of the company came and said you have a job for life here. And that was his benefit. And even though towards the end of his career he spent 35 years with the same company. Even at the end of his career, I can remember stories where he wasn't the happiest guy in the world. He would never think of leaving because of that loyalty that commitment. You know, you try to describe that to somebody today, and you know it's an interesting story, but it's a story, right? So interesting stuff. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mike Burniston, Senior Partner at Mercer, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Mike Burniston, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Inga Carboni](images/inga-carboni-17-thumb.jpg)
![Strategic Networking](images/inga-carboni-17-thumb.jpg)
Inga Carboni
Episode 17: December 8, 2015
Strategic Networking
Dr. Inga Carboni is an expert at networking and managing networks and teaches others how to successfully manage the networks in their lives. She is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies and tactics that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, you've heard the phrase, it's not what you know but who you know. In recent years networking has become a hot topic for professionals in all fields. Our guest today takes that concept a step further as she discusses Strategic Networking. Dr. Inga Carboni says intentionally managing your strategic network is imperative to a successful career. Carboni is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. She works with corporate clients of all types as well as MBA students, teaching them how to network strategically. Here's our conversation with Professor Inga Carboni. Ken WhiteInga, thanks for being here. Tell us what are leadership networks. Inga CarboniLeadership networks are networks that are constructed to optimize the ideas, the perspectives, and the insight that people receive from them. So when leaders are constructing their networks, they're making sure to reach out to people at every level of the organization and in different pockets of the organization as well. And we're finding that people who do that are more likely to be tapped as top talent. They're more likely to get promotions. They're more likely to get raises. They're more likely to be involved in innovation. So leadership networks have a specific look and feel to them. Ken WhiteWho should be engaged in creating a Leadership Network? Who within the organization, for example? Inga CarboniAnyone who wants to be a leader. You should start right when you join an organization and never stop until you leave the organization and your networks are extending beyond the organization, so really you never stop. Ken WhiteAnd it's not just mentors I'm seeking. Inga CarboniNo, no mentors are helpful, and they're valuable for lots of different things. But what you're looking for is insights into the organization, and you want to know what's going on in accounting. You want to know what's going on in sales. You want to know what's going on in production, and you want to know how the people at the top are thinking, and you want to know how the people on the floor are thinking. It's gathering insights and perspectives, and these will help you in lots of different ways. For instance, you can't plan a strategic initiative unless you know how it's going to affect all the people in the organization. So setting up these leadership networks is critical to being able to take leadership action. Ken WhiteWhat's it mean to design a strategic network? Inga CarboniSo one of the keys to designing a strategic network is to make sure that you're reaching out to people who may not know each other. So you're reaching into different pockets of the organization. And I mean that in the sense of different areas of the organization but also unconnected areas of the organization. So you're really getting perspectives that belong to, say, all of accounting, but you're getting them from, you know, Bob or Jill in accounting. You're not getting them from a whole cluster of people. So strategic network is designed so there's lots of pockets that you're dipping into, as well as holes between those pockets. Ken WhiteWhat's it mean to network strategically? Inga CarboniNetworking strategically means to be thoughtful about it, and that can be uncomfortable for a lot of people to think about. What am I going to get from my social relationships, or how can I learn from other people and be thoughtful about how I interact and meet other people? But the truth is its part of our business life, and social capital, which is what comes to you through people that you know is more important really than human capital. And what I mean by that is knowing other people and being connected to other people will get you more influence and will get you more power in an organization than simply your technical skills. Ken WhiteI remember when I was a young professional. A mentor said to me have a PR day once a month. Just get out there and talk to people and be seen and learn. Is that similar? Inga CarboniYeah, that's a great idea, and it's a great start. To do it strategically, you'll be targeting certain people or at least certain areas of the organization so that you're sure you're going out and talking to people, but you're making sure that you're talking to people who are in different areas in the organization and you're doing that really specifically, and that can be hard. You know you're in marketing, and you want to talk to someone in manufacturing. You're going to have to find a way to make that connection. Ken WhiteAnd how do I know that the people I'm talking to are probably the best people for me? Inga CarboniWell, first of all, you want to talk to people that you like interacting with. That's fine. But you know, there's a pretty broad range of people that you like interacting with, and people come together over shared interests and shared activities. You'll know it's the person that's right for you to be talking to because they'll be giving you a different perspective than you have on it. On something so very simply, you could be taking a look at just organizational level. You could also be taking a look at departments or functions within the organization, but you can also think broader than that. Am I talking to men as well as to women? Am I talking to older people as well as to young people? Where are the holes in my network, and how can I strategically fill them? Ken WhiteHow much time should we devote to this? Inga CarboniA lot of time. Jack Welch said that he devotes 70 percent of his time to people interactions. The higher up you go in the organization, the more your time should be spent interacting with people. And it's got to start right from the get-go. It can't be an add-on. It's got to be part of your work. And you'll find that when you invest this, it pays off dividends. So work that might be hard to process becomes a little easier for you because you've built up these relationships, so it will save you time in the long run. But it's hard to shift your mindset to a focus off your technical skills and onto your social interactions. Ken WhiteSo networking strategically, we had a podcast just a few episodes ago with Dave Cote, who's the CEO of Honeywell, and he talks about, you know, walking the talk. That's really what we're talking about, right? I mean, he was getting out there talking to people and doing this on a regular basis. Inga CarboniYeah, I think that's a related idea and also really valuable, and the idea is that management by walking around getting to know people and connecting with these with people from all different areas. I'm talking about something very similar in terms of building relationships but simply more strategic in being thoughtful. It's not just you're bumping into people and building up, for instance, strong relationships in your department, which is valuable, but that you're reaching out, you're really thinking about how can I make this the most strategic network possible and how can I design it strategically. Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, strategically designed networks will also help you think more strategically. So you'll be more informed by different perspectives in your organization, and you'll be able to bring those to bear on strategic initiatives. Ken WhiteThis can't be a one-way street. I have to offer something. Inga CarboniOh, sure, sure. That's one of the big myths about networking is that it's using people and it's manipulating people. Go in with giving. All right, go in thinking what can I give to people. What kind of information would be interesting to people? What kind of time should I be spending with people? Go in thinking giving. The reason that works is because it really is true that what goes around comes around. And what you give comes back to you sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Leverage is something we call the principle of reciprocity. We have sort of hardwired into our brains that if people give to us we want to give back to them. And it makes us like people more. So always be thinking about what you can give. Don't be counting what you're giving and trying to tally scores and things like that. You can trust that what you give will be returned to you. Like I said, either directly or indirectly. But networking poorly is manipulative, and it's trying to get things from people. And people come onto that so quickly, and it'll bite you in the back. Ken WhiteWell, and I think the workplace is changing right we're more open-source. It's more collaborative. And so I can understand why people would think, boy, this is sort of selfish. I'm out to get, but that isn't the case because the people I'm interacting with hopefully are gaining something from my knowledge and my experience at the same time. Inga CarboniOh sure. And that's something you should be thinking about too. What can I share? What do I have to offer? Have I worked with this client before? Can I offer that help to somebody in my company that I know is dealing with this client now? Do I know a language that might be helpful to somebody in dealing with their client or in dealing with other people in the organization and also sort of extracurricular stuff, you know? Do I know a sport really well? Do I know about all the great eat places you know around here, or do I know the latest movies and where some really neat funky independent movies are playing? Those are things to share, especially as you get to know people and know that those are things that they want to hear about. Ken WhiteNot the easiest thing for an introvert. Inga CarboniNo, but the good thing is that the quantity of relationships is not as nearly as important as the quality. And that's something that introverts are really good at. So ten high-quality relationships beat 100 low-quality relationships. Ken WhiteWhat are some of the challenges associated with networking strategically? Inga CarboniWell, some of them are within yourself, which is sort of making sure that you adopt a giving mindset, sort of moving yourself away from this is a manipulative or unpleasant kind of thing, also, about real allocating your time. That was a great point that you brought up and that's something that people often really struggle with. But there are specific challenges for certain people. For instance, we know women sometimes get backlash when they adopt this position of reaching out to people in different groups. It seems that people it's a very maybe because it's associated with leadership. We're still exploring that in the research, but maybe because it's associated with leadership and agentic action. Women sometimes get a backlash and are viewed more negatively if they adopt those behaviors, and they sometimes experience it more negatively. There's some indication that women who adopt these what we call brokerage roles these connecting with pockets that have spaces in between them, sometimes feel more stress sometimes feel less contented with their social relationships. And that also could be due to socializing that it's more likely that women are pressured to belong to a close-knit group than it is to belong to what might appear as a fractured group. They may feel it to be that they're on the edges of a whole bunch of groups rather than connected to a whole bunch of groups. There's also another barrier that makes it hard for women and people from traditionally disadvantaged populations in that when you're connecting with people. You often want to connect with people that you can share friendly relationships with because that's the nature of social interaction. And for some people, those friendly relationships are also relationships where you can get work-related resources and advice. However, if you're a woman or someone from a traditionally disadvantaged population, you are more likely to connect with women and people from your population, and because they're traditionally disadvantaged, they're likely to have less power and resources to offer you. So we sometimes find that, for instance, women will have a set of friends at work and then a set of people at work that they talk to for advice and other resources, and that those two things are very separate. And that makes it harder to reap returns from your network if you're separating out sort of friendship relationships from work-related purely work-related relationships. Ken WhiteHow do you know if you're not doing it correctly? You know, as someone who teaches, I immediately thought of, you know, when you said people, maybe some women will sit with women. You take students to a conference, for example, and you've been there, there's a thousand attendees, and your students are all sitting together at the table networking. How do you know when you're doing it correctly or incorrectly? Inga CarboniYeah, it's funny. Every time I give a talk to a large group, and they're sitting at those circular tables, I always ask how many of you are sitting with people that you work within your exact department. Almost always, all hands go up. Right. So it's pushes you out of your comfort zone. Ken WhiteYeah, it does. Inga CarboniSo you'll be doing activities differently. You'll be interacting with people where you sometimes make faux pas. Right. Because they're coming from a different world. So they're sharing a different perspective. There are ways to prepare yourself for that to come up with you know forgiveness strategies for when you make mistakes. But I think probably the most important thing is just to understand that you're going to experience a little discomfort. It's going to feel a little forced. But pushing yourself out of your comfort zone will help you not only with work but also in developing a more global understanding of people and the world. If you really want to understand the world of knowledge diversity, you got to go out and meet it. Ken WhiteYeah, great. Well, put. Listening skills have got to play a huge role if you're going to network strategically. Any advice you give to people, maybe earlier in their career, who are starting out trying to build that network? Inga CarboniSure. One of the critical skills to build is active listening, and it helps you in all different kinds of ways. But one of the critical ways in terms of networking is it builds intimacy but it also allows you to understand where the other person is coming from. And so if you're thinking about giving, you don't really know what to give if you don't know what a person wants to receive. So active listening is a critical skill, and it involves listening to what someone is saying and really trying to understand what they're saying. It sounds fairly simple, but we don't do this very often. Ken WhiteRight. Inga CarboniOften we're trying to think of what we want to say next or how wrong they are in what they're saying, but really listening solely to understand what someone else is trying to communicate to you. Their words, the meaning, the emotion attached to them, and then paraphrasing that back and the paraphrasing is critical because there's a running jokes about active listening where you just repeat back what the person said, and we do that with our two-year-olds, but we don't do that with our colleagues and friends. Paraphrasing back shows that I've listened to you intently enough that I can understand your deeper meaning. I know if you're happy about this thing or frustrated about this thing, or sad about this thing, and then you check for understanding, did I get that right? Just if I hear you correctly, what you're saying is this is that right or whatever sort of works for you. You don't have to judge it. You don't have to agree with it. You just have to understand it, and it's a critical skill. It goes also beyond networking. It also de-escalates conflict. It builds relationships on all kinds of levels. But yeah, listening is a critical skill to developing your network effectively. Ken WhiteAnd you mentioned, and I think you're spot on, so many executives, if they're not good active listeners, it's because exactly what you just said, they're thinking of the next thing to say because I'm the boss I've got to say something brilliant right. So I'm actually not listening to what you're saying. Last question for someone who's not doing this what should they what's step one? What do you do to build these strategic networks? Inga CarboniStep one is to understand where you're at. You might want to take a look at the people that you know and just or maybe just say to yourself. Who do I turn to for career advice, or who do I turn to understand what goes on around this organization and then look down and see, okay, here's where my pockets are. Here's where I'm not getting holes at all. I turn to is my boss and the other person in my department. And so the first step is sort of understanding where you are. The second step is pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. And the best way to do that is to find a shared activity. In shared activities, you have something to focus on. You presumably have a mutual interest, and you will find people that you feel natural connection with. So shared activities can have a go across a range of things, but particularly when you're starting out in an organization, you know, serving on a task force if you can. Looking to see if the organization does any charity work. Is there can you participate in a marathon for the company? Can you sit in on a brown bag with a for another group? Can you offer to give a brown bag if you're in IT or any area really within an organization you may have expertise that other people would find very interesting? Ken WhiteTrue. Good point. Inga CarboniSo there's a lots of ways to reach out. Ken WhiteIf our listeners aren't doing this now. What's your advice? Inga CarboniGet started because it's a critical thing to do for your career, and you're going to need to do it for a long time. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation on networking strategically with Professor Inga Carboni, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Professor Inga Carboni, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe and productive week. |
![Ed Coleman](images/ed-coleman-16-thumb.jpg)
![Advice on Leading a Turnaround](images/ed-coleman-16-thumb.jpg)
Ed Coleman
Episode 16: December 1, 2015
Advice on Leading a Turnaround
Ed Coleman has led many turnarounds. He's a member of the Board of Directors at Lexmark International, a former CEO, and has led three companies through significant transformations. Today Ed Coleman shares advice about how to approach and lead a turnaround.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Leading a turnaround it can be a wonderful, exciting opportunity. But like all leadership opportunities, it requires certain skills, a particular mindset, and the right strategy. Ed Coleman knows about turnarounds. A member of the board of directors at Lexmark International. He's an experienced and highly successful former CEO who has led three public companies through significant business model transformations and improvements. At the height of the 2008 financial crisis, Coleman became CEO of Unisys, and he turned the global information technology company around. Under his leadership there, the organization reduced debt and delivered six straight years of profits. Before that, he served as CEO at Gateway and CompuCom. And because of his years of success, he's recognized as a customer-centric leader who gets it done. In our podcast today, Coleman shares some very insightful advice about how to approach and lead a turnaround. Here's our conversation with the former CEO of Unisys, Gateway, and CompuCom, Ed Coleman. Ken WhiteWell, Ed, thank you for being here. You just spoke to a number of undergraduate students here at William & Mary. It was an interesting conversation to listen to you and to the questions they had, and one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about was turnarounds. You've led some turnarounds very successfully, and what is it about a turnaround situation that attracts you? Ed ColemanWell, first of all, great to be with you, Ken. I appreciate the opportunity. Turnarounds are exciting, they're exhilarating they're also nerve-racking, but I think the thing that is most interesting about the turnaround is, typically, there's some strategic issues to deal with. There's operational issues to deal with and cultural issues to deal with, and the opportunity as a manager or as a leader to be engaged in working on all three of those at the same time on a high wire is pretty exhilarating. Ken WhiteYeah. Do you have to have a specific skill set? Do you think in order to be successful in a turnaround situation versus leading an organization that's fairly stable? Ed ColemanI don't know if it's a particular skill set. I think you have to have a particular attitude that you can make something happen, that this is not unsolvable that we can, in fact, recover and complete the turnaround. Ken WhiteYeah, you talked once before I saw it. It's actually one of your talks is on YouTube, and you talked about scale, scope, and structure and the importance of those three in a turnaround. What do you mean by scale? Ed ColemanWhat I mean by scale is just how large is the business versus scope. What I'm talking about scope is how diversified and distributed the business is. So I could have a very big business over lots and lots of different areas geographically and product lines, or I could have a small business. It's also a small amount of revenue spread across a lot of geography and a lot of different products and services, and that would require a different kind of structure than a larger business. Ken WhiteSure. And so, how do you balance the three? The scale, the scope, the structure is one more important than the other. How do you deal with that? Ed ColemanWell, I think what you're trying to do is just get them in balance. If you have a again, I was in one situation where I felt that we were doing too many things in too many places without enough revenue to support it without enough scale to support all that, and yet we had structure in place as if we had a lot of scale. And what happens in that environment is that your cost is way out of whack with your business opportunity. Ken WhiteRight. How important is a fresh set of eyes to lead a turnaround? Ed ColemanI think it's awfully important. To me, one of the advantages of coming in from the outside is you don't know the history. You don't know all the details. And all the reasons why things have been done or not done. And you have a chance to look at the business really top-down and with an external set of eyes and look at it sort of holistically and decide what you think your impressions of the business are. And you look at the financials and see what seems to be in whack and out of whack, and you can begin to formulate some impressions about what the issues might be before getting pulled down into the details by the team that's in place. Ken WhiteSo you're doing that yourself. How much time would you recommend spending with the former leader in that situation? Ed ColemanYeah, I think it's nice to make the connection. I think it's nice to maybe get a briefing as to what the former leader thinks the situation is upon his or her departure and your entry into it. But beyond that, I think you want to avoid learning too much from the former leadership. I think you really want the opportunity to look at it yourself. Form your own opinions. Ken WhiteWhat about the team? The current team. How much do you communicate with them when you're coming into a turnaround? Ed ColemanI think a lot, and because you want to certainly get to know them as people, you want to understand where their heads are at in terms of the potential of the business, whether they're up for the turnaround or not, and what it's going to take. Are they enthusiastic about change, or are they going to be resistant to change? But again, I think you're looking at the individuals and the members of the team to try and understand where they are attitudinally more so than getting pulled down into the details of the business too quickly. Ken WhiteThat attitude then ties to you as the leader to you the way you communicate. What advice do you have for someone coming into a turnaround and having to communicate with the team, whether it's a team of five or 5,000? Ed ColemanWell, I think it starts with aspiration. I think you want to come into a turnaround with some idea of what you aspire this business to be. What is your vision for the business? What do you think we can be and be able to communicate that pretty clearly and then how you're going to get there? I think you want to be a few simple statements that you repeat over and over again. I really believe consistency in message across all the stakeholder groups is really important. You want to be able to tell the same story to customers, to shareholders, to employees. Keep it simple and keep it consistent. Ken WhiteOne of our first guests was Dave Cote from Honeywell, and it's one of the things he said he's, you know, the nice thing is when you're inside story is the same as your outside story. Ed ColemanLife is easier. Ken WhiteThe consistency, right? Yeah absolutely having sort of a battle cry so to speak. What about goal setting? I've been in a turnaround situation. You get so fired up. You see these goals and say we can do it. We can do it. How do you set realistic goals? Ed ColemanI think that's a great great question because I think you can overreach. You want to have aggressive enough goals that even if you come up a little bit short, you still improved your hand, and you've improved the business. But again, you want to have an aspiration for what the company can be, but you want to be able to reward success along the way towards that aspiration. So I think particularly early on, you want to have very achievable goals that people can see that they are making progress, but they're being recognized and rewarded for their progress. Ken WhiteNow you've dealt with boards, you've dealt with influencers they may not be as willing to get there slowly. They may have goals that are a little well high and pretty high up there that may not be achievable, say in a couple of years. How do you interact with, say, the board in that kind of a situation? Ed ColemanI think there is always a push and pull on that. And I think you try to explain your position, explain why you're doing what you're doing, why you're suggesting that objectives and compensations plans should be set the way they're set, and you have a push and pull on that, and eventually, I think, and generally, I think you end up in a good place. Ken WhiteI talked to a colleague who new leader, and he said one and. I asked him he had been two years on the job, and I said what? There's been a couple of good things you did, and the other question was, did you make any major mistakes? And he said one of the major mistakes I made as I got in there and I actually fired a few people quickly, and here it is two years later, and I am kicking myself for doing that. It was a bit of a reaction. How do you do that when you walk in, and you're looking at a team, and you think I don't, I don't think he can do it. I'm not so sure she's in the right spot. How do you deal with that? Ed ColemanWell, I think again it's all individual and case dependent, but you know, I think some people come into a turnaround and say, gosh, I need to. If this team was any good, the company wouldn't be in the position it's in, and so I'm going to do a complete refresh and bring in my own team. Other people and I would put myself in this other category. I think one is pause long enough to understand. Are they positive contributors to the business? Do they have the right attitude in terms of the ability to accept changes? Can you get them to share your aspiration for the business? Do they buy into the strategy, and will they, in fact, execute with passion and willpower that strategy. If they can do all that and know the business and you don't. Boy, I'd keep them, but if you begin to question whether or not they're just giving you lip service to the need for change, then I think you have to really think about changing. Ken WhiteBut there will probably be some selling in the process, right? They'll be good people on board but still, need to be persuaded and be challenged and invited to join the team. How do you deal with them? Ed ColemanHonestly, most of the situations I've been involved in, the management team has felt the need for change, and they've been waiting for the change and looking forward to the change. So in some cases, that incumbent becomes your best ally. A lot of cases, I think people know what needs to be done. They just haven't been allowed to do it so that fresh set of eyes sometimes can unshackle them to do what they always wanted to do anyway. Ken WhiteWhat do you see as the top, say, two or three challenges when you're coming into a turnaround situation? You've got some experience there. What are the hurdles? Ed ColemanWell, one hurdle can be winning back customer confidence right. So not only are you communicating inside the company to your team and getting buy-in around the aspiration and the strategy, but you also have to be able to communicate to the customers why they should stick with you. Why this is going to get better, why we are changing, why we're going to be in a position to support their needs today and in the future. So a lot of it is managing to that stakeholder as well. So that's a big challenge. Second big challenge, I think, is you have to make some tough decisions in terms of cost structures oftentimes. If your structure is way out of whack with your scale and your scope, you're going to have to do some pretty extensive cost-cutting. So at the same time that you're trying to get people to embrace your strategy and welcome the change and support the change, the same time you have people knowing that their jobs are at risk and being able to work through that through the organization and keep people supportive of the change even knowing that it may put their jobs at risk is a tough, tough challenge. Ken WhiteThat's a heck of a challenge. Right. How do you deal with that? I mean, you may not be here, but I need you to buy in. Ed ColemanBe honest. I think you know this is one of those things where it really is about trust, and you have to engage with people at an individual level, small group level, big group level and show them that you're being honest with them. That you're not trying to hide anything, but this is what we need to do. I need your support to get there, and I think you also have to kind of, you know, walk the talk. You have to be willing to sacrifice a little bit some of maybe your executive perks. You sacrifice those so people can see visually that you're cutting back to. Ken WhiteLeading by example. Ed ColemanYeah. Ken WhiteCustomers, you mentioned that. That's interesting. So you're working on the team trying to get there. You're not really there, but you can't lose the customers at the same time. What are you saying to the customers? They've seen business or least service perhaps go down a little bit. Why should I believe you, the new guy? What is it that you're bringing to the table that makes me want to stick around and continue to do business with you when your plan hasn't really been put into place yet? Ed ColemanWell, that's why your plan has to get put in place pretty quickly. You can't study this thing forever. So I think you have to be able to tell the customers this is what we're going to do. And I can give you some examples of what we've already done in support of that. And here are some milestones you're going to see over the next 60, 90, 120 six months, whatever days. But you need to be able to show a difference very quickly. Ken WhiteSo as soon as you're hitting it, you've got to put some sort of a plan in place soon after you arrive then. Ed ColemanYeah. I don't think it necessarily has to be super detailed. It's just more of, you know, starting with here kind of big themes, and then you start filling in underneath those themes and acting on those and showing results as quickly as you can. Ken WhiteAny advice to someone who has not led a turnaround before but may have an opportunity to do so they've been in a stable position? Here's this opportunity we have. We're interested in you. What kind of advice would you share with them? Ed ColemanWell, first of all, I'd say embrace it. You know, get ready for, you know, some exhilaration. Get ready for some exhaustion. Get ready for some sleepless nights. Keep in mind the fact that it's not going to show a result, either positive or negative, in one day. Some days you'll have good days, you will have some bad days, never as good as it seems, never as bad as it seems but stay the course, have that aspiration, have that plan, work that plan hard, demonstrate a lot of willpower lead by example communicate with your troops and your teams and your customers as much as you possibly can and stay excited about it. Ken WhiteAnd believe it. Ed ColemanAnd believe it. Ken WhiteYeah. Ed ColemanAbsolutely. Because people will believe that it can be done if you believe it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Ed Coleman, former CEO of Unisys, Gateway, and CompuCom, on leading a turnaround. And that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Ed Coleman, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Max Rapp](images/max-rapp-15-thumb.jpg)
![Open Innovation and its Benefits to Organizations](images/max-rapp-15-thumb.jpg)
Max Rapp
Episode 15: November 24, 2015
Open Innovation and Its Benefits to Organizations
Open Innovation helps organizations use internal and external sources to improve and grow. Hyve is an innovation company in Munich, Germany, that uses an open innovation approach. Max Rapp is Team Lead for Innovation Campaigns and North America at Hyve, and he joins us on the podcast to discuss open innovation and more.
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Max Rapp: Open Innovation and Its Benefits to Organizations TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Companies and organizations are constantly looking to improve. That might mean developing a new product, launching a new service, or improving the existing model. Well, in the old days' organizations would rely mostly on the talent within the organization to create the product or service. That's not the case today. More and more companies and organizations are turning to open innovation to determine their next steps. Open innovation helps organizations use internal and external ideas to improve. The concept being that companies can no longer rely only on their own ideas. Instead, they need to solicit ideas from external parties. Sometimes external parties who are competitors. Hyve, spelled H-Y-V-E, is an innovation company in Munich, Germany. Hyve uses an open innovation approach that integrates consumers and users in the development of new products and services. Hyve's clients include more than half the companies on the German stock exchange as well as companies more familiar to Americans, like Intel, Procter and Gamble, and BMW. Max Rapp is team lead for innovation campaigns and North America at Hyve. He joins us today to discuss open innovation and its benefits to organizations. Here's our conversation with Max Rapp of Hyve. Ken WhiteWell, Max. Thank you. We've been spending some time together the last day or so talking about open innovation and we thought this is a great time to ask you to be a part of the podcast and talk about this. How would you define for someone who's never heard of it? What is open innovation? Max RappOpen innovation is actually, yeah, the intention to open up my company, my institution, my organization in order to co-create or to create something new like product services together with end consumers, with citizens who or whoever is actually out there not just in the internet but also offline. So I try to co-create something with other people for my own organization. So it's really leaving like the internal barriers of my institution and opening it up for people and consumers and everybody who wants to participate. Ken WhiteYou had shared a story earlier with me that sort of explains why open innovation. Can you share that story? Max RappYeah sure. So it's an anecdote actually because everybody thinks that open innovation or like co-creation is very new and very modern. But there is actually like a nice example from the 19th century that it isn't. So there was Napoleon the third, who was searching in the 19th century for a substitute product for margarine because he was trying to feed his forces out in the or the army when they were going to battle. And so he was searching for actually more cheap product for it. And so he was having an ideation or like an idea competition and say okay, whoever is out there help me and I want to have a substitute product for that. And there was actually a guy who was coming up with a great idea. He was actually inventing the margarine with this idea, and so it was an incredible nice innovation because he was not searching just with his own people in the government. He was really like sourcing it out of the institution or of the government to all the people and friends and but the story behind it actually is quite interesting because the guy who invented the margarine, in the end, said okay, perfect. Do I get any reward for it? And Napoleon said no, it should be honor enough to work for me. And so what happened actually is he was taking the IP rights for it have a copyright on it, and he was selling it to a company which is called Jurgens which was later on actually absorbed by Unilever. So you see, I think two points, on the one hand, you see not just all the smart people are working for me like that's I think a very big learning for big companies. So it's not just all my employees or my own research department can do the magic. It could be also outside of my company. But the other thing is obviously if I try to include other people from outside of the company it would be good to at least give them a bit of a benefit or like an incentive for their work and for their experience what they share with me. Ken WhiteThere are, basically, and you and I discussed right before we started recording three pillars or three different reasons to engage in open innovation. What are those? Max RappYeah. So usually, like, when companies coming to us and say we want to have open innovation or we want to co-create products or ideas, usually they have three different things in mind. So on the one hand it's definitely like research and development. So I think it's a very big and successful tool in the research and development because it's whenever I try to innovate my own company I try to innovate my services or my products. Usually, I always have yeah the same research department, maybe since 20 years which are always working in the same mood in the same atmosphere, maybe a couple of times with young blood. But usually, sometimes they just see always with the same glass. Right. And so it's nice to try to get off that board and saying it would be nice to co-create with people outside of my company because they have maybe totally different experience with it, and obviously, they have because like the people outside of the companies they are the guys actually who are wearing products, were using products, who are doing anything with products on an everyday basis. And so they have an incredible insight and an incredible experience with that, and they want to share that with the companies because obviously, their interest is also to have better products in the future on the market, right? And so that is like a big successful story actually with research and development departments around the globe are doing with open innovation already since couple of years. They try on a continuous level to integrate people to get their experience with products, and this can be totally on a different scale. So we are working for a company which is based in Austria. It's a small, medium enterprise. It's called Patonga, and Patonga is actually a market leader in trailers for tractors. And so they came to us with an incredible interesting challenge because they said since five years, their research and development department is searching for a fix because they have a trailer which is incredible big it's called the jumbo, Patonga Jumbo. That's a product name. And so it has an integrated cutting system. And whenever, like, the trailer is going over the cut field, and it's picking up the grass, it isn't forwarding the grass into the integrated cutting system, and it's throwing those grass packages in the trailer, and these packages are then feed to the cows. And because whenever to have this pick-up process or the forward process going on the grass is very chaotic. And so it's not lined up and in perfect shape, right? Ken WhiteSure. Max RappSo there is a lot of air in between those grass packages, and this air leads to that cows are giving 8 percent less milk because they eat a lot of air and get a lot out of methane, right? Ken WhiteOf course. Max RappAnd so this is a very specific problem which their own research and development department were not able to fix in the last couple of years. And so they came to us and said do you think you can find actually somewhere people who can help us like engineers or maybe designers also who come up can come up with great ideas and how we can fix that problem? And so we build up like an open innovation idea contest. It was like a community-based platform in the internet where I can register as an engineer but also as in people who are just interested in the whole material, and they were actually really coming up with incredible ideas. And so the reach was incredible. It last from 3D designs to like renderings to scribbles or whatever how they would actually fix their problem. So we were actually collecting hundreds of ideas and in the end, the combination of three or four ideas actually really fix that problem which is incredible. Ken WhiteAnd so that what a great story. And again, it all online. The whole process was online. When you're getting input from, I guess, what in America, we would call it fresh set of eyes. Max RappRight. Ken WhitePeople who have a different they're not so close to the problem probably. Max RappExactly. So that was online, obviously, whenever you have those ideas, it makes sense to take those ideas, give it to your research and development department and try to work on it and, you know, like making the last shapes out of it, etc. So that is happening offline? Also maybe with the idea contributors who will be invited maybe afterwards and try to also present their ideas and come into a nice communication with the whole company. And so it usually it's online, right, but it could be also a combination of online and offline. Ken WhiteSure. Max RappSo yeah. That has been actually like more focus on the research and development department, but they're also like two different other pillars. Pillars, you call it, which could be interesting to use open innovation. So there are a lot of marketing departments out there who see the potential of open innovation. Why do they do that? Because they see obviously end, consumers share their ideas they share their experience. So why not actually using those insights also to market the products in a proper and more decent way? Right. And so there's a nice example we did that for the big car manufacturer Audi in English, not in Germany. So they have a new product which is called Audi sound plus it's an audio system because they had a problem because whenever like new cars they produced were going out of the garage it was not possible to have like in usually they use Bang & Olufsen which is a very premium product for audio systems. Ken WhiteSystems, yeah. Max RappAnd so they couldn't do it into the cars after they sold it from the garage. So they had to actually build their own audio system that the people who once in the aftermath a good audio system can buy something. Ken WhiteRight. Max RappAnd so they created Audi sound plus, which is a premium product as well, and they sold it like nothing, actually. So and the problem was nobody knew about it. Right. And what we did actually we made an open innovation campaign where we tried to find product testers for this new product. And what we did is there could apply of being an official Audi Product Tester. And so we took out 20 of those people, and they were having like an Audi TT for a weekend and just has to like they just had to prove and check and control and experience the new system. And the only thing they have to do to do so is they should share the whole experience on their blogs, on their communities, and so on so forth. So that's actually open innovation because it's from outside the company. Somebody is testing my products and is sharing his thoughts and his experience about it. And in between weeks, we have actually build up like contact points which are around like couple of million million contact points because they were sharing it in like incredible influential sound testing community, sound testing forums, and so on so forth, and the whole community jumped on that bandwagon and were discussing the whole product and so on so forth. So we actually succeeded in filling the whole gap Audi had before that nobody knew the whole product before. And so everybody was talking about it, and there was spread of word of mouth in the internet. Ken WhiteWow. So you have R&D and then marketing. What's the third pillar? Max RappSo the third pillar would be like HR. So interestingly enough, like the big company, Siemens is using open innovation since couple of years just with a perspective of human resources. So how did they do that, and why do they do that? They see actually that all the people who participate in such open innovation challenges or in maybe also offline workshops or whatever are definitely high potentials. They are people who have a clue. They are people who have maybe higher education, maybe people who have totally insights into products and have a great talent, and so they say, okay, why should we not use an online community or an online challenge to actually have a source for smart people? And so they actually build up every year, which is called an open innovation student award. So it started with the Middle East. It was also in Brazil. It was has been in Germany, where they just have a nice challenge for students to participate in. And so they're searching for ideas, for example, for smart grids. They're searching for ideas for new sustainability products. But in the end, they just try to find very smart people in an early stage. So they focus at the moment on university as I said with student awards. And so they try obviously afterwards to invite those people to Siemens get in touch with those people and then try actually to get those people in very early stage to Siemens because afterwards. They have to pay an incredible amount of money for headhunters. Ken WhiteSure. Max RappWhenever they had like working experience for a couple of years. Right. And that's interesting because I mentioned earlier the Patonga case, like the company from Austria with the trailers, and now like two of couple of winners of this competition are also now working for Patonga because they have seen they had such incredible good ideas and they are engineers and they are students. So why the hell should they not work for me? Right. Ken WhiteRight. Amazing. That would turn internships on their ear because why bother with the internship when you can actually see what a student or a young person has in terms of capability online through one of these? Interesting. Now I would think the first thing that someone might say when they hear about open innovation is it is in fact open. So our competition can see everything we're talking about what how do you respond to that? Max RappRight. So there are actually like two different ways to deal with it. So, on the one hand, before I talk about this whole open stuff, there is still a way to make it more closed. So there are ways, for example, what we call a bit like open-closed innovation. So there is a couple of big companies who say, okay, I would like to have a view from outside our company, but I don't want to have it globally or everybody. Actually, it would be fine to have maybe like 200 or 300 people for me, and they should like work on an internal community. So we still have the outside perspective, but it's a bit closed because not everybody can look into it. Ken WhiteRight. Max RappSo what happens there is actually we take 200 or 300 very smart people talents, and that is actually like the USP from Hyve. We find the right people for the companies who could contribute actually good ideas for the companies, and they are actually in this internal community, and they're all signing NDAs, and they're all actually working on a specific problem or a specific challenge. But in the end, it's still closed because just a company can see it right. So that is obviously a possibility when a company is very afraid of being totally open. Ken WhiteSure. Max RappTo use it open innovation like that way. But on the other hand, talking about the really open crowdsourcing platforms where everybody can look into. So obviously this is a tradeoff because when I do open innovation really my competitors can look into those online communities or online challenges. But what happens there is actually that whenever a research and development department is having a specific problem like Patonga had, they say for themselves we are actually nine month ahead of the competition because we have focused and dealt with the whole problem already since couple of years. So we are on a stage where our competition is definitely not at the moment. So we pick out the good ideas we're in in the whole process of this ideation campaign, and we will fix it with the research and development department and then do a patent on it. So that's something which is also, I think, interesting. Usually, if you get ideas in such a campaign there, it's not possible to do a patent on it anymore because it's already been open and public in the internet, but usually, you won't have those gold nuggets which you can actually execute one to one. Usually, you have to do rework and refine the work on the whole process and ideas a bit more, and then afterwards, you do a patent on it. And so usually like this being ahead of the competition and seeing that still my research and development has to do some work in order to have a patent. That's the reason why then usually the companies say okay, anyways I want to have that input from outside of my company. I do open innovation. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Max Rapp of Hyve, the innovation company in Munich, Germany. If you'd like to see open innovation live as it takes place, William & Mary's Mason School of Business is currently partnering with Max and Hyve on a project called Tomorrow's MBA co-creating the future of business education. The project is bringing together users of the MBA. Lawyers, executives, professionals, innovators, faculty, and students to discuss and create together the MBA of tomorrow. A very interesting project that's involving people from over 50 countries. To check it out, go to tomorrowsmba.mason.wm.edu. That's tomorrowsmba.mason.wm.edu. Invite you to share your ideas on tomorrow's MBA website. Well, that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Max Rapp, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Mike Savage](images/mike-savage-14-thumb.jpg)
![Digital Marketing](images/mike-savage-14-thumb.jpg)
Mike Savage
Episode 14: November 17, 2015
Digital Marketing
Mike Savage is Vice President for Marketing Solutions at DirectMail.com. He's worked with some of the world's top brands. In this episode, he shares his insights on digital marketing and how it affects customers and businesses.
Podcast (audio)
Mike Savage: Digital Marketing TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, thanks to technology, this is an exciting time for marketers. They have incredible tools at their disposal today to reach and connect with prospective and current customers. Digital Marketing allows businesses to really know their clients. It provides the tools necessary to engage with customers on customers' terms, like on their laptops or cell phones, and measuring digital marketing effectiveness helps marketers spend their budgets in an intelligent manner. Mike Savage is Vice President for Marketing Solutions at DirectMail.com. He's a career marketer who's worked with and counseled some of the world's top brands. We sat down with him in Northern Virginia, where he shared his insights on digital marketing, its future, and how it affects customers and businesses. Here's our conversation with the Vice President of Marketing Solutions at DirectMail.com, Mike Savage. Ken WhiteMike, thanks for taking the time to join us today. We really appreciate it. You work in such an interesting space. You know, digital marketing it's just exploding. Some people get it some people have no idea. Why don't we start by what is it you do in your job? Mike SavageSure. Well, thanks for having me. This is a great opportunity I appreciate it. Ken WhiteWell, thank you. Mike SavageI work for a company called DirectMail.com. So it sits right at the intersection of online and offline. And so we work with non-profits, commercial entities across a number of different industries, and we help them get new customers and engage existing customers. And we do that through a number of different ways. My personally my role there is VP of Marketing Solutions which is really kind of at the front end of our sales and marketing with our team to really help engage our customers understand their opportunities or challenges and leverage data and insight and bring that data and insight to bear across you know not just direct marketing which is honestly a still a growing space in a number of sectors but how consumers are engaging with their brand throughout their lifecycle. So oftentimes, you hear folks talk about, you know, a customer journey and a lot of trends right now, especially around the digital side or understanding that customer journey when they're making buying decisions. Who their influencers are. When to make appropriate offers and sort of the combination of the consumer journey and the marketing it, you know coming together it's a highly complex world right now. So that's what our company does we're a privately held business. Prior to this, I've been here for about three years. I've worked in a large holding company environments, and companies that have helped large brands like Geico and Dell and P&G, and Direct TV put data and infrastructure technology in place, and the analytics in place to kind of help drive these new customer acquisitions. These customer portfolios, I'll call them. So it's been a fun ride so far, and it's ever-changing the digital landscape. I think we're all trying to figure it out as we go. And the best place to learn is just to jump in the deep end and work with your clients because your client's going to help you know they help make us better every day. So it bring new ideas to the table. Ken WhiteHow do you? You mentioned direct marketing. How do you define direct marketing versus just, say, marketing in general? Mike SavageYeah, direct marketing classically speaking, direct marketing was direct mail, but that's evolved. In fact, a lot of the age-old principles of direct mail marketing from the 70s and the 80s are really being adopted now by digital marketing. So really I would define as anything that has a response mechanism or response channel. That's how I would define direct marketing. So in a lot of ways, digital marketing is direct marketing because it's you can understand a response rate very quickly, and you can measure that, and then you can adjust, and marketing is all about testing and learning and adjusting to get the highest response rate to improve ROI. Whether that be through customer acquisition campaign we're trying to grow this year organically at X rate, how many new customers do we need to kind of fill that portfolio, or hey, we've got a high churn rate with our business, and we're trying to figure out how to kind of shore up that churn rate and get folks to stay with us longer. So there's an engagement process that you employ over time. And the great thing about digital it's highly measurable, and it's, you know, in terms of it is the classic one-to-one, you know, you can literally bring content up that's relevant to Ken, and that might be different for Mike. Based on my attitudes, my segments, my profile and, I can adjust that. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely amazing. You mentioned measurement. That is such a huge evolution. I mean, 20 years ago in, marketing was really very, very difficult to measure. Besides measurement, what do you think is one of the major changes that you've seen since you've gotten into the space over the years in terms of digital marketing? Mike SavageThe well, I would say there's a couple; actually, there's three that I've really kind of focused in on. Ken WhiteYeah. Mike SavageOne is, and I'll just kind of summarize them and maybe go into them in detail. One is what I call omni channel. One is the ability to communicate with a consumer across multiple channels. The challenge that creates an opportunity for smart firms that are looking for ways to continue to grow is to understand how to really farm the data from those channels and build a single view of the customer. So that's sort of, I'll just kind of put that out there, and we call that omni channel, omni channel marketing. The second is integration. And many, many of our clients and whether it be, you know, a Fortune 100 brand as a large overall marketing budget or a mid-sized regional bank. We work with a few of those as well. They're struggling with this idea of integration. So integration in terms of budget integration working in silos internally. Organizational integration. So oftentimes, the consumer how the consumer wants to be marketed to or how they want to engage with your brand. They're oftentimes out ahead of the actual brands' ability to move quick enough to implement those state-of-the-art mechanisms, and a lot of it comes down to people, process, and technology. You know, those things are, you know, have been talked about for years and years. It's just the complication of those things with technology enablement, with big data and analytics, and with content and versioning because it's not let's create one website, one webpage a month. It's how do we version hundreds on a daily basis to match up to our various segments. So that's that idea of integration is brands are struggling with that and continuing to try to work out the internal silos. Politics still exist in clients, and everyone's trying to vie for those budgets because, in a digital world, it's all about attribution, right? I just spent a dollar to get a customer, and that dollar came in through the email channel, and I want credit for that attribution versus we sent them a direct mail piece got them interested. They went to a landing page simultaneously. We hit their Facebook page. We did some Facebook marketing, and then they responded online. So who gets credit for that? Ken WhiteYeah, sure. Mike SavageI don't know. You know, so does it really matter who gets credit for that? Right. In a pure world pure sense, we've got a new customer, and then let's try that formula again to get the next customer. Ken WhiteRight. Mike SavageSo that idea of integration takes on a lot of a lot of areas. The other is, I'd say kind of CRM, customer relationship management. There's an exploding space around tools and technologies, and for students coming up today, business leaders today really understanding kind of what sits behind the brand and what kind of makes that brand tick from a technology perspective and infrastructure perspective. A large portion of marketing budgets are getting allocated to tools, whether it be Salesforce.com, Marketo, something that sits on top of their database. The data to support it and the analytics infrastructure. Analytics 20 years ago was, hey do I have a statistician that I can help build a response model? Today there is human capital associated with building those response models and those analytical tools, but so much of it is automated. So the analytics are really in the hands of marketers. And so as a skillset, you know marketers of tomorrow, the marketers who want to reinvent themselves today, really need to embrace this idea of understanding how to engage with analytics, whether it be looking at a response report, how do I make sense around decisioning about how to spend my next best marketing dollar based on what I'm learning and that doesn't require a Ph.D. in stats or a Master's in math. Marketers really are trying to take that and really own that function of marketing analytics where it should be. Ken WhiteWhat I'm hearing from a lot of colleagues across the country. Yes CRM absolutely love it totally understand it. Man, that's expensive. How do you balance that with clients and with the people you're working with and coaching? Mike SavageYeah. At the end of the day, you start with you know what are the economics to acquire a customer or to retain a customer, and every business every industry has those economics. And you can kind of work through those, so what's the cost to acquire a new student? If you're Strayer, like next door, or new insurance policy for Geico and the economics associated with those depend on their supply chain. Right. Ken WhiteRight. Mike SavageAnd so so for every industry, there's a strategy associated with CRM. Oftentimes it's an in-house solution. Ken WhiteYeah. Mike SavageYou know, leverage your internal IT folks, and maybe there's a legacy system you can kind of get started, but the idea is to get started. There's, you might be a level one where you're, you know, in infancy in terms of understanding your customer data, but at the end of the day, you really do want a central view of your customer. Understand the messaging and the content that's going to get them to respond. So understanding those economics upfront for your industry and for your vertical will kind of be a good starting point to build your strategy map for CRM. But yes, CRM it can be expensive, but it's all relative. If you're if it helps enable you to drive more profit and more customers, then it was probably well worth it. Ken WhiteYeah, great investment. Mike SavageExactly. Ken WhiteYeah. Mike SavageYeah. Ken WhiteIt's interesting you mentioned you know there's that number in your industry to acquire a customer. What about in your experience? Is there a number of what an organization should be spending on marketing? Mike SavageYou know the, I think if you look, this will be generalized across many commercial industries. A good gauge is about 10 percent of total revenue, and I think that pretty much holds true for the Fortune 50 all the way into the Fortune 5000. You know obviously on a different scale. And then it kind of looking and digging into the digital right now. There's a lot of noise out there around where budgets are going and kind of where they're moving. But generally speaking, a good benchmark is about 25 percent is going towards digital of that 10 percent. Ken WhiteRight. So a quarter of the marketing budget goes the marketing online. Mike SavageExactly. Exactly and there's some, you know, obviously, there are some variances across industry by vertical. But I think that's a pretty good gauge. Now the more interesting part is what's happening within that 25 percent. So if you look at sort of think of traditional marketing and think of digital and like what are the general categories under that, so you have direct marketing, TV, radio, billboard, event marketing sponsorship. So that represents 75 percent of company A's marketing budget. Ken WhiteRight. Mike SavageYou know those, some spend is relatively flat across most of those areas except, you know, maybe up 3 to 5 percent. That's kind of the growth rates. At least a recent report I read from, I think, 4-star Gartner said those are going to be up a little bit single digit but if you look at the digital side you know they're projecting 17 to 25 percent growth rate within that 25 percent. So if you look at where money's moving, you know it's into the digital side. And then if you kind of drill down a little further like what elements of digital are really getting some buzz or really getting some projected growth in the future you know, it really comes down to mobile, it comes down to social, and it comes down to content. Those are really the three big areas that are growing and those three words are huge words in terms of if a client came to say I need a social strategy what do I do. Ken WhiteRight. Mike SavageThere's its sale divides across all three of those channels, but there's a ton of money going into social, and I think Gartner projects that the share of social budgets is probably going to double in the next ten years, so social channels, Facebook marketing, you know multiple other areas are popping up. And then the other complicating factor and the other opportunity that I see and that we see with our clients is really really around mobile. Ken WhiteYeah. Mike SavageSo it's not mobile texting. I wouldn't say that that's the hot area we're seeing. It's really understanding how your consumers are engaging with a device, right? So whether it's our cell phone, whether it's how we absorb and consume content at the end of the day. And so that is it's there's own table of contents around mobile and how to derive content deliver content on a mobile device. Making sure that content is responsive, responsive web design a lot of web firms or you know, going to market with that service and rightfully so because you know we're spending way more time on the mobile device whether it be reading an email or browsing for our next best purchase versus our desktop. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Mike SavageAnd so, I think content is king as it relates to optimized for mobile device. Ken WhiteAll marketers say content is king. And when I was in that space it is all about content generate content. It's such a big thing. I mean, we hire people who do nothing but generate content. Are the consumers able to keep up with the content? Mike SavageI think the consumers are able to keep up with the content because a consumer, I can recognize if I'm being spoken to in a voice with a creative, with an appeal, with an offer that's relevant to my interests, my needs at that particular time. And really what sits beneath the content discussion is really the idea of big data for marketing. It's not operational data. It's not purchase. You know transactional information. It really is understanding what segment your consumer sits in and what messaging, what content, what creative, what offer will drive the next best response. Ken WhiteRight. Mike SavageAnd so the idea of kind of the left brain marketing and right brain marketing coming together it comes together right in that content discussion because there's data that sits on beneath that and understanding how to segment those those those consumer groups out, and then it's deploying strategies. Now it used to be. You know, the big Madison Avenue agencies, they're in some degree. They still are they're in a big idea business, right? It's understanding hey which big idea is going to mobilize a group of consumers to be drawn to our brand get them excited like what's our brand promise? You want to get them excited. But really, today, the true vision of one-to-one is coming to fruition because you can target that information directly to consumer. The challenge that's creating the folks who are doing the chief creative folks at the big agencies or at the midsize agencies or wow, I was used to, you know, deploying this creative on a 30-day rolling basis. Now I've got to this is just cell divided on me so on a daily weekly basis. I've got tons of segments and cells in which I need to create new versions. So the idea of marketing asset management technology to support those high versioning, high creative deployments is yet another area that's growing like crazy, and that marketers need to understand how marketing engages with these technologies. Ken WhiteYeah. Mike SavageSo it makes it more complex, but it makes it more exciting. Ken WhiteOh, no question. Yeah. What do you think is the next big thing? What's it seems like there's a next big thing every week. But if you have a crystal ball, what do you think might be on the horizon? Mike SavageYou know, I think the it's hard to predict what the next big thing is for marketers because there's so many big things happening right now. Ken WhiteYeah. Mike SavageAnd so if you kind of look at who are the horses that you would place bets on. You know it really is around social and around content and understanding those that are marketing automation tools and technologies. But the next if you sit on the other side, if I went to the other side of the table and said, as a consumer I would hope the next big thing is getting having marketers get more and more smart and targeted around the contact strategy. The contact strategy, I would say it is just a critical process that kind of sits beneath all these topics we've discussed today, and it's really at what time, what cadence, what frequency is the brand going to reach out to me, and through which channel. And so that really is the next big thing. It's really contact strategy. It's taking all this information. It's all this creative content and all this data and technology and really bringing it down to an individual level to drive a response. And so yeah I would have to say contact strategy is probably the next big thing. Ken WhiteFor someone, a CEO, a small business leader doesn't really get marketing and you're spot. That's a tough person to deal with when they just don't see it right. They just don't quite grasp it. Where does someone where would you recommend someone just start? How do I even begin to put my arms around this if I just don't get it? What are you trying to tell people in that position? Mike SavageYou know marketing and sales are kind of interrelated, and every executive responds well to a conversation around growth. And so at the end of the day, our organizations want to grow whether it be organically through mergers and acquisitions or whatever those metrics are. And so, the best way to understand growth is understand your existing customers and why they engage with your brand. So understand your customer, sit with the customer service folks, and listen to some calls. I've done that numerous times in my career. It's invaluable. Understand their pain points and then go talk to your folks that are in marketing today and say hey what are we you know what's working, what's not working? What are the roadblocks, and those roadblocks are going to be, you know, silos internally, organizational politics, budgets that are allocated separately and not brought together. And so if you're going to understand the voice the customer talk to your current marketing folks and go on some sales calls or sit and understand how you're your customer transacts with you. Take all that in. That would be a great way to start. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mike Savage, Vice President of Marketing Solutions at DirectMail.com, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Mike Savage, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Margaret Liptay](images/margaret-liptay-13-thumb.jpg)
![Leadership Presence](images/margaret-liptay-13-thumb.jpg)
Margaret Liptay
Episode 13: November 10, 2015
Leadership Presence
Margaret Liptay is a certified leadership coach and CEO of MLC Consulting. She works with leaders to help them with "leadership presence," something she believes is vital to success as a leader. Learn what leadership presence is in this episode and why it is so important.
Podcast (audio)
Margaret Liptay: Leadership Presence TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Do you have what it takes to be a great leader? The requirements are many, and they include possessing leadership presence. Margaret Liptay is a certified leadership coach and CEO of MLC consulting. She works with leaders in a variety of fields, including the pharmaceutical industry, transportation, education, healthcare, and others. Among other things, Liptay helps her clients with leadership presence. Something she says is absolutely necessary if you want to successfully lead. On our podcast today, she talks about leadership presence, what it is, and how it can help you become an effective leader. Here's our conversation with leadership coach Margaret Liptay. Ken WhiteMargaret, why don't we start by talking about what a leadership coach is and does? I'm not so sure people really understand that. Margaret LiptaySure, Ken. The way I look at leadership coaching, I view it as opening up possibilities for the clients that I have. I look at it as them taking them from a place of I can't to I can or I won't, but I will. Now you might ask how do I do that. That's done through, of course, lots of engagement conversations. It's through assessments. It's through practice. And let me give you an example, and I use this with my clients all the time. When I want my clients to really improve around something, I usually use a sports analogy such as golf, and I say to them you know, most golf bags have 14 clubs in it for a reason. You need to use all the tools at your disposal. So what I try to do is introduce them to those tools. I try to say to them, listen. You can't putt with your driver. You can't drive with your putter, so let's figure out what you need and how you're going to go about improving your behavior. Now that's not always that easy. And it takes a lot of practice. It takes rigor, but we do it, and we do it together. But it's not about me. It's about them. And that's very clear from the beginning. This is your responsibility to look after your own future, and that's what they do. Ken WhiteAnd when you and I were talking before we recorded, we talked about you mentioned the term leadership presence, and that's something that you discuss with clients. What is that? Margaret LiptayWell, leadership presence there is a formal definition, and we can get back to that in a moment. But what I like to say the definition of leadership presence is it's once again having people step into possibilities so you can have a leader who is not present, and it's obvious. A leader who is present is engaged, is empathetic, is self-aware, is interested in your story is helping you with your story. A leader who is engaged and who is present is with you in every way through their voice, through their expressions, through their body. So that opens up possibilities for both of you. You're allowed to be vulnerable. You're allowed to be courageous because you're also allowed to be curious. So leadership presence gives you the ability to do things once again that you couldn't do before and see things that you couldn't see before. Now I view leadership presence as one of a trilogy. To me, if you're going to look at the whole concept of leadership. There are three important component parts. There's the technical skill that's a given. If you're going to be a good leader, you have to have technical skill. The second part are leadership competencies, things like problem-solving, critical thinking, flexibility, adaptability, good communication skills. That's the second. The second ring of the three rings. The third ring is leadership presence. Because, to be honest, if you don't have leadership presence, you don't know how you show up. You don't watch your words. You don't watch your behavior. Then you can have great technical skill. You can have great problem-solving skills, but you negate those by your very presence. And the other aspect of leadership presence that I think is very important is that it's not what you say but how you say it. It's not what you do but how you do it. And that's a nuance that some people miss. But it's not the words. It's your body language. It's your expressions. It's your smile. It's your eye contact. It's your listening skills. Those are all the things that drive leadership presence. Ken WhiteOf the three in the trilogy, technical skills, leadership competencies, and leadership presence. One more important than the other? Are they equally important? Margaret LiptayThey're equally important but as respects leadership presence. If you don't have leadership presence, you could be the smartest person in the room with the greatest technical skill. But if you don't have leadership presence, those words and that skill will fall fallow because people will realize that you're not listening to them. You're not open to other comments. You're not open to other ideas. If you're not present, if you're not listening, if you're not engaging, if you're not having a conversation, then you're selfish. You're not selfless. So my opinion is without leadership presence, the other two could very well be weaknesses, not strengths. Ken WhiteAm I correct in assuming that some may be newer leaders will have the technical skill because that's why they were sought out in the first place and maybe will possess some of the leadership competencies, but it's the presence that's missing. Margaret LiptayThat's exactly right. And that is something that needs to be practiced just like that golf game. It just is a question of practicing. The beauty of leadership presence is everyone can have it. It can be contagious. One person having it leads to others having it. Many people can have it, but it is something that requires practice. And just like in coaching, what we try to do is get practice to natural. That's the whole concept. So after a while, you don't need as much practice. You know, when you're gonna putt, you're gonna use your putter. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayYou know, you know what club you're going to pull out of your bag depending on what your shot is. That's the same thing with both coaching and leadership presence. You know how you should show up in different circumstances. Ken WhiteIf I'm a lousy putter, I know it. I look at my scorecard, and it tells me that I four-putted, right? Margaret LiptayIt's good self-reflection. Ken WhiteWhat about how does a leader determine or anyone determine whether they lack leadership presence? Margaret LiptayWell, well, that's a really great question. If you are open, you will hopefully get feedback. You will go to your peers. You will go to your leaders. You will go to your family and ask them how they think you show up. Do your words match your actions? Are you a good listener, and by good listening, I mean there's, you know, three levels of listening? There is listening when you're already forming a question. The second level is you're listening, and you are kind of listening and leaning in a bit, and then there's the third level, the global level. Are you really listening, watching body language, watching the other person's expression, and also paying attention to what's not said, not just what is said? So if we could take even that global listening skill to both our families and to our professional life, that would be huge. But you don't know you don't have it until you ask somebody. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptaySo feedback is really important. Assessments are really important. Self-reflection is really important. And you'll also find out if you're self-managing well. Lots of emerging leaders seem to have challenges around energy management. They emotionally hijack themselves, or they self-sabotage themselves because they don't know how to manage their energy and manage their persona and manage their vision, if you will, of themselves. So I would encourage emerging leaders to reflect and, at the end of the week, say what did I do well, what did I not do so well, and what will I do differently tomorrow? And that might give them some sense of what they could do better. But asking people going to Ken White and asking him how do you think I showed up at that meeting. Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptayBeing vulnerable, being courageous enough to ask the question and then accept the feedback and then come up with a practice to fix it. That, again, would inculcate great leadership presence, and it would become contagious because people see the change. Ken WhiteWhen I was in my twenties, I worked in television, and I would ask people how, especially my wife, how did I do. It didn't matter what I did. She would say the same words every time. Oh great, or oh fine. It was tough to get really good feedback from anyone who cared about you. So I'm making an assumption here. I assume that's where the leadership coach can be so unbelievably effective because you're going to tell it like it is, aren't you, to your clients. Margaret LiptayThat is absolutely true. It's rigorous. It's not. We're not there to be a friend. We're not there for talk therapy. We're not there to tell people how great they are. We're there to have them self-reflect. And then through powerful questions and through really digging a little deeper, and I call it peeling the onion, finding out what's getting in their way. And you know, a typical question a good coach will ask is when someone expresses or describes their behavior in a certain situation. The easy question for me, and then I go quiet, is so, how's that working for you. Ken WhiteYeah, great. That's great. Margaret LiptaySo the feedback from a coach is critically important, but if you have good leaders around you, which is where leadership presence comes in, giving and getting good feedback, then your leaders should be in that position. They should not be afraid to give you constructive, you know, nonjudgmental feedback. Feedback that is objective around a certain behavior. Ken WhiteWhy is listening so really actively listening? Why is that so hard for many leaders and executives? Margaret LiptayIt's probably a skill that we haven't all worked on very well, and actually, listening at a global level is very selfless. It really is putting yourself in sort of suspension, and I think that's very difficult for most people to do. To just suspend their own thoughts, to suspend their own judgment, to just say let me be and be in this person's space and listen to what they have to say. And also, most people aren't very good at observing body language unless it's a severe anomaly. Otherwise, they're not thinking about a person's body language, so if you get to be pretty good at studying body language, studying what I call the secret weapon, people's smile. How often does a person smile? That's a secret weapon that people don't use often enough. How bright are their eyes, and then what are they saying? How does the content match their physicality? Ken WhiteYou said a couple really cool phrases, energy of voice and energy of body. Can you tell us more about energy of voice? Have you worked in that area? What do you mean by that? Margaret LiptayWell, energy of voice gets back to this whole concept of energy management, and we all know people who walk into a room and are very loud. The question is, are they effective? Ken WhiteRight. Margaret LiptaySo you have to understand the energy that your voice brings. You have to understand who you're speaking to. You have to understand when your voice should be louder when it should be softer, when it should be more directive. When it should be more quiet, that's also very hard for people to do. Your voice does bring energy. We've all been at meetings where you know. I call it the talking head syndrome, the monotone. You know someone's talking in one monotone, monotone, monotone, and everyone falls asleep. The content of whatever that presentation was, you'll leave the room you have no idea, or you made two notes, and you could care less. But the real issue is when you have someone who is has energy from within and is centered and present. Their voice has the energy. They're excited. They're excited to be there. You're excited to listen. It's conversational. You're sharing it. It's a real connection. That's the beauty of energy of voice. It's that connection. Ken WhiteAnd that passion and people love that, don't they? Margaret LiptayThey do love it. Ken WhiteLike talking to somebody who's passionate about the company. Margaret LiptayThey do love it, and it's contagious. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayPeople leave that meaning, and they're jazzed. They go spread the word. Ken WhiteYeah. Margaret LiptayIt's fabulous. Ken WhiteYeah, absolutely. Earlier, before we recorded, you and I talked briefly about how the workplace is changing so much, and we have different generations now. Wow. And it's so interesting because those generations are unbelievably different. You know, the boomers from the millennials is such, and we'd do an hour on that. In terms of your leadership coaching, what are you seeing with the generations? What does that mean for leaders today? Margaret LiptayWell, you know, if you really do dig into the demographics, it's going it's a very interesting time because 10,000 baby boomers a day over the next nine years are going to be retiring from the workforce. That means there's going to be an exodus of talent and an exodus of intellectual capital. Meanwhile, we've got the millennials coming along, who are as big in generationally and demographically in size as the baby boomers. And right now, 15 percent of millennials are already leaders in firms. So the way I look at it, we have a real responsibility to bring those leaders along very quickly and to have them appreciate the fact that there is this demographic shift going on but also to have them appreciate the fact that there are at least going to be five different generations represented in the workforce. And what I love about that is think about it, think about the storytelling that can go on between a 21-year-old and a 71-year-old, and those 71-year-olds are still in the workforce. Ken WhiteSure. Margaret LiptayThink about the exchange of information if everyone came to the party with leadership presence, openness, nonjudgmental, listen to stories, and learn from those stories. I think it could be fabulous where we run into a little bit of a challenge. I'm thinking is with social media. Social media may or may not be the best mechanism to demonstrate leadership presence, however, if you think about it. Why not. Why can't you write a fabulous tweet? That's that's empathetic. That's kind. That's putting yourself in the other person's shoes. Why can't you do that? Why can't you write an email that isn't full of outrage and vitriolic statements? Why can't you write how are you doing today? How are you feeling today? How can I help you today? Why can't we do that? So I think leadership presence actually dovetails into even everything to do with social media, which of course, is the space of millennials for sure. But I think they can also learn and want to learn. The one thing that I'm finding with millennials and I think they get a bad rap, frankly, because clients I've had who have been millennials and the emerging leaders that I coach. They are hardworking, diligent, wanting to learn, inquisitive. They have tons of skills, and they want someone to help them get better. And that's the beauty again of leadership presence. They want to learn about leadership presence, but they want to be with people who are leadership present. And I think that's just going to be a win-win. The more leadership presence we can develop, the more leaders we can develop. Once again, it can be contagious because we everyone is complaining. All the major firms are complaining right now that there are not enough leaders. They don't have enough leaders for the work that they've got. So we need to accelerate the system. We need to make this trajectory for millennials a lot faster than maybe the trajectory was of the baby boomers. And the only way you're going to do that is through mentoring and coaching, teaching them about leadership presence. Giving them the opportunity to learn skills that they have and that they want to have and also about those leadership competencies. So they, too, are going to be part of the trilogy. Ken WhiteWhen when we talk to our MBA students about professionalism and winning, we talk about communication, especially we say be and other centric communicator. And it seems like that's the common thread. Everything you're saying is it's about the other person, isn't it? Margaret LiptayIt's selflessness if you just come back to that. And that's what we coach to. That's what leadership presence is all about. It's about being empathetic and trying to understand the point of view of the other. And if you can do that and be other-focused, I don't think you would write a vitriolic email. I don't think you would say something awful on Facebook. I don't think that you would show up and treat a colleague with disrespect if you thought about them first and you second. I think it would be a much better environment for everybody. And that applies to a generational gap too. There shouldn't be a generational gap. Everyone can learn something from everyone else. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Margaret Liptay, certified leadership coach and CEO of MLC consulting, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Margaret Liptay, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Strauss Zelnick](images/strauss-zelnick-12-thumb.jpg)
![Evolution of a Leader](images/strauss-zelnick-12-thumb.jpg)
Strauss Zelnick
Episode 12: November 3, 2015
Evolution of a Leader
Strauss Zelnick is founder and CEO of Zelnick Media Capital, a company that executes private equity investments in the media and communication industry. He's been a leader at 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, and more. Listen in to learn how to evolve as a leader, why you have to make tough calls, and what to do if you're at the start of your career.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. On today's podcast, we talk with a successful leader from the world of media entertainment and communication. Strauss Zelnick is founder and CEO of Zelnick Media Capital, an organization that executes private equity investments in the media and communication industry. Zelnick has been a leader since early in his career. His resume is impressive and includes leadership positions at 20th Century Fox, BMG Entertainment, Columbia Pictures, and more. We talked with Zelnick at his office in New York City, where he shared his thoughts on how with experience, he has evolved as a leader. He also discussed the importance of communication, the willingness to make the tough calls, and the connection between successful leadership and passion. And he shares some terrific advice for those at the early stages of their careers. An interesting, insightful, and sometimes lighthearted conversation with the CEO of Zelnick Media Capital, Strauss Zelnick. Ken WhiteStrauss. Thank you for taking time with us today on a busy day. We'll get right to it. How do you define leadership? Strauss ZelnickOh, there's so many different ways to define leadership. I guess. Leadership is bringing out ultimately bringing out the best in people in the interest of achieving an agreed-upon goal. Ken WhiteYou started out fairly young, leading a major organization. How did you get there at that time? Strauss ZelnickWhy him? I think there was an element of serendipity, of course, combined with my knowing pretty precisely what I wanted to achieve pretty early and presumably having some competence in my chosen area. So I think the starting point is always knowing what you want. Immediately after knowing you want to have a coldly reasonable point of view about what you bring to the table because if your goal is completely at odds with your skillset. That's a tough task. On the other hand, it is a good idea to dream big. I don't think there's anything wrong with grand ambitions. The ability to execute against them should be rooted in reality. And then, if they are, then I think you avidly pursue that path, and knowing what you want in the first place and having a certain amount of confidence around your skillset allows you to direct your attention in a pretty focused way towards what you want. Ken WhiteThere are obviously lessons learned when you lead earlier in your career versus later in your career, so how do you lead differently today based on years ago when you first had a leadership position? Strauss ZelnickWell, the first thing is when I was young and had some responsibility. Naturally, I thought any anyone who had a couple of years on me was suspect, used up, tired, cynical, and the like. And not surprisingly, with age, I've gained respect for age. Ken WhiteRight. Strauss ZelnickI didn't know that I would say that I have achieved any wisdom. Probably the fact is, though, that oddly as I've gotten older, you would think with left time left on the face there, you'd have less patience. I ignore patience as I've aged, and I think also I've developed some personal security. And the more comfortable I feel in my own skin, the better listener I am, the better leader I am. So I think hitting the ground running all guns blazing, you know, all the wires buzzing, isn't necessarily the best way to lead. Having a bit of patience and tolerance, sensitivity, willingness to listen, and an ability to put things in perspective and understanding that this too shall pass all of those things make for more effective leadership. Ken WhiteYou mentioned age. Now we're in an interesting work environment. Several generations on one team, and you also talked a little bit about communication. Do you communicate differently between generations? Does age make a difference, or experience make a difference when you're communicating with a teammate? Strauss ZelnickNot from my point of view, I think I think everyone needs and should be treated with the same respect without regard to how senior they are in the organization, how long they've been in the organization, or on the face of the earth. And I try to treat everyone identically. I think that's the best way to bring out great work in people to show them respect. Ken WhiteDo you find it's different communicating with a millennial, say, than someone who's in their 50s, for example? Strauss ZelnickWell, it could be. I mean, it's different communicating with every individual if you're a good listener, and the starting point is, of course, to understand what makes that person tick and try to put yourself in that person's shoes as a starting point. But I wouldn't say that age is the dividing line. I've met old people who are really, really young, and I've met young people who are really, really old. Ken WhiteYou've mentioned communication a couple times. What role does that play in a leader, in an effective leader? Strauss ZelnickWell, I think the fantasy is an effective leader is someone with a big personality who, you know, holds people accountable and screams and yells and is fearful and has all the answers. And I think the truth is that the very best leaders are great listeners. As a starting point, they assemble great people around them. They delegate with information, not without information but with information. And when a decision needs to be made, they gather information. Leaders usually have strong abilities to synthesize information quickly and intelligently, and accurately. They seek a lot of counsel. And then they are willing to make a hard decision. And a hard decision is not just one that's uncertain. That's a hard decision. A really hard decision is one where you have to contradict the advice of someone you care about. That's a difficult situation now, and then one has to do that. So and all of that benefits from an ability to communicate. The starting point, of course, an ability to listen. So I think the fantasy is that a leader is this powerful individual who's barking out orders. And I think the truth is that the best leaders are nothing of the sort of, you know, one of the apparently greatest leaders of all time, Abraham Lincoln, was known to be a very good listener as a starting point. Ken WhiteMany executives having taught and studied this aren't the greatest listeners. They sometimes think it's more important to talk than it is to listen. So how did you build that skill? Strauss ZelnickI'm a reasonably good talker myself, so I had to work on it. Look, I think the answer is as one become develops more personal security, it's easier to listen, and you're trying to prove yourself less, and you become comfortable with not knowing all the answers. My family had a nickname for me and which I haven't needed as much anymore, which was Mr. Know It All. You know, let's outline often wrong but never in doubt that described me. And I think again with some with the deepening, and personal security one can let go of the need to to to be apparently in charge, and you can exercise quite authority through knowledge and expertise, and you don't need to do it through loud noises. So I think you know when you see someone who's bombastic and noisy. Usually, they're not super secure. The most secure people are good listeners, respectful. They really care about what other people have to say. And ultimately, I think those are the best leaders, and there's a good deal of evidence in the research that they're the best leaders. Ken WhiteWhat do you see the difference between leading and managing? Strauss ZelnickI'm not sure there is much of a difference, and I think I think ultimately, leadership can be exercised and should be exercised even by people who have no one working for them. I think I think good management good leadership are the same thing which is to the extent you have an ability to choose bringing the best people about you, delegating with information, encouraging, and making sure that you're heading in a common direction which requires a lot of communication. And I'm not while leader has singular responsibility for that described flow that could be a very small sphere of influence or it could be a very, very large sphere of influence. At the end of the day, management benefits from the same thing leadership benefits from. Ken WhiteYou mentioned earlier you knew what you wanted to do early on. I've talked to a number of leaders and CEOs who have jumped from one industry to another. There wasn't a whole lot of passion about the industry when they first got there. How important is you being passionate about your field? How important is that to you in terms of leadership? Strauss ZelnickIt's important to me. But I think every person is different. Ken WhiteRight. Strauss ZelnickSo there are people who find management leadership the most interesting thing about what they do, and the thing itself is not. Then there are people like me. The thing is really important in my case. It's media and communications and entertainment, and the role is somewhat less important actually than the thing itself. So I think that varies person by person. I just think you need to know who you are and what excites you. Failing to bring passion to the equation, though, I think is a detriment, and it's a detriment particularly early on in your career. Maybe less so later on, but early on, it's a detriment because the world is a competitive place. And early on in your career, you don't have a whole lot to distinguish you apparently from others who have, let's say, you have a good education, well probably everyone you're competing within a similar role in your organization or a similar organization does have the same educational background. So and you don't have a lot of experience. So really, all you have is your innate abilities and your willingness and ability to work hard, and the latter, your willingness and ability to work hard, is highly correlated with the passion you feel for the enterprise. So one of the reasons that I declined to pursue a career in investment banking was I wasn't really passionate about it, and it's really hard job, and I figured so I'm sitting at a desk at Goldman Sachs if I were lucky enough to be employed there. And next to me on either side are people who have their whole lives dreamed of being an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and then there's me. Well, who's going win? You know the answer is not me. So I went to a business that I was passionate about and maybe more so than some of the people against whom I competed. And I did have a certain basic skill set, but so did they. But many of those folks decided, huh, you know, I'm going to go into a different field. And I kept pursuing that field, and it gave me a competitive advantage. Ken WhiteWhat is it about media you like? What lights your fire? Strauss ZelnickOh, I wish I had a better answer. You know what's that line? Everyone has two businesses their own business and show business. I'm not different, but I was always excited by motion pictures and television and music and, ultimately, video games and other forms as well. I've pursued all of them in my career, but I wouldn't say I have a very good reason. I just I like the media business. I find it I find entertaining people really fun and interesting. I recognize it's not curing cancer, but I like it nonetheless. Ken WhiteSure. Time management. You keep a tight schedule. You're on it. There doesn't seem to be a lot of wasted time. How do you get to that point where minutes count every day? Strauss ZelnickWell, I was always a person who was very focused on being efficient. So I think again that may be a personality trait, and I'm not sure it's necessary to being a good leader or successful. It just happens to be my makeup. I know some really successful people who aren't great at time management and are much more sort of, you know, if I were if you describe time management as a painting style, you know I'm photo-realistic, and I have friends who are impressionists or even Cubist, and they're very successful. So I don't think it's a necessary condition to success to be a good time manager. And I've had to actually relax my standards because there are times when people just need time and space to express themselves, and you can't run off in that situation. So I wouldn't say it's necessarily my strongest trait, but it's sort of the way I'm wired. In the same way that you're sort of a neat person, or you're not a neat person. I think that's part of your wiring. Ken WhiteYeah sure. What advice do you have for younger people starting out on their careers? Just general advice it is competitive. You mentioned that out there, it seems like everyone is educated. It's tough out there to get a career started and get off on the right foot. When you meet with young people, what kind of advice do you share with them? Strauss ZelnickWell, the advice the starting point I always use is what is it that you really want and not just what do you want out of a career but what you want out of your life. What are your values? What are your real goals? Because few people give thought to that especially educated people. Often there's a surfeit of opportunity, and that swamps people's willingness to look inside themselves and say, wait, what is it that I really want? I also think the American dream is so widely promoted in media I'm partially guilty for that, I guess. Is it becomes embedded into what I should want? You know I should want a certain kind of lifestyle or a certain amount of earnings in a given year, perhaps a certain amount of wealth. And when the truth is that many people don't care about any of that stuff. Many people have entirely different goals and should. So I encourage people first and foremost to write down a list of their values. Values being sort of just descriptive o who you are and what you want out of life, and then to write a very short list of your goals which could be very specific and financial or perhaps a bit more general. And then, look at the two lists together and see if that helps you narrow down the options. So, for example, if your values are to work reasonably hard but not to work nights and weekends, and I don't think there's anything wrong, I'm not making a judgment when I say that. I think that's fine. But those are I don't really like working late nights and weekends. And your goal is to be head of Goldman Sachs to bring their name out again. Well, those things are inconsistent if you want to compete in financial services. You have to be willing to work really hard, especially early on, but you there are plenty of jobs where you can succeed where your time can be your own. And it's good to know that sort of thing. So the starting point is what is it that you want. And for a lot of people, that's very, very complicated. Having arrived at some sense of what you want, then the advice I've given people is advice that was given to me, which fell into sort of three basic buckets. The first was, you know, get to the office early and stay late, which is another way of saying work hard. And I actually don't think there's a substitute for hard work, especially early on in your career. As I said earlier, there's not much to distinguish you early on in your career except a willingness to work hard. The second piece of advice I was given was listen. You never know what you will hear. We are taught that making presentations well and talking is part. You know, part of building a good career. I actually think being a good listener is much more important, and a lot of people don't really understand that. And then the third is never compromise your integrity. It's all you have. And there'll be temptations to do so all the time. And I don't mean to imply that it's all been perfect for me. I've made mistakes, and sadly, I've made mistakes with regard to integrity, even though I think of myself as a person with enormous integrity. There have I've had lapses and I'm embarrassed about them but I've had them but try really hard not to. So those are the three pieces of advice given to me, and I've tried to pay attention to them. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Strauss Zelnick, founder, and CEO of Zelnick Media Capital, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Strauss Zelnick, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Bin Mu](images/bin-mu-11-thumb.jpg)
![Big Data](images/bin-mu-11-thumb.jpg)
Bin Mu
Episode 11: October 27, 2015
Big Data
Data Analytics is a fast-growing area of business. Bin Mu is Chief Data Scientist at MetLife, and he explains data analytics and the need for data scientists in today's business world.
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business, the weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, one of the fastest-growing, if not the fastest-growing, areas of business is data analytics. Companies and organizations make decisions based on data, so they are desperately seeking talented people to fill data-related roles. Data analytics has multiple facets, elements, and approaches, and for the novice, it can be confusing. But our guest today clearly explains data analytics and why it is so important to businesses. Bin Mu is chief data scientist at MetLife. We sat down with him in Northern Virginia, where he explained data analytics, the need for data scientists, and how insights gathered from data are used to help businesses make the right decisions. Here's our conversation with the chief data scientist at MetLife, Bin Mu. Ken WhiteBin, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy day to talk with us today. Bin MuThank you. Ken WhiteThis is such an exciting area. It seems everywhere I go, all of the professionals I talk to, everybody's talking about data analytics and very, very exciting field. For those who don't quite understand it, how would you define the field of data analytics? Bin MuYeah, actually, what you describe is a very exciting phenomenon and trend today across different industries. And it's exactly the question many people are also asking is what exactly is analytics, data analytics, and why it is so important. Why is everybody asking that question? So how I want to categorize analytics, especially data analytics, is deriving insights from data to help and to drive and to power business to make the right decision. So that's what I call that is data analytics. Ken WhiteWhat did we do before? Bin MuGreat. Other than putting a finger and test where wind blows? Well, before, oftentimes, decisions are made based on how people know about the subject matter and based on the institutional knowledge. But today, business are looking for a fact and science-based decision-making process, and that is where the data analytics really brings everything to that notion. Ken WhiteSo, for example, with MetLife, what might you be looking at? What type of data would you be examining to drive the business? Bin MuYes, that's specific to the type of for the insurance. If you look at the insurance value chain, it starts from channel, distribution channel, and customer acquisition and risk assessment, including underwriting actuary and operation. And final is customer service, customer experience. So each one of these step across the value chain would have data coming in. So when we do analytics when we come draw insights to drive business decisions, we look at data across the spectrum and also looking at data from outside, not just internal, but external, including enhancing the data, giving it more attributes. And also, today, people talk about big data. Those are unstructured data. We're also looking at unstructured data, for example, weather and geo data and home foreclosure data, if you will, taking those data altogether. So looking at, looking at what insights all these together can drive out specific to the business objectives, and that is how we drive insights in MetLife. Ken WhiteDoes the data analyst, is he or she in charge of determining those insights or simply gathering the data and handing it off? Bin MuExcellent, excellent question. So, today's data scientists so I run the data science organization within MetLife, and I'm also the chief data scientist in MetLife. Today's data scientist, the definition has broadened. We used to be called the data guy sitting in the basement. Nobody cares. Right next to file cabinet. Ken WhiteRight, right. Bin MuAnd then, gradually, our title elevated to analyst, data analyst statistician. And today, data scientists. The title evolves. It's not just an evolution of the title itself but also the responsibilities associated with that. Today's data scientists their responsibilities involve basically four major components. One is being able to identify the source of the data. Where can I get the data to address the business objectives? Second is how do I get access to the data that related to what type of technology I need to use to get the data into the format that I can use to actually to be able to drive insights? And the third component is analytics. How can I build a model, what models can I build, what solutions, what algorithm I can build based on data to get that insights? And the fourth is how do I deliver the insights to the business to influence and impact and drive the business decision? So, four components together is today's data scientists. Ken WhiteWow, that's a great deal of knowledge and talent someone has to have. So this is a job that requires some real experience, and you've got background in IT and retail, consulting, and insurance. What we hear at William & Mary is that businesses are desperately seeking people to fill positions as data scientists. What are you seeing on your side? Bin MuTo tell the fact in the past ten months. So I joined MetLife from Cigna in October 2014, only 9-10 months into my job in MetLife, I have doubled the size of the Data Science Organization. Ken WhiteWow. Bin MuThat's how fast we grow. And I'm expecting to have another ten to 15 positions open, including data scientists and also the leadership positions, such as directors and AV positions, in the next ten months as well. Ken WhiteAmazing. What kind of people are you looking for? Bin MuThat's a great question. Definitely, if we can find someone that has all the four components, we'll grab them. We'll grab them at all costs. But the reality is there are not too many people today in the market that would compose all the four components. So what we do we'll pair them up. Different people have different skills. They have strengths. Then we pair them up to form as a data science organization. So the type of talents we're looking for is all the four components. However, is combined together we've looked for different combinations. And most important, most important is I'm looking for someone that has the passion of data. Really, with that passion, we can mold them, we can train them, and people can really evolve into this position. So really, it's a passion with data. Ken WhiteRight before we started recording, you and I were talking about the number of one-year master's programs in business analytics and data analytics. William & Mary, soon to launch one and other schools. What have you heard about those programs and the graduates that they're producing? Bin MuWell, Dr. Ken, thank you for bringing this up. And honestly, to be honest, I'm so excited that William & Mary now starting this program. What I have seen in the past six years, actually, I saw how this program initiated across the country, even across the globe, is there are schools that they were able to capture really the foremost trend of this. Kudos to them. And what I also have seen that there are more schools are starting to open this program, start this program. And from a business perspective, we excited because really through this training, through this formal academic training, really the students going through this program and what I have seen is they started to equip with the knowledge and skills of how to look at the issues and problems and how to apply data in a different way. That actually, with a focus of addressing the business needs and making a change, that's, I think, the most valuable output and outcome from the program as opposed to from on-the-job training. There are people always focusing on the output rather than focusing on what exactly I'm trying to solve. So that's I see this huge value coming out of this program, and I am so excited. Ken WhiteIt is, it's very exciting. As you and I talked before, so many schools looking into it, and William & Mary, as soon as we announced the fact that we were going down this road, we heard from so many people. Let us know when you start, let us know when the first class is finished, and so forth. So the passion needs to lie with the data. That's number one, and then is the industry number two, like you have been in retail and in IT and in insurance. Where does the industry part fit in? Bin MuIndustry is important but not as critical. Why I say that is it's all about data. Data is the numbers. It doesn't matter which industry you are. Data is data, and especially when it comes to big data is structured and unstructured data is agnostic of industry. So I say that with a caveat, which is at a more senior level, then industry knowledge and industry experience will be more important. But to begin with, at an entry-level and also mid-level industry is not as important or not as critical as a passion and understanding of the data and also the methodology of how to apply analytics to solve a business issue that's more important. Ken WhiteWhere do you see the field going in the next three to five years or so? Bin MuI like to tell stories, and I like to tell the stories from the past experience. Here's the story I want to tell, and maybe that can address where does this, the trend where the data this field is going. Remember back at 1985, that's mere 30 years ago, CIO Chief Information Officer was not a position actually in most of the companies. It didn't exist. Today it's on the executive, sitting on the executive board. Ken WhiteRight. Bin MuWhat about Chief Data Officer? We started to see the trend of more and more companies starting to have chief data officer or chief analytics officer. Now they are sitting in different organizations. They can be sitting in IT, in strategy, marketing. Do they truly belong to there? It's hard to say, but what I've seen that and within the industry as well as when I spoke with other executives and top executives, is they see the data-driven decision science is going to be a critical and integral part of executive decision-making and sooner or later that will be elevated to another level, to the board level, basically. So what I see this trend is someone said this is just a buzzword, just a trend, it will fade out in two, three years. I said probably no. Ken WhiteRight. Bin MuNow it's a buzzword. But in two, three or three, five years, it will solidify its position, and you will see a really drastic change of how the analytics this field is going to be positioned within a corporate America or within any company. Ken WhiteInteresting. Well, let's say 1990, for example, websites were new, and we just started to have chief technology officers who would oversee. Here it is, 2015, and pretty much everybody in the organization knows a little bit about the website and social media, and marketing. Almost everybody kind of gets it. Do you see analytics going that way that maybe in a generation from now, everyone has a hand in that? Or is it too specialized and too focused? Bin MuInteresting, no, no, Dr. Ken, you just describing something that I have seen almost happening at every company. Ken WhiteWow. Bin MuNow is every company and any function, any business line. Now if you ask about what's your 2016 priority, I can guarantee you for sure that 80% to 90%, if not 100%, analytics is going to be one of the top three or top five priorities. So everybody is talking about analytics. Everybody is thinking I can use analytics to help me solve a problem. But what exactly analytics is? And do they actually know what actual analytics is? Probably not everybody can understand to 100% degree. So it is going to change. It is going to evolve. And once, once business start to realize to see more value coming out of data analytics, data science, then they will get to know more about this field. They will get to know more about how it does, and they will ask more, and they will get to know more. It turns into a healthy cycle and becomes an evolution. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Bin Mu, chief data scientist at MetLife, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Bin Mu, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time, have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![Mark Shenkman](images/mark-shenkman-10-thumb.jpg)
![Insight from an Entrepreneur](images/mark-shenkman-10-thumb.jpg)
Mark Shenkman
Episode 10: October 20, 2015
Insight from an Entrepreneur
Mark Shenkman is a highly successful professional in the financial services industry. He's president, chief investment officer, and director at Shenkman Capital Management. We discuss entrepreneurship and his business philosophy in this episode.
Podcast (audio)
Mark Shenkman: Insight from an Entrepreneur TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. He's one of the longest-serving leaders and success stories in the financial services industry. He's Mark Shenkman, President, Chief Investment Officer, Senior Portfolio Manager, and Director at Shenkman Capital Management, an organization he founded in 1985. The firm, with 30 billion dollars of assets under management, has offices in New York, London, and Stamford, Connecticut. In our discussion today, Shenkman shares his thoughts on entrepreneurship as well as his philosophy of doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Here's our conversation with the founder of Shenkman Capital Management, Mark Shenkman. Ken WhiteMark, thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. You just talked with MBA students who really enjoyed your talk with them, and I noticed that some of the things you said really excited them. You can tell by their body language and by the notes they were taking. And one of the things that really that you said that seemed to catch them was you said that entrepreneurship is the backbone or should be the backbone of business education. Why do you feel that way? Mark ShenkmanThe primary reason that entrepreneurship is so important is because you have technical knowledge, you learn accounting, you learn finance, you learn specific, but an entrepreneur has to learn and think quickly. And it's not always by the book. You have to innovate. You have to think quickly in order make the right decisions, and that's something you need to start when you're in business school. You can't wait till you're 40 years old and start thinking like an entrepreneur. Ken WhiteHow did you learn to be an entrepreneur? Mark ShenkmanSo I feel very fortunate because my dad who's still alive at one hundred and one. He instilled in me the idea of being a businessman early on. So I was 12 years old, 13 years old, and he would take me to shareholder meetings, and I observed what public companies said and did. Then he got me subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal, Business Week when I was a teenager, and then he was President of his own company, a public company. And I would go to meetings with him and just listen and observe and take notes. So it was instilled in me from a very young age. It wasn't something that I thought about when I got older. I knew from the time I was a teenager I was destined to be a businessman. Ken WhiteYou shared some principles with the students, and I thought we could just. If you don't mind, I'll mention it and see what you had told them about it. One of the principles you said to be successful is create the niche and be great at it. Yeah. Can you talk us through a little bit more about that? Mark ShenkmanOf course, so the world is very complex. The world is changing rapidly, and the competition is so intense in every facet of life. So I believe the way to win in today's competitive and ever-changing world is to find something that is different, unique, and specialized. And then just become the expert in that field. And it's better to be narrow than broad and generalized. You want to find a very specific facet of any business and just be the best. So another example I was down in Florida last week, and a company and they specialize just in knobs hardware knobs, but they're one of the biggest companies in America. And now with the Internet, they can sell it all over because they're so specialized they can sell it at a cheaper price. They can have more selection, and they can create their own product which is unique only to them. But imagine just having a company that sells doorknobs and handles. But it could have been a hardware distributor and done all kinds of things but they specialized in one facet of the hardware business. And that's true. I mentioned the gazebo company. You got to find something that you can be the biggest and best in order to excel. Ken WhiteAnother tip you shared with the students was employ smart people. Find the smart people, but they need to be nice people as well. Can you tell us more about that because that's something you don't hear every day? Mark ShenkmanNo. So we take great pain and care in interviewing not to find out their technical expertise, not to ask them technical questions but to find out how they think and what they're proud of in their life. And you can always tell by the answers whether they're willing to talk about themselves, talk about their successes and failures, failures too what they've overcome in order to get where they are today, and to open up and engage in what is important to them. And when they talk about family. When they talk about could be their pets or anything that shows that they have compassion, understanding, and relate. Is it's the kind of talent we're trying to recruit versus they want to talk about some paper or thesis they've written? In other words, are you an extrovert an introvert, and we're not looking for techie people or people? I hate to use it, but like geeks who are only interested in the book knowledge. We want people, people skills. The more people skills, the better they are as team members. Ken WhiteYou also focused a great deal on integrity. You keep coming back to that, and the student that seemed to resonate wonderful with the students. In fact, you said integrity is number one. Can you tell us more about that? Mark ShenkmanSure. So Wall Street has a bad reputation very bad reputation that they're only interested in making a lot of money stepping on people's their achievements. But everyone wants to make a lot of money, and they don't care how they make it, and I feel it's more important how you make it than how much you make. And it's most important that you have core belief system. A value system says this is right, and this is wrong, and there are no shades of grey. Ken WhiteNever sacrifice quality for expediency. That's tough for an entrepreneur. How do you get there? Mark ShenkmanSo it's very tough for an entrepreneur because most people today are looking for shortcuts. They want to get to Point A and to B in the quickest and the easiest way. And so what you do is you compromise something in order to get to that point B. And my attitude has always been I'd rather take the long journey but the right way than the fast journey and do it in a quick and in some ways compromising your integrity and your willingness to do the right thing. Ken WhiteYou shared something that was that everyone's found very interesting when you were talking to our MBA students recently. You write down every day you take some time to write down your accomplishment for the day. What's the plan? What's the goal for that, and how do you do that? Mark ShenkmanSo every done it my whole life. The last week of December, I write a list of the ten things I want to accomplish in the next year, and the only way I know whether I'm achieving those ten goals and some are personal, some are business, and some of them have to do with let's call it values of success. But the point is if you measure what you're doing on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis you're more likely to achieve those ten goals than just wake up one year later and check off well I got number one, but I didn't get two, three, four, or five so it's a monitoring system to make sure you achieve the ten goals you set out for for the next year. So in this calendar year my ten goals I've gotten eight out of 10. I need two more to get done before December 31st. Ken WhiteYou've got time. Mark ShenkmanYeah. Ken WhiteCause we're recording in the beginning of October. Mark ShenkmanIt's almost two and a half months. Ken WhiteRight. You also mentioned the importance of being optimistic always having that optimistic attitude for some entrepreneurs that gets difficult after a while. It's not always not every day is a great day. What advice do you have for people who are fighting that? Not being able necessarily to be so optimistic at the end of every day. Mark ShenkmanWell, actually, I've learned that true entrepreneurs are more optimistic than they should be. So there's got to be a balance between being totally in Never Never Land and reality, and so you want to be realistic, but you also want to take the positives, even if they're small ones, and put them ahead of the negatives because what you don't want is the negatives to overwhelm or suffocate the successes that you achieve and that can be little things like I just won a new account. Don't focus on I lost an account today, but I won an account today. So look at the positive side of the coin not the negative side of the coin. And then the other thing is very important is I don't base it on how much money I make or the company's profits. But I'd base it on did we achieve our milestones that we set in terms of this is our revenues. These are number. I want to win 20 new accounts for the year. I want to add five new people. So don't measure always on a monetary basis but measure it on accomplishments that are creating value in the business, not just profits but value to the company. Ken WhiteYou said to our students conventional wisdom is always wrong, and they all looked at each other as you said that. Interesting. What do you mean by that? Mark ShenkmanSo that's the number one mantra I constantly remind my team is they assume because they read about it in the paper. That's the way it's going to occur. And I am just the opposite in almost everything I do. If I read about it in the paper, I say to myself that's old news, or it's wrong news. And so, for example, everybody that I talked to and read about said the Fed was going to raise interest rates in September. And I said if it was unanimous, if everybody was right on all these predictions, there'd be a lot more successful and wealthier people in the world. It's the people that go counter to conventional wisdom are the winners in the long run and have always believed don't think like everybody else. If I took the advice of so many people, I would not be where I am today. It's all a basis on I think differently than the way my peers would think or my competitors. And that's what sets us apart. And that's what gives us our great success. Ken WhiteI think many people, when they think of leaders, entrepreneurs, these are people who make decisions, and you mentioned when you're talking to the students, sometimes it's tough to make that decision, and your advice was that's okay. Postpone it. You don't have to make the decision. And that somewhat goes against what's other people. Some people say no, make the decision. That's what a leader does. Why is it smart to just wait sometimes and think it out? Mark ShenkmanSo it's the opposite of taking SAT, which is your first answer is usually your right answer. I feel in business decisions, your first thought or instinct isn't your best. You want to weigh the positives and the negatives and see which side comes out. And also, I'm a believer in the law of unintended consequences. Meaning that if you make decision A and not B, what is the ultimate consequence if you're wrong? If you're wrong, and then what's the consequences if you're right? So it's weighing, evaluating, and analyzing the information that will give you the best outcome. Now sometimes you don't have complete information, so it takes time also to gather more information. So you're basing it on a larger fact set that allows you to make a better decision. So my belief is, which is again counterintuitive to conventional wisdom, it's better to postpone an important decision rather than an act impromptu or in a quick decision that could be a serious mistake. So my best decisions have always been delayed decisions. Now maybe I've learned that also because being a trader. Traders can't postpone decisions. You either buy, sell at that moment at that price and in that quantity. So being a trader has made me a little more cautious when I'm making a business decision. So there's a difference between making an investment decision and a business decision. Two different sets of information. Ken WhiteDo you think entrepreneurs are born, or are they taught? Cause you had an interesting upbringing with your dad. I mean that that's. Mark ShenkmanSo I would say it's a combination of both. You have to have some genes, some DNA that make you an entrepreneur. But at the same time, you can learn additional skills and sort of refine and improve and enhance your entrepreneurship. So in my case yes it was built into my DNA but I learned it by being at Fidelity. I was always at the right spot. I mean, I feel very blessed and very fortunate because I've always been at the right place at the right time. And I took full advantage of each of those opportunities and never let an opportunity I was able to perceive the opportunity and then seize the opportunity to take me to the next step. But no, if I hadn't been first, I was an officer in the Army, and I had a very important job in the US Army computer systems command. Then I got a job at Fidelity which was a fantastic place to start a career going to Lehman Brothers, where it was what you learn, not what to do. And then being President of a organization that was a little unique. And then starting my own firm. So it's being at the right place taking advantage of those opportunities and with your, DNA programmed to think like an entrepreneur. It all builds to greater success. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Mark Shenkman of Shenkman Capital Management, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week Mark Shenkman and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week. |
![John Hyman](images/john-hyman-9-thumb.jpg)
![The World of Wealth Management](images/john-hyman-9-thumb.jpg)
John Hyman
Episode 9: October 13, 2015
The World of Wealth Management
John Hyman is CEO of Algonquin Advisors. The company manages the financial portfolios of high-net-worth individuals. Listen in to learn more about the wealth management field and the role that investment advisors play.
Podcast (audio)
John Hyman: The World of Wealth Management TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. The number of American households worth $25 million or more is growing. According to MSNBC, there are 142,000 households in the US that meet or exceed that $25 million mark. That's a significant jump from just two years ago. In addition, more people are becoming wealthy in America. Well, that's good news for wealth management professionals like John Hyman, CEO of Algonquin Advisors in Greenwich, Connecticut. Hyman and his colleagues at Algonquin professionally manage portfolios of high-net-worth individuals, helping them achieve their wealth objectives. We spoke with Hyman in New York City recently about the wealth management field, what's expected of investment advisors at that level, and the role ethics and regulation play. Here's our conversation with John Hyman, CEO of Algonquin Advisors. Ken WhiteJohn, thank you very much for doing this. We know you're busy. It's great to meet you in Manhattan. Thanks for your time. John HymanGreat. Thank you, Ken. Ken WhiteWealth management is a little bit different. You're an investment advisor but in the area of wealth management, what does that mean? John HymanSo, wealth management is really a process where we work with investors, institutional or individual investors, but principally in our case, individual investors, and help them identify their investment objectives, help them allocate their assets appropriately, given those investment objectives, and help them identify the appropriate way to fulfill that is, how should they invest? Should they be using mutual funds, separately managed accounts, hedge funds, private equity funds, ETFs to really provide a full suite of really the investment internal CFO role, if you will? Really for most of our clients they work with us, they pay us a fee. So they're expecting to get something in return for that fee. And that would presumably be either better returns, lower volatility in their experience. But for most of our clients, because our clients tend to be very high, net worth individuals tends to be peace of mind that someone is watching after their investments and watching it in a professional fashion with an objective, systematic approach as opposed to being somewhat emotional and dealing with the sharp market moves and reacting perhaps in a way that shouldn't be reacting. Ken WhiteHow often do you communicate with clients? John HymanSo our client base is somewhat small. We're dealing with clients today. The firm that I'm associated with, Algonquin Advisors, we today manage approximately half a billion dollars. We have about 25 clients. So you do the math, the average account size is quite large, and it's a high-touch business. We, at a minimum, are talking to our clients and reviewing their performance at least quarterly. But to be fair, we're probably talking to our clients much more frequently. What we don't end up having conversations about would be the sharp market moves and, gee, should I be moving out, should I moving in? Our clients really, they've been with us for quite a long time. They have, I think, a high degree of confidence and trust in what we're doing and they appreciate the disciplined approach to their investments. So regular conversations with the regular conversations tend to be more about lifestyle issues, tend to be about personal investment issues that they may be having. And then quarterly, it's really revisiting the investment plan and making sure that we're on track and reviewing the performance, frankly, to make sure we're delivering the results that they're looking for. Ken WhiteSo what's your typical day like? What do you tend to spend most time with? John HymanSo my day is varied, and we have a reasonably small staff, and having worked in large investment banks, it can be very different from working in a smaller investment advisory firm. But my day is varied. So as the CEO of the firm, my responsibilities tend to be managing the day-to-day business side of the firm. So that would be dealing with everything from technology to legal and compliance to infrastructure to client reporting to any new initiatives that we're thinking about, taking on, building new products, and the like. I also spend a lot of my time with our analyst team doing research on the investments that we are likely to place our clients with, either those that we have existing client money with or those that we are prospectively looking at to place client monies with. So I do spend a lot of my time, and that's the part of the job I like the best, and frankly, it's part of the job my partners like the least. So it's a good fit. Ken WhiteYou beat me to it. I was going to ask what do you like best. There's got to be the two or three things that really get you fired up. John HymanI mean, for me, doing the research on the investment opportunities is really that's the most fun for me. We get to sit down and talk to some of the best investment minds in the business, hear what they're thinking, hear what they're doing in their portfolios, and making a decision as to who we want to work with and how we'd like to deploy that in our client portfolios. And we're working across the spectrum from the most benign investments to some of the most exotic investments that are out there. So you really do get a broad swath, and it's intellectually incredibly stimulating. I also like working with the younger people on our team. So at the firm I'm with, Algonquin, we have a small analyst team. At other firms that I've been associated with, we've had large analytical teams. But that's the other part of the job that's very rewarding is working with folks who have come right out of school or reasonably close to graduation and then working with them and getting them moving in their career as they kind of move up the corporate ladder. So those are probably the two things that are most fun for me. Ken WhiteAnd you've been in this a long time. You've seen the investment world go through changes, highs and lows, and difficulties. Where are we now? What's your feeling overall about opportunities for your clients? John HymanSo I'm going to be able to take it two different paths. So there's opportunities for people coming into the business and opportunities for clients. I'm an optimist by nature, so I always like what's going on, and there's always someplace to be investing. There's obviously periods of time where that has not been the case, but there's always something to be looking at, and there's always either new opportunities or opportunities to be revisiting. But in general, we are optimistic on the current investment landscape. If that's the question. For folks coming into the business, it is a little bit different than when I entered the business 30 years ago. It is very, very competitive to come to work in Wall Street. And despite some of the reputational changes that have taken place subject to the 2008 market correction and some of the activities took place there, it's a different environment today than it was. I would say people coming to The Street look at it as potentially the opportunity to get rich quick. And if that is your only motivation, probably not the right reason to come to The Street because you'll work hard. If you don't really love what you're doing, it's going to show up, and you're probably not going to be as successful as you might have hoped you would have been. So people who really enjoy the business, who like the aspect that they're getting into, tend to thrive, and it will show people you're working for, they'll know it, they'll be able to figure out who the real people who really love what they're doing. Ken WhiteWhen a young person comes to you and says, I think this is what I want to do, what kind of characteristics are you looking for? What are you looking for from them? John HymanSo I think the first thing is if you're a young person coming to The Street, understand the people that you're talking to. So I work in the wealth management business, so when people come to me and say, I really want to work in investment banking, they may not understand the nuances, but if you're going to be that specific, be careful. And so just how you position yourself and what you're looking for. What I've looked for, and I think in as much as business schools would tell you, that boy, having a great undergraduate business degree, which I had, and a graduate business degree which I had, would be helpful, I don't really care. We're looking for people who are multidisciplinary. So if you're very smart, if you are a good analytical thinker and can communicate. I mean, those are critical skills. You can learn the finance, the technical aspects of finance. So in my current environment, I have a history major, an economics major, and a philosophy major working for me as analysts. One has a CFA, one's finishing off her CFA. I've hired people who were Kinesiology majors who are now comedians. It's looking for the right personality, strong ethical background, people who can communicate, and people who I think are good analytical thinkers. Having good team chemistry is really important. So in as much as we're looking at the hiring side for people who will fit well, people who are looking for positions should be looking for places where they feel they're going to fit well. And hopefully, I can identify someone who might fulfill a mentor role or mentoring role for them down the road where there's some personal chemistry, as aside from just someone who if you suck up, they're going to help you get ahead with your career. Ken WhiteHow do you help determine your client's objectives? John HymanSo it is really an iterative process where if it's someone who we've never met before or have been referred to us by an existing client, which is how we typically win new business, we'll sit down with them, and it'll typically be there's three partners at the firm. The gentleman who founded the firm and my other partner, who is based in Cleveland, really have the client-facing relationships, and they spend the most time with the clients. And the rest of us try to keep the pipes and plumbing running so they're able to do their jobs effectively. But I think really the critical path issues will be sit down and have a frank discussion with the individuals. What is it that they are looking to do with their money? Most of the people that we're dealing with are what you would consider to be high-net-worth or ultra-high-net-worth investors. So surviving their capital typically is not an issue. Ken WhiteSure. John HymanWhat are their goals? They have lifestyle goals, they have legacy goals, they have heirs, or they have plans for leaving money to places where there might be some charitable opportunities. And so there's different goals that you look at. The time horizon will be important as to what they're looking for and if they have any biases. And as well, if they have any issues that they prefer not to invest in, maybe a senior executive at company, and they don't want to invest in anybody else in that industry or their own company because they're already fully exposed. Ken WhiteSure. John HymanSo you start to walk through and help identify an appropriate allocation of assets, stocks, bonds, cash, and the like. And then, from there, it becomes very much an iterative process. And you really want the prospective or the existing client to be engaged in that process so they understand how their money is operating. And a lot of that's an education on our part working with them or family members. Ken WhiteDoes every client know what they want or is that part of your role to help them? John HymanYeah, most clients, I think, have an idea what they want, but the idea of what they want, they may be sophisticated, and they may know because they have friends, family, or may have actually may actually be in the business. But many folks, frankly, don't know what they want and they're looking for that guidance. And I think that is one of the reasons that firms like ours exist because people are looking for professionals to help guide them through the investment process. And they're coming to us typically because someone has said, these folks have done a good job for me in the past, and you should sit down and talk to them. Ken WhiteBeing a smaller firm in a bit of a niche market, you're not going to be on billboards and on the radio. So how is the word spread, and how do you other than referrals? John HymanYeah, it's not a business where you can advertise and Algonquin Advisors is not a firm that most people have heard of. It's not one of the bulge, bracket Wall Street shops that are advertising at golf tournaments and tennis tournaments and the like. For us, it is largely word-of-mouth and referral based. So we have clients to the extent that they like what we do, and we've been fortunate they've referred us to other folks. And a lot of it's just a networking. It's networking opportunities where there's people that we know either in the business or outside of the business. They could be third parties, accountants, attorneys, sports or Hollywood entertainment managers who have been pleased with the work that we've done for their clients and then they may refer us to other clients. So that's really the way we do it. We are hardly a marketing dynamo in terms of we don't advertise. You're right. And I think for our clients, they really don't want to see us advertising. They like the fact that it is kind of a small, very cloistered sort of opportunity. Ken WhiteRegulation. Things have changed. How has that affected you, and what has taken place? John HymanWell, it's interesting, depending on where you sit in the financial services business, if you sit in a big bank, you've faced a lot of regulation. If you sit in a brokerage firm, you're probably a bank today, and so you're facing a lot of regulation. But even for smaller firms like ours, where we don't have a legal staff, where we don't have a full-time compliance staff, you're subject to the changing regulations. So things as arcane as cybersecurity is a big flashpoint for the SEC and for, FINRA and other regulators in our space today. It's not something that most of our clients would even think that we would have to deal with. We're not a bank. We don't have ATM cards, we don't have credit cards, we have a website with a password-protected login, but there's not a whole lot of clients. So we don't view us as necessarily a prime target, but we have obligations that we have to fill no differently than any other large mutual fund company or bank or brokerage firm. There's been regulations around custody of assets post Madoff, where nothing that specifically impacted a firm like mine. But if I were a hedge fund, they would want to know that the assets are where the assets are supposed to be, that there is audit, and third parties looking at it and verifying it. So parts of the business that are not even investment specific, but they're more operational, the nuts and bolts of the business have become very time-consuming for firms, and it's caused a lot of firms to consolidate because they'd like to really roll up that coverage if you will. It's also something that has hit the bigger firms in a very meaningful way, where they're spending tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on compliance, on risk management, and the like because the regulators are requiring them to do that as a result of what happened in 2008 or 2001 or 1987. Pick your crisis that might have caused an issue. And so it's created tremendous job opportunities for people in those fields. If you're a compliance person or professional, if you're a risk professional, it's a great opportunity for you. And for smaller firms, a lot of folks have outsourced, so we have an outsourced. We have two law firms that we deal with. We have a compliance firm that we deal with. We have outsourced technology. And so that's how we deal with some of the regulations. Ken WhiteHow have people in your field approached ethics over the years? Things have changed because of events. John HymanRight. Ken WhiteDiscussion on that, I mean, do people talk about it? How do you approach it now versus maybe ten years ago? John HymanIt's a very interesting topic, and a lot of designation-granting entities like the CFA, for instance, they have an ethics component, IMCO, which is another group, and the CFP, they all have ethics components that are ongoing education. But it really is either it's a tone at the top, either from the firm or the individuals of the firm, as to how ethics are communicated and dealt with. Our philosophy really is, look, the client comes first. If our clients are not happy, then they're not going to be with us, and we're not going to have a business. And so if we don't put the client first and operate in that fashion where we have fair fees and fair service, and we treat our clients equitably because, one, we're obligated to, and two, because it's the right thing to do, we're going to have a tough time maintaining our business. Your employees have to come second. And if you don't treat your employees well and don't ground them in firm ethical business practices, they could damage the business, or they could also, frankly, damage their careers. So it's really making sure that that's an important aspect. So at our firm, I am the chief compliance officer. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a compliance professional, but I've been around the business long enough to know what most people think are probably sound business practices and keeping on top of what is appropriate regulation. We have a compliance meeting at least once a year where we walk through the legal obligations, and then we take it a step further. Here's our code of ethics. Here's what it means. Don't screw around with it, because if you do, you may not be working here. And so it's really putting teeth behind ethics and understanding that it is the critical component. Our business is a trust business. You work your whole career to build a great reputation and have the trust of your clients. You can undo that with one bad act. And so it's so important in a service-related business that it almost goes without speaking. You have to operate that way. Unfortunately, in the financial services business, that's not always the case. And you have to be careful who you hire or picking who you work for to make sure that you don't find yourself in one of those tough situations. Ken WhiteYeah, wonderful. Very interesting. Thanks so much for your time and for meeting us here in the city. It's great to talk with you. Really appreciate your insight and advice. Thanks so much. John HymanGreat. Thanks, Ken. I appreciate it. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with John Hyman, CEO of Algonquin Advisors in Greenwich, Connecticut, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, John Hyman, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time, have a safe and productive weekend. |
![Maureen Brille](images/maureen-brille-8-thumb.jpg)
![Working with an Executive Recruiter](images/maureen-brille-8-thumb.jpg)
Maureen Brille
Episode 8: October 7, 2015
Working with an Executive Recruiter
Maureen Brille is the Managing Director of Executive Recruiting at Bay Street Advisors. She's a self-titled "headhunter" with years of experience in growing businesses and helping people navigate their careers. Listen in to find out why and how you should form a relationship with a recruiting firm and take responsibility for your career.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Whether you're seeking a new job or looking to add someone to your team, chances are you'll interact with an executive recruiter. A headhunter can play an extremely important role in your career and in your organization. From matchmaking to market intelligence to management consulting, executive recruiters offer considerable expertise. Maureen Brille is Managing Director of Executive Recruiting at Bay Street Advisors in New York City. With more than 25 years of experience on Wall Street, Brille focuses on recruiting in asset management, wealth management, and investment banking. We met with Brille recently in New York City and discussed what executive recruiters offer and what companies, organizations, and you should know regarding executive recruiting. Here's our conversation with Maureen Brille. Ken WhiteSo Maureen, let's start off by talking about what it is you and your organization does. Maureen BrilleSure. I am an executive recruiter, which is often called headhunter, and we don't mind that term. We actually are very similar to McKinsey. We do a lot of management consulting, providing value-added advice to our clients and candidates. And most people don't think about our business that way. Ken WhiteRight. Maureen BrilleIt's very high level, very intellectual, and again provides market intelligence broadly across many different both industries functional roles at the senior levels and down into the organization. My firm is a boutique executive search firm. I started my career at a much larger one of the global search firms, and the only difference really is that a boutique is often specialized on a certain industry or functional role. So, for example, my firm is Financial Services. Some functional search firms focus on CFOs, accounting operations, et cetera. Ken WhiteSo why don't we talk about what a corporation or a company might how they might work with you and then later how an individual would, and you said strategy? So if I'm heading a company and I need help, I think I'm just going to call you and say, hey, can you find me, someone? That's not always the case, right? It may be deeper than that. Maureen BrilleCorrect. And it's ideal if that happens and somebody does call us, and that would mean that I'm being reactive and picking up the phone. That's great. Ken WhiteRight. Maureen BrilleA lot of our business is really just relationship-oriented and business development oriented. So I have to proactively go out and seek clients and kind of market our services. And again, a lot of it is based on relationships. So most of our success, I would say, in building those relationships comes with being an expert in an area and then proactively calling firms to say, hey, we're working on an assignment in a particular area. We've been doing a number of these over time, and we have developed significant expertise in, again, a certain field. Would that be of interest to you? Or more importantly, I just placed a senior person and then built out an entire team. This is what is going on in the cutting edge at your peers. Would you like some competitive market intelligence about what's going on? And most firms never say no to that. Ken WhiteSure. Maureen BrilleSo that we could have a very interesting dialogue about what are their growth challenges, what are their opportunities, what are the gaps in their kind of executive team. Again, a lot of search, as you might think about it, and a lot of people think about it, is someone leaves and then they replace that person. But more often what we find is that our business and the searches that we do are related to growth. New roles being created, new businesses being added, or entire firms being acquired. And firms, the senior executives have to always think about how are they going to grow their business. Is it vertical? Is it lateral? And is it completely different and exciting? And so most of what we do comes in the form of something completely new and different. And that might mean that we come up with an idea and introduce that person as a thought leader to our client. They might say, great, you know what, let's hire that person or create that new business. And then they'll hire us to build an entire team around it. So sometimes it starts building from the top down, managing director down to the analyst or associate. Sometimes it starts building the team all the way up. Sometimes it's an entire team lift-out. Clients love team lift-outs. They're very difficult to accomplish, but we've done a number of them. For example, we just did one for one of our big investment banking clients, and it was a 15-person team lift-out. Again, the technique for doing it so that there are no legal ramifications is very tricky, but we're good at it. And the other thing we've been involved in lately, I think we're working on eight or ten different things right now are entire firm acquisitions. So one firm says, I'd really like to be in a new business. So, for example, I do financial services, and some of our private equity clients now are looking at getting into either hedge funds or credit, or real estate. And we're involved in all of those things right now, and one client is looking at another firm. Sometimes it's an entire reverse merger where the firms that we've introduced are public companies, and the acquirer might not be. So it's front-page news. It's very exciting and tremendous value that we would create. Ken WhiteYou're obviously passionate about this. What is it you like? What is it that really gets you moving about this type of business and this type of work? Maureen BrilleI am passionate. You're right. I love the altruistic side of what I do. I help companies grow, and I help people change their lives. Ken WhiteYeah. Maureen BrilleAnd it's never just taking getting to a new level of seniority. It's never just getting a higher level of compensation. It's about doing something completely different, learning, growing, developing in their career, getting out from under a negative situation whether the company is not growing or is shutting down or the people on their team are competitive with each other and not collaborative, whatever the case may be. It's very exciting, and I stay close to my clients and candidates after I place them and to know that it worked out really well, and five or ten years later, it really did change someone's life. It's so exciting. Ken WhiteYou and I were talking last week and you said regardless pretty much of what you do, at some point we're going to run into somebody like you, right? Either the organization we work for is going to contact you or your peers, or the individual is going to be looking for a job. So we're going to come across you sooner or later. Maureen BrilleWell, funny, you should mention that. Most people, whether you're right out of college or 20 years into your career, so many people have never spoke with a recruiter. And some people are either they just never had the opportunity because they didn't either change jobs, or if they did, they just follow their boss, or they just happened to go direct. But I can tell you for certain that getting to know one or more small number, it doesn't have to be a lot of us. But getting to know a couple of recruiters can greatly enhance your career. And again, smart people, I have found whether every single person we talk to is either a candidate, a client, or a source. And the sources are often the most valuable to us and the smartest ones because they realize if I call them talking about an opportunity, they might say wait a minute, that sounds like something really interesting for me. What about me? And those are the best candidates happy where they are, actively employed, not looking at moving. And I would not have called them because I wouldn't have known them unless they were nice to me over the years, really got to know me, and developed a relationship. So again, I always give people advice early on in their career. Figure you don't have to take every single call because in the world of executive recruiting, like the world of real estate or stock brokerage, there are a lot of different types. And again, I'm at the high end of the game. Very strategic, very high level, very senior. And then there are a lot of other people at the other end of the continuum, but you'll know in the first two minutes of any phone call whether the recruiter is knowledgeable, high-level, experienced. Most of us in my end of the business we've all had ten or 20 years of industry experience ourselves. Most of us. We're very successful, have advanced degrees, and, again, are very McKinsey-like. In fact, I started my career at Egon Zehnder, which had more McKinsey alumni there than at any other single firm, and most people just can't fathom that. Ken WhiteYeah, so what's some advice for people in the business world who have not dealt with an executive recruiter or a headhunter? What are some of the do's and don'ts? You said we all get calls, and we get the emails. What should we do in terms of meeting with someone in your profession? Maureen BrilleThat's a good question. I think often you will get a call first, and this is the way you would naturally get involved with a recruiter, be responding to a specific job that they might have called you with. If it's interesting enough, tell the recruiter, you know what, it may or may not be for me. Probably not. I'm really happy where I am, and I'm not looking to move. However, it's interesting enough, and by the way, you sound like you know what you're talking about. Why don't we meet anyway? Let's have a cup of coffee. I'm open to that. And let's think about it for future. Because most of what we are calling about, I offer people the possibility I'm not pushing a job or selling something. I'm offering. And as long as you say that could be interesting. And if not that job, maybe it's the next one. Especially if we're representing really interesting clients or interesting roles and have coffee, it cannot hurt almost every single person I meet with, which, by the way, ends up being a lot of career counseling. I spend a lot of time. It's my free time giving people a lot of career advice. And it's often when you are thinking about what is your next move 3-5-10 years from now. You have to think ahead. Most people do not manage their career proactively. You really have to take responsibility for yourself and your career. And people never got that advice, whether it's in high school or college or at home. People don't get the career advice that you should. And it's not hard. All it relates to is research, due diligence, and networking. And today, with LinkedIn and with email and everything else that we do all day long, networking is easy. I think the most important thing is for people to kind of think about what's out there. Not based on what's on paper or what you hear from your friends, but do research, think about all the different kinds of jobs or roles, and look at people's backgrounds. Look on LinkedIn, look up some really senior people that you respect. Almost everybody's on LinkedIn now, and they have their whole CVs in gory detail that you can look at what is their career path, how did they make their moves. Most people, by the way, do kind of meander through their career accidentally based on something that came to them. But some of the most interesting candidates I find are ones who are proactive some network with my friends to find recruiters to speak with. They ask, who do you think are the most interesting and smartest recruiters in my area that I should meet with? So I get a lot of introductions that way. And I think they're just different. They're differentiated. They're taking the bull by the horns and really thinking, again, forward about their career. Ken WhiteThat's interesting because I think most people maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that most people, when they have the opportunity to meet someone like you if they're not looking, they're going to say, I don't want to waste her time, she's a busy professional. Why would I want to do that? And you're telling us just the opposite. If it has a kernel of interest, why not make the call? Interesting. What about in terms of, so I have a relationship with you then, even if it's somewhat informal in the early stages, do I try to keep that exclusive? As a professional, I shouldn't be bopping around from one executive search professional to the other, right? How do I handle that, I guess, is my question. Maureen BrilleNo, we're not exclusive. It's okay if you talk to other ones. And quite frankly, I often introduce some of my very good candidates to friends of mine at other search firms for their benefit as much as anything else. And again, you don't want to spread yourself so thin where you're wasting your time, but sometimes you have to touch and feel a few different ones to see which one you're going to like the best. It's like a stockbroker or real estate broker who resonates with you. Who do you feel comfortable with? And the other reason that it's really good to keep relationships with firms like us is even if you stay at your own firm for ten or 20 years, we provide insights into things like compensation. Everybody wants to know about comp. Everybody always does because if you haven't changed jobs, you don't have a lot of data points or benchmarks. Ken WhiteGood point. Maureen BrilleA lot of my favorite candidates ask us, ask me, call me periodically through the year. Hey, I'm about to go in and meet with my boss. What's going on with comp? What do you think? How should I negotiate? Or they're negotiating for a new job, and there's no headhunter involved. I help them do that. Because you never want to negotiate against yourself. If somebody ever asks you, what are your comp expectations? You should never tell them. Don't give them a number. Give them concepts. Do you feel like you're under market? And if so, why? Would you like a little bit more base salary? But I'm really motivated for the upside, and here's how I think about it. Give them concepts and where you might want more like equity in the firm. For example, if there's any ability to get equity, talk about it, but don't talk about how much. Let the firm always put a number on the table and then you can react. But it's hard. It's hard to negotiate in a vacuum. Ken WhiteAny trends you see going on? Is there anything at this point in time in your line of work that is top of mind or a hot topic that is going on? Maureen BrilleWell, for us in the recruiting world, one of the trends that is kind of increasing is corporations having in-house recruiting, which they often call talent acquisition. And technically, we compete against them at the same time that we work with them. And in the bottom of the market, I think it was a trend where a lot of firms brought it in-house. It's a fixed cost, and they have to justify themselves. But you can do so pretty quickly. But the in-house recruiters can only do so much. And especially if there's a very high-level assignment or some very complicated, difficult searches, they always go outside as well. So whether it's a contingency firm or a retainer-based firm like ours, there's still a lot that we can work on together. But it's been a huge trend. Ken WhiteAnd talking to professionals of all level, but especially the younger ones, it is amazing to come across someone once in a while who's not on LinkedIn. I guess are there some couple of pieces of advice you give younger people or early stages of their career? I would assume get on LinkedIn and make sure your profile looks good would be one of them. Maureen BrilleAbsolutely. LinkedIn is a beautiful thing. I mean, it's amazing. It's so incredibly helpful to everybody, to firms, candidates, all sorts of intermediaries like us. And it's a way of putting yourself out there without your firm knowing that you're looking. So the more detail you can put on there, the better. But it's also business development for most people in their current role. So to me, there's nothing better than LinkedIn. I have to say. But it's also joining different kinds of networking groups, just being again thoughtful about who you spend time with and how you think about really just opening your eyes to the possibilities. Most people don't understand that even in an industry like mine, financial services, there are tons of roles that are marketing, operations, accounting, legal, technology. So it's not about getting into an industry or just a functional role. There's so much overlap these days and so much kind of consolidation and integration that it's overwhelming. And unless you really meet people, talk to people, look at their backgrounds, you might not ever know. The other thing is a lot of firms are doing their own job postings. So one of my clients, for example, it's an alternative asset management firm that does a lot of different things across kind of hedge funds and private equity. They're not that big, but they're growing. They have maybe five or 600 people and about 25 billion in assets. They have over 100 job specs on their website, and we're helping them with a number of those. So it's unusual. It's exciting. They're growing. They'll probably add one or 200 people each year or more. So that's something else that a lot of people don't completely appreciate, that a lot of firms are posting their own jobs, whether it's on LinkedIn or on their own websites. And so all you have to do is a little bit of Google, just googling around, and you'll find a lot of job opportunities. Ken WhiteSo I guess the takeaway in our discussion is we use the term headhunter. It's so much more than that. And we can benefit from you and professionals like you, whether we're coming at you from our company standpoint or from a personal standpoint. Maureen BrilleAbsolutely. The other thing, just in general, for people's career, I've seen thousands and thousands of resumes. A lot of what people also ask for help is in writing your resume or CV. And I tell people, don't sweat it. Always do one, have a good CV, keep updating it over time. Don't worry about it. Have it organized? Use bullets, don't have any gaps at all. And it's not just what you look like on paper. It's what you've accomplished. But not just what you've done, but how you've done it, what you learned. What are the challenges of each situation? Little description of each firm because not everybody knows what the firm is all about. Ken WhiteSure, good point. Maureen BrilleJust a line or two. Who is this? What is this firm? How did you join there? And why did you change jobs? I call it connecting the dots. Because almost all of our clients want to know why did they move from one firm to the next? Why did they not stay longer than one or two years? It looks like they job-hopped. Nobody likes job hoppers. But in so many different circumstances, particularly with the market crisis, you were forced into it, and it's fine. It's okay, but explain it on paper so that as much of your resume is already obvious to people, and they don't have to think about it. People aren't going to read everything. It's things that will jump off. And by the way, your resume can be on more than two pages or more than one page, certainly. A page and a half to two pages is fine, especially maybe not when you're first getting out of school. Ken WhiteSure. Maureen BrilleBut a couple of years out. If you've done at least one or two different jobs, it's okay to have it go on to the next page. So many people I've seen with 20-year careers shove it onto one page with dinky little font and narrow margins, and you can't even see it without glasses on. But just in terms of job hopping, some people, not so many anymore stay in one job for 20 years. Ken WhiteRight. Maureen BrilleThat's okay, but it's unusual. And by the way, if you did work for a couple of jobs, a couple of different companies, you'll have a lot more of a network and a lot more alumni. So you never want to stay in one job too long, but you don't want to leave too soon. And it's finding that right moment. And as soon as you start having doubts about your future or if you feel like you're plateauing, reach out to either friends or headhunters, or anybody in your network to help you think about what your next move might make. Ken WhiteGreat advice. Great advice. Thank you so much for being with us. We learned a lot, and we appreciate your time. Thank you. Maureen BrilleThank you. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Maureen Brille, Managing Director of Executive Recruiting at Bay Street Advisors in New York City, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Maureen Brille of Bay Street Advisors, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time, have a safe and productive week. |
![Tim Murray](images/tim-murray-7-thumb.jpg)
![Communicating Change](images/tim-murray-7-thumb.jpg)
Tim Murray
Episode 7: September 29, 2015
Communicating Change
Leaders must be skilled at being the face of change. Tim Murray has worked with thousands of employees to take his company Alba to the next level. He's been the CEO since 2012 and has been at Alba since 2007. Listen in to learn how to communicate change.
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Tim Murray: Communicating Change TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies and tactics that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Change, it happens constantly in organizations of all shapes, types, and sizes. And for many employees, strategic change can be upsetting. An organization can be brought to its knees if the people on the team don't embrace the changes the leader has deemed necessary. As a result, leaders must be skilled at being the face of change. Our guest today has been successful in that arena. Working with thousands of employees, Tim Murray has taken Aluminium Bahrain, known as Alba, to new heights. Born, raised, and educated in the United States, Murray has been the CEO of Alba in Bahrain since 2012. Before that, he served in a number of capacities at Alba since 2007. He has great advice on how to effectively communicate change and on being the face of change. Here's our conversation with the CEO of Alba, Tim Murray. Ken WhiteBeing the face of change, what does that mean? Tim MurrayTo me, the face of change when you do any kind of change management program where you're trying to change behavior. You have to be out there. You have to be visible. You have to be seen. An example for us is our safety program. We made massive changes in our safety program. We had, unfortunately, had a few fatalities a few years back. And so to change the behavior, to raise the awareness, you have to be out there. They have to see you. They want to see you. Particularly where we work in Bahrain, the way we're structured, we have a lot of operators of our plant. We have 2300 operators out of the 3000. So we're heavy. It's shop floor labor. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurraySo if you want to change something, you have to physically go out and let them see you. And when they see you, and they see you, then they'll start believing. And then, when they believe, that's when change happens. Ken WhiteSo we're talking face to face. You're talking thousands of people. How do you do that? Tim MurrayI mean, for us, for me, it's just going to the shop floor. So Alba is one giant facility. It's a three-and-a-half square kilometer facility, very big facility, but it's all in Bahrain. So I can go visit any part of the plant whenever I want, any day of the week, anytime. And they're really happy to see you. They also want to see you. If you look, particularly when the head guy comes out, just you say hello, you say their name, you shake their hand, you say thank you. Culturally, they're very family-knit people in the Middle East. So they really want to see you. And they look up to you. They say okay, the boss came today, and we had to do this. So you can do it. Okay. It's a lot of time because it is 3000 people. So it's not an easy thing to do, but you can do it. Ken WhiteDo you try to divide into groups, into areas of responsibility? How do you get to all of that? Tim MurrayWe do. I mean, if you look at it's not just a one-man show. So I mean, we have the executive team, the management team that does it. And we do like if we have a safety campaign, we will break them into different groups. You may have a visit during the day. You may have one after hours or on the weekend because we're a 24-hour, 365-day operation. It's a process flow. It never stops. We do break it up, and we rotate them around, and we bring different departments, we go to different departments. So you may have accounting go review operation or operation come into a different part of operation. So we want to have a different perspective from other people that have not been in the operation. Because I find that very valuable that you see take myself, I'm a finance person. So have a financial person go into operation and ask silly questions of why is this there? Or is that crane supposed to be there? Is this scaffold? You will ask the silly question because you don't know. And actually, usually, the silly questions are good questions because people that are so close to the trees, they don't see the forest, as we say. Ken WhiteRight, or it gives them the opportunity to explain what they do to you. Tim MurrayExactly. Ken WhiteHow much of it is speaking? How much of it is listening when you're trying to communicate? Tim MurrayI personally try okay. When you have speeches or formal things, you speak. I try to listen more because I find as when you're the boss, once you say something, that's it. And so if we're dealing with an issue or we're trying to coach or whatever it is, I would rather hear from everybody first before I say anything. Because typically, once the boss says something, then everybody maybe they wanted to say something, and now they won't say it because it conflicts with you. So I think trying to listen is very important because most of the time, again, they want to talk to you. They want to take a picture of you. They just want to say how's it going or very simple things. So I prefer not to actually do most of the talking. Ken WhiteYou mentioned it. But I think people forget the effect and impact it has on an employee to see the boss. What kind of reactions do you get when you see people? Tim MurrayI think it's a huge benefit if you do it correctly. My former CEO had this philosophy called the CEO to the Worker, which I explained in the presentation today. And so when you communicate, and you're a big company like Alba, you have seven levels. You have the CEO, you have the executives, you have a director, you have a manager, you have a superintendent, and you have a supervisor, and then you have shop floor. So to deliver that message, even if I want people to deliver it correctly, maybe they want to say it correctly, it has to go through seven layers. So by the time it gets to the 7th level, the message is lost. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Tim MurraySo the more you can speak directly, the better because then the message is not twisted. Ken WhiteWhat types of communication activities have you taken part in a town hall, a face-to-face? What do you like? What's effective? Tim MurrayI mean, we do a lot of the shop floor visits, particularly on safety at Alba, since I've been CEO. We did implement town halls, which is something new to our company, as well as, I think, the region. Most companies don't do town halls. So we have a big meeting hall where we have roughly 200 people can fit. Okay, we have 3000 people. So we had over the month of January, we hold 15 sessions, and every employee gets to hear my update of how did we perform, what are the big issues and then what are the goals and objectives for 2015. So we've done that for two years now. And it's extremely effective because most of the time, the questions you get, I don't get that many questions. It's more after the meeting, we spend more time taking pictures that people can take the pictures and post them in Instagram and selfies, and they're more interested in that, but just the fact they say, okay, I heard what the CEO said, we did good, or we did bad. Whatever it was and what they're facing, they leave, and they say, okay, now I know what's. So in terms of alignment, it's a very powerful tool. I mean, actually, far more than I realized because, in the States, this is something typical that you would see. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurrayI can tell you when I first did it two years ago, everybody's, what is this town hall? What are you going to say? Why do you want all the employees? Why would you want shop floor people to come? And okay, now that we've done it, people actually look forward to it. And actually, many people attend more than one session because they get the updates. Because I change the speeches a little bit depending on the group. Ken WhiteWhat was the planning process? Because certainly, you have various messages, very specific messages you want to get across. How did you plan for the town hall? Tim MurrayThe town hall, I mean when I give the update for the town hall, I have three categories that I focus on. I focus on safety, health, environment, okay. I focus on people, and then I focus on what I call value. So how did we perform financially, production, and all those things so those are my three. If I look at a business, that's how I look at a business. So those are the structure of the presentation. So I give an update on how did we perform in terms of safety, in training, in development, and production. And then, at the end, I give my expectations for the year. So this year, we have five expectations. Expectations for us we talked about LME, which is our London Metal Exchange, which is our price to expect a lot of volatility. We talked about we're going to have more training, we're going to continue to push on safety. And also we're preparing for our big expansion, our line six expansion, which would increase our capacity roughly 50%. Ken WhiteWhen you talked to the MBA students today, you had a list of just good advice sentence phrases here and there. One of them was certainly be prepared when you get the opportunity to speak to others. How much preparation goes into your town hall? Any kind of communication. Tim MurrayA formal speech I personally I put in a lot of preparation. Okay, when I speak, I don't use papers, and it probably looks very natural, but I can tell you I spend a lot of time preparing. I mean, to write a speech or a format or a presentation, it may take me a couple of days. Okay? Then I tweak it. Then I change it. Then I do it again. Then I'll do a dry run. I'll do in front of my wife. I'll prepare. So I mean to do something like a town hall, it's probably a three or four-day activity to get myself prepared. And then, each time, I get better. So like a town hall, I did 15 times. Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurraySo I can tell you, after I do it three or four times, I'm really clicking. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Tim MurrayAnd you feed off the audience. You see what they like, what they don't like. What was the question you may have got? And then I try to improve each one. So actually, it was interesting because a lot of people did attend more than one session, and they were surprised that each session was different. 80% was the same, but there was always a different message because maybe I learned something in the previous session, or I have a different group where I want to send a different message. So you try and tailor it. So no, to me, you want to over-prepare. Because when you over-prepare, then it's easy. To me, my philosophy is you're over-prepared, and then you walk out and say, okay, that wasn't so bad. That's because you over-prepared, and you never get a second chance to make a first impression. So if you don't prepare and you're not ready, people judge you. And to change that first impression is very, very hard. Ken WhiteHow do you improve? What steps do you take to make sure you're getting better? Because communication is so critical. Tim MurrayI mean, on giving speeches? Ken WhiteYeah. Tim MurrayI think you listen. I think the biggest thing there's a saying. Maybe you hear me, but maybe you're not listening. And so when you listen, you really need to listen. Just because somebody says, I hear you. It might be one ear out the other. And really, when you do the speeches, you can see what works and what doesn't. Maybe I'll test something in one speech, or somebody asks me a question like, oh, that was a good question, and I'll take it head-on in the next speech. So you have to be, I would say, nimble. You have to be flexible. You shouldn't just be. Here's my papers, and I read. I can't stand when people read from speeches personally. It loses. To me, that tells me you didn't prepare. So if you didn't prepare, why should I listen to you? Ken WhiteRight. Tim MurraySo if you didn't put in the time, why am I putting in the time? Ken WhiteThat face-to-face with employees. You're putting yourself out there, you're being honest, and you may not have the answer every time. What do you do when you run into that situation? Tim MurrayI mean, if you don't have the answer to me, you should be honest and say you don't have the answer. And actually, to me, in the words of wisdom, I said that talking about you tell bad news first. And if you have bad news, you just tell it. When you sugarcoat it, or you dance around it, and you avoid it. I mean, to me, you lose credibility. So I think it's very important about being honest and being transparent and okay, yes, you don't always have the answer. And if you don't have the answer, say you don't have the answer. Don't BS people and try and trick them or say and make up some story. You just say, hey, on that one, let me come back to you. I don't have the answer in front of me. Ken WhiteGreat. Thank you. The talk today to the MBAs was great, and it's interesting to talk to you about how you communicate change and how you lead it. Obviously, you've got experience in this, and we appreciate you sharing it with us today. Tim MurrayIt was my pleasure. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation on being the face of change with the CEO of Alba, Aluminium Bahrain, Tim Murray, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Tim Murray of Alba, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time, have a safe and productive week. |
![Nicolas Boël](images/nicolas-boel-6-thumb.jpg)
![Adapting Your Leadership Style](images/nicolas-boel-6-thumb.jpg)
Nicolas Boël
Episode 6: September 25, 2015
Adapting Your Leadership Style
Nicolas Boël has worked in North America and Europe and shares with us the difference in leadership styles on the two continents. He runs a family business that was started by his ancestors and also talks about working with family in this episode. He is the Chairman of the Board of Solvay SA.
Podcast (audio)
Nicolas Boël: Adapting Your Leadership Style TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies and tactics that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, this week, we feature a conversation with Nicolas Boël, chairman of the board for Solvay, the Belgian chemical and plastics company that was founded in 1863 by Boël's ancestors. Today, Solvay employs over 26,000 people in 52 countries. The organization is headquartered in Brussels. Solvay America is based in Houston. Boël brings a unique perspective to leadership and business, and he discusses that in our podcast today. He was educated in Belgium, then earned his MBA in the United States at William & Mary. He's worked in North America and in Europe and he talks about the differences in leadership on those two continents and he also leads a family-owned business. And he'll share the unique elements of working with relatives, globalization, building company culture, and working with family. All covered in our conversation with the chairman of the board of Solvay, Nicolas Boël. Ken WhiteThank you for taking the time. You just came from a class of MBAs. I know you're all talked out, and then we ask you to sit down and talk a little bit more. Nicolas BoëlI had a little bit of water, so it's okay. Ken WhiteThanks. You have a unique background in that you've led in North America and in Europe. What are some of the differences, as you see, between those two areas and leading in those two parts of the world? Nicolas BoëlI think it goes directly to the different culture, the business culture in the country. Europe is traditional. Once you earn the trust, you can do anything you want, but you've got to earn the trust. And especially if you work in a family business, you have to prove that you have earned the right to be there. It's a little bit like in the Army when before becoming an officer, you are led by all the noncommissioned officers, and they are going to see if you have what it takes one day to lead them. The US is an optimistic country. The feeling where whatever happens, whatever incident, whatever problems, it will be overcome. And so there is a really nature of optimism. Europe, there is more gravitas, I would say, but at the same time, a capability of once they sign on in Europe on a project, then they can move all the mountains. Ken WhiteInteresting. How do you go about earning that trust? Nicolas BoëlIt's example. It is by walking the walk and demonstrating that what you're saying, you're saying it, and you're living it in everything. We had one example, which is when I took over a steel plant in northern France in a difficult area of post-industrialization, and it was one of the major employers in town. We had two deaths in the plant just before my arrival. And when I arrived, I found it was a 900 workers' plant, really a trauma in the whole plant. And I decided to use with my management team to use safety as a game changer for the company and the culture building and results. So the first thing we did, which they had a wonderful, what we call the cirque, which is the places where the management and customers were going to have lunch. And actually, in France, they had a wonderful wine center. And I remember. And I like wine. Remember, my first decision. I think it was on my second day of arrival, was saying if you're on a shop floor, you're caught with alcohol, you're fired. Why can management do it? And so we cut off the alcohol and that was a symbol. And then we went leading by walking around, explaining, talking, and not passing next to something without not acting. So you see something, you say it, and the feeling in the plant was, gee, that's his new idea, let's go with him. But when there's going to be a difficult decision, we'll see what happens. And that happened when we had a bridge moving a product A from bay A to bay B. And if that bridge didn't work, the plant stopped, and we had a major incident on the crane, and we could make it run in an unsafe mode. And I remember we said, well, is it safe? No. What does it mean? It's not safe? Well, there's a risk that the crane falls and drops. It was 25 tons of steel on the floor. And then we said, how long do we need for the repair to go on? And it was, if I remember, three weeks. And we shut down the crane, and we restarted it in four days because naturally, like all the engineers, once you're faced with a situation, and there's no way around it, suddenly creativity comes out. And that day, the unions, the workforce, and everybody said, well, he really means it. And that meant that that day on, it was accepted as, and I think that's a perfect example of saying that leadership is really example. Ken WhiteThat's a major investment, though you had to make in time and in money. That's a major investment to build that trust. Nicolas BoëlAbsolutely. But it is in a company. We're asking a lot of things. There's change that's becoming faster and faster. Decisions have to be made, restructuring changes. People have to learn new skills. There's a pace of change that is really increasing. And if you do not have a project, communication, and belief, and trust from the people who are going to implement it, it becomes almost impossible. And so it was always in my beliefs, and that's something that I learned at William & Mary when I was here. But I believe that in the model, the business model today, whether you're an entrepreneur with two people on the payroll or you're multinational with 25000 those key drivers are always the same. Ken WhiteWhat's causing the pace to be so fast today? Nicolas BoëlTechnology is changing a lot of things, and I think we live in the world where because of the globalization, ideas can come out much faster, can be implemented much faster, and disseminated much faster, which means that you have less time to react and you have to identify. We go through at our board and always ask, trying to ask once a year at least in our strategy meeting for each business, what could happen in a market that could kill the product or the business. And once you do that exercise, you come out stronger, but it sometimes mean that you have decisions of portfolio change, product drops because suddenly something happens in the market that you hadn't expected, but at the same time if you miss it, it's a whole company that goes down the drain. Ken WhiteRight. Nicolas BoëlAnd if you're a family business company or if you are long-term oriented, and sometimes they are both. The notion of saying that to be able to maintain the future and keep the values and keep going on and passing on to the next generation implies also the transformation is essential to be able to reach that goal. So you need to balance an equilibrium and attention between continuous change and improvement but keeping the values that have led you there and will keep you on. Ken WhiteWhat are the challenges of running, leading a family company versus private? Nicolas BoëlI think one of the key challenge is to, one, align everybody and two is to clarify the role of everybody. If you think about if you take a mafia movie, there's always a big party for Christening. Ken WhiteRight. Nicolas BoëlAnd during the party, you see the host usually moving from a wonderful father, godfather, husband, to a ruthless killer, to a don who accepts and manages the community. And in a family business, it's the same thing. You meet at family, you meet at Sunday lunches and you never know if the uncle you're talking to is talking to you because he's your uncle, because he's a manager, the CEO of the company, or because he is a big investor in the company. And to be able to how would I call, clarify the role and the hat that he has on when he talks to you is essential because it allows you then to create the right governance and the right center, an organization for each separate role. Because if you are family, you are in the project, you are in the what we would say, the l'affection les sociétés, which is how do you build the affection in the company when you are in management, you are there for the results, for the strategy, for the company as a whole. And if you're investor, you're going to look at your value over time. And it's very essential that each of those roles have the right people to fill them in and that you know exactly how, in a family, to prevent conflict, what is expected, and how the rules of the game are going to be to select who is going to be where. So there is a very fundamental formal role in clarifying the criteria, the nomination process, and the role of responsibility of each part of those three organizations. And then next to that, you have the informal, the communication, which is the alignment, which is explaining to everybody the same thing and why are we doing this, why do we believe it is a good idea and that therefore there is no frustration. I believe that a family needs more time to accept change, and at the same time, because it is family, you create in a company a certain sense of emotion, emotional values. It's been there a long time, you've got the trust, and that can sometimes does lead to complacency. Oh, we will not know we can't do this because we can't do it, and sometimes difficult decisions that are not taken at that time lead to much more difficult subject afterwards. And so it means that for a company, a family company, your radar, in terms of strategy has to be open much earlier, I believe, than a normal other company. Because the time you need to induce change and to do it in a way which is in line with the traditional values of a family, which means no hurt, no surprise, means that sometimes you have got to start those decisions much earlier than others. So it means that if you are running a family business you need to be much more, I would say maybe complete in your leadership role than if you're there managing a company and after five years you're going to move to another one. Ken WhiteAnd pretty flexible, right? It's your uncle, as you said, one moment, and then a couple of minutes later, that same individual is either a direct report or an investor. So I imagine that takes quite a bit of flexibility or a certain type of personality. Nicolas BoëlOnce you understand the hat you have on when you're talking, then you eliminate a lot of sources of conflict because there is no miscommunication at that time. But it means also that you need to have very strict rules. So that, for example, if your nephew believes that he's the future CEO or he wants to play a role in a company, or he wants to play a role in any part in there, and you need to have a clear set of the criteria and of the decision process that's going to lead to select the best person. And one of the most important is, for example, on the management side or the board of directors is, to focus on a competence. You can have alignment representation in other circles but at the board, you want to make sure that the person who is around the table is the best one and he's not there because he's just family and that's where in our governance, the role of the external directors is so important because they guarantee the governance strict application. Ken WhiteIf a young person was to say to you I have this opportunity with my family company, with this private company, all else was equal, what kind of advice might you give them? Nicolas BoëlBecause of the legitimately issue, I think it is easy, easier to start outside of the family. We have some, I know some family companies who have that as rule, you can only work in the family company once you've been promoted twice outside. So go and do your experience outside, learn, get the toolbox, and then when you come on in, you have legitimately, and then you can start working, and you've seen a little bit of the outside world. If you start immediately in a family company, the risk is that you will not have the toolbox as filled as it could, and secondly, you are going to have to demonstrate all of your life that you were there because you're the best guy and not just because you have a family name. So if you're good, it's no problem but if you do not have the shoulders, it's difficult to live with. Ken WhiteI bet. Now you spoke to MBA students earlier. They are aspiring leaders. Any advice for aspiring leader career advice or what they should be thinking or doing? Nicolas BoëlWhat is really impressive to see is the amount of nationalities around the table. It's really getting global all around the place. And the success of a company is you have the numbers, you have the process, you have everything that makes a product or a company successful. But the key is how do you get people working together in a better way than your competitors? And that means it gets down to people management point. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with the chairman of the board of Solvay, Nicolas Boël, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at www.wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Nicolas Boël, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time, have a safe and productive week. |
![Dawn Edmiston](images/dawn-edmiston-5-thumb.jpg)
![Building Your Personal Brand](images/dawn-edmiston-5-thumb.jpg)
Dawn Edmiston
Episode 5: September 22, 2015
Building Your Personal Brand
Dawn Edmiston is a professor of Marketing and knows how important our online reputations are. She discusses how to make sure your online presence is looking its best for future employers and how to start managing your reputation on the internet.
Podcast (audio)
Dawn Edmiston: Building Your Personal Brand TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Amazon Music/Audible | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Show Notes
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies and tactics that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. If someone went online to learn about you, your personal brand, and what you offer to others, what would they learn? Well, your online presence is extremely important. It's an extension of your resume, and data show people rely on social networks to learn about others. According to a recent story posted on Mashable.com, 77% of companies and organizations are using social networks for recruiting purposes. That means your customers and prospective customers are using social networks as well to learn about you. Well, as a result, your online presence is directly linked to your success. Our guest this week can help steer you in the right direction, wherever you happen to be, in terms of your online presence. Dr. Dawn Edmiston is a Clinical Associate Professor of Marketing at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. An award-winning educator, Edmiston has also held marketing management roles at Discovery Communications, IBM Business consulting services, and Pricewaterhouse Cooper's consulting management services. She helps executives and aspiring executives build their brands online, and she joins us today on Leadership & Business. Ken WhiteDawn, we know what brands are. We see them everywhere we go. What's a personal brand? Dawn EdmistonA personal brand is how you position yourself in the market. And I like to challenge individuals to think about their personal brand promise. My personal brand promise, I like to believe, is that I teach people how to pursue and promote their passions. So everything that I do, relative to articles that I write, conferences that I'm invited to attend, consulting projects that I undertake, I always ask myself, am I reinforcing my personal brand promise? Ken WhiteWhy is a personal brand important for rising executives and people in business today? Dawn EdmistonIt's critical because it's how other individuals are going to identify you and what you can contribute to their organization. So having a very clear, specific personal brand, one that's consistent across all media channels is one of the greatest competitive advantages that you can have in the market. Ken WhiteHow do you get there? How do you develop your brand? Dawn EdmistonThe first step to developing a powerful brand is to give considerable thought to that personal brand promise. And then once you've determined your personal brand promise, and you start to think about, who would benefit from what I have to share, who would benefit from this personal brand promise, then you think about those audiences and what their needs are and how those audiences are communicating with each other. So one of the first places that I recommend all individuals consider for their personal brand, their professional brand, is LinkedIn. That's a great starting point. So if you do not have a profile on LinkedIn, that's a great place to start to build your personal and professional brand. Ken WhiteRight before we hit the record button to do this podcast, you and I were talking about this personal branding and social media. And five years ago, when this was discussed, we thought we were way late to the game. But people still, not all people are there, are they? Dawn EdmistonAnd it's evolving. I mean, I don't know that you ever truly get quote there. It's a constant management process, just as though you are marketing a brand like Coca-Cola. They have brand managers who are constantly trying to understand their audiences and measuring how to effectively communicate with those audiences. And you need to do the same. So there may be opportunities for you to take advantage, for example, of new social media channels or new platforms or to start sharing new messages. And so even though personal branding is something that's been talked about since Tom Peters first mentioned it in a Fast Company article decades ago, at this point, personal branding is a continuous process, and it's one that we should often be reflecting upon and we don't always take the time to do that. Ken WhiteSo someone creates a personal brand, they go through the exercises, and answer the questions. Their brand is different than most. It's better. So they're truly differentiated. So when they do go on LinkedIn for the novices, what do they do? Why go there, and what do they do? Dawn EdmistonSo an important consideration when you start looking at LinkedIn and other social media channels, this is not an exercise in ego development or ego management. This is truly an exercise in understanding audiences that truly value your services. So you always need to position yourself from the perspective of a potential client or a potential employer. So this is not about you sharing all of your credentials. It's about you sharing experiences that you believe other organizations could derive value from. So first and foremost, it is really important to have that mindset. Because if you start developing a LinkedIn profile and you're constantly using I statements, or you're starting to develop lists, and you're not sharing projects or experiences that other organizations potentially could value, then you're not using LinkedIn to the extent that you should. So once you develop your profile on LinkedIn, perhaps the greatest single tip that I could give to individuals relative to securing that personal brand is to be certain to personalize your URL. So what I mean by that is, typically, when you develop a LinkedIn profile, your web address will be a series of letters and numbers. LinkedIn makes it very easy now to customize your profile URL so you can become Linkedin.com/im/kenwhite I'm /dawnedmiston. And so, however, you decide to represent your brand, if your name is John Smith, we might have to do creative work as to developing that brand. But that's very important to customize that URL so that when individuals search for you on Google and across other search engines that, your LinkedIn profile will be the first site that they see that reflects you and your personal brand. Ken WhiteDo you recommend people actually look for the .com address and buy that in their name? Dawn EdmistonI do. In fact, I have a friend who, when her godchildren were born, she bought that as their gift. I own my own URL, @dawnedmiston.com, and I would certainly encourage others to do that as well, even if you don't know quite what you will do with it at this point. That's important real estate. That's an important investment for you to make in yourself. Ken WhiteSo going back to LinkedIn, some of the guidelines you're saying be audience-centric, really, right? Not about look at me, look at me, but yes, this is how I can help you more or less and focus on the audience. This isn't Facebook, so the photo is quite important. Dawn EdmistonAbsolutely. And research demonstrates that your profile is more likely to be viewed upwards to eleven times more often if you have a profile photo attached to your LinkedIn profile. And, of course, it needs to be professional. People will give your profile a second look if they believe that it's a professional presence that you exude from that profile photo. Ken WhiteNow some LinkedIn profiles are fairly bare bones, other people really lay it on. There's a ton of information. What kind of guidance do you give to professionals? Dawn EdmistonLinkedIn is not necessarily a place where you should be sharing anything and everything that you have ever done. You really want to be, again, very forward-thinking as well. I have consulted with individuals who are considering career change, for example, and that they were in the accounting profession and now they were seeking to transition into project management and consulting. And so we had a discussion as to how projects that they worked in accounting could be positioned differently on LinkedIn. So that's very important to do. And in fact, they decided not to include two of their initial roles in accounting because it made them look too accounting-centric, and that really was not the path that they wanted to take moving forward. So I think that you need to be very selective. Currently, I've read research that has said individuals will take 6 seconds to look at your resume. So I can infer from that that they will probably only take about 6 seconds to look at your LinkedIn profile. So what do you want them to learn about you in those 6 seconds? Ken WhiteThose familiar with LinkedIn know they can post articles they've read, they can list comments. How active do you recommend that? How active do you? Dawn EdmistonDefinitely, LinkedIn is offering great opportunities to publish posts, to share articles. I'm not necessarily one to want you to have your notification setting on. And what I mean by that is when you update a new photo, or you change a skill, I typically recommend clients turn off the notification setting. When you share a post that will be shared across your audience, so that's not the same as changing your profile, and I would prefer there's a very simple setting where you can change it to update notifications and turn it off. And I would recommend that you do that, but because when you post, you want people to look at what's really important, you don't necessarily want them to know that you changed the spelling of the College of William & Mary within your profile. Ken WhitePeople unfamiliar with LinkedIn have connections. Is there a sweet spot in terms of the number of connections you have? And who those people are? Dawn EdmistonThere is a sweet spot. So the sweet spot for LinkedIn is definitely that 500. Because at 500, LinkedIn simply shows your connections as 500 plus. And 500 is also a level where you have really expanded your network and created connections that can prove to be very valuable. Having said that, I'm a personal believer in having quality contacts because I want my LinkedIn profile to be a place that I can refer to when clients need suggestions for networks when students need opportunities for internships, that I know these individuals, that I can reach out to them, and that I can ask for insight. So that is important to me. I prefer only to connect with individuals that I have at least had a personal connection with in the past, even if it's in an airport or I've had plenty of great connections on airplanes as I'm traveling to and from places. I often end my conversation with do you have a LinkedIn profile so we can remain connected? Ken WhiteYeah, great. Dawn EdmistonBut that 500 is a good aspirational number. Ken WhiteSo I've worked on my personal brand, I'm differentiated, and then I'm on LinkedIn. So if they go, they understand what I do and how I can help them in their organization. Where else, social media-wise, what are my other alternatives in getting out there? Dawn EdmistonSo that's great. If you've done all of that homework, you should also know that in addition to social media channels, which I will address next, LinkedIn will work for you. This position at the College of William & Mary, which I just started this past year, was as a result of LinkedIn sending me this job posting. I was not in the market for a new job. I was a tenure professor. I was very happy at my former college. And when I saw this posting from LinkedIn, I said, they're right. This would be the perfect job for me. So if you've done your profile well, if you've used keywords, if you've been very focused upon what you want to do, then your LinkedIn profile will not only allow you to develop networks, but it will work for you relative to the opportunities that it presents to you. Ken WhiteGreat. Dawn EdmistonAnd that's similar in other social media channels, whether you decide to use Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, or Pinterest. My next advice would be to be sensitive as to where your audiences might be. I've had various clients, for example, who want to start Twitter feeds and want to use Twitter because they feel that that's what they should be doing. But if your audience is not there, then that's not where you should be. Then maybe your focus really should be on developing a community within Facebook or other tools, other social media channels that have value for your particular audience. I have made the decision that I have my own website. I have LinkedIn, I do have a Facebook profile, but it's private, and it's where I share my personal, and I'm not certain that everybody in my life wants to know about the personal aspects of my life. So I've chosen to have that be private. I do have a Twitter feed, but I'm not near as active on Twitter as I am on LinkedIn. I tend to be most active on Twitter when I'm attending conferences, for example, because it's a great way you can hashtag, you can trend, you can connect. So I definitely have a Twitter channel for that. YouTube has become also a very powerful. We may not think of that initially as a social media channel. In fact, YouTube has been known to be the second-largest search engine in the world. Of course, they're owned by Google, the largest search engine in the world. But that's also a very powerful place to have a presence. Ken WhiteAnd I think some of the social media, you have to like it, right? If you're going to go on Twitter, that has to be something you enjoy. I'm on Twitter. I love it. I love tweeting about communication. I'll read a cool article. I want other people to see it. Off it goes. Dawn EdmistonDefinitely. Ken WhiteAnd form this group out there who likes it, and it is it's fun. But this can all be time-consuming. Dawn EdmistonYes. Ken WhiteAnd you've run across sometimes on social media, and you look at someone or their profile and say, do you actually get any work done? Or do you spend most of your day branding yourself? There's a line, right? Dawn EdmistonSure. Ken WhiteWhat kind of advice do you give to people on how much time they spend or what kind of role it plays? Dawn EdmistonThere are individuals who have developed careers based on these social media communities that they've developed. And if they're good at that and they can share that and share that expertise with others, then that's where they should be. I personally believe I actively maintain my profiles. I know that I have limited time within social media, so I really focus on maintaining a consistent LinkedIn profile. I do make certain that my profile photos across all of my social media are consistent. So that's a quick example. I'd love it when I go to a conference, and people look at me and say, you look exactly like you do online. That's brand, and that's where you want to be, and that does not take a considerable amount of time. And you can also have tools that work for you. For example, there's a tool called BrandYourself.com, and that is a great tool. It was developed by entrepreneurs at Syracuse University in upstate New York, which is where I was raised. So I have a special fondness towards this tool-free tool. You register for this tool, and it will actually evaluate your Google search presence for you and it will send you updates. One of your links has fallen off the first page. There is an unknown link that has now appeared on Google when you Google your name. And so there are plenty of tools out there that can also provide you with insight as to how to further strengthen your personal brand. So it doesn't have to be time-consuming. Ken WhiteThe social media aspect can be pretty overwhelming, or at least sound overwhelming. If you're on you've got a nice LinkedIn profile and say you're either blogging or you have a Twitter feed, it could probably use improving. And if you're not there, you need to be there. Dawn EdmistonYes. Ken WhiteThat seems to be sort of the takeaway. Dawn Edmiston92% of children under the age of two have a digital shadow. Ken WhiteWow. Dawn EdmistonSo whether you choose to develop a brand or not online, it will be there. So you need to be proactive. You need to take the time to make this happen. You can be very selective about what you choose to do, but you need to make that choice, and you do need to invest in yourself in that regard. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Professor Dawn Edmiston of the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at www.wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, professor Dawn Edmiston and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time, have a safe and productive week.` |
![Bay McLaughlin](images/bay-mclaughlin-4-thumb.jpg)
![The Life of the American Ex Pat](images/bay-mclaughlin-4-thumb.jpg)
Bay McLaughlin
Episode 4: September 18, 2015
The Life of the American Ex Pat
Bay McLaughlin left the USA to try his luck in the Asian Startup world, and he succeeded. Learn from his experience as he details the cultural changes and challenges of becoming an ex-pat.
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Chances are someone in your network at some point decided to leave the United States to work abroad. Maybe that's something you're considering. It's a big step, of course. In addition to dealing with the professional and business aspects of working in another country, the differences in culture can be huge. Our guest successfully made that geographic leap. He left Silicon Valley, where he worked for Apple, to start a career in Asia. Bay McLaughlin is an American headquartered in Hong Kong, where he's the Chief Operating Officer at Brinc, an IoT accelerator. Despite the fact he'd never been to Asia when his wife got a job offer there, he decided to take advantage of the opportunity in the Asian startup world, moving to and succeeding in another part of the world. Here's our conversation with Bay McLaughlin. Ken WhiteSo, Bay, you've got a cool story. But before we talk about that, what it's like in a different culture? What it's like moving to a different world, actually? Tell us about what you do and what your company does. Bay McLaughlinSo Brinc is an IoT accelerator. We're based in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in, China. So our main focus is to find entrepreneurs fantastic ideas around the world, invest in them, move them to Asia, help them build their products, manufacture their products, distribute their products to retail around the world, and just set them on the right footing to become a large IoT, successful business. So think Apple watch, Fitbit, Jawbone, connected cars like Google. Ken WhiteYeah. What's your technology background? Bay McLaughlinI was probably the least technological person. I was just interested in technology. I didn't study it, but my dad bought the first computer he could get his hands on for me. I never formally studied anything, but was always very active. I worked for Apple in college here at William & Mary when I was in the Master's and also undergraduate business programs, but then just started teaching myself how to code. But never really would call myself technical like my engineering staff is, but just enough to be dangerous. Ken WhiteSo after a while, you're in Virginia, born and raised. You get educated here. Your first big jump was from this coast to the West Coast. You went to work in San Francisco. Bay McLaughlinCorrect. So I worked at Apple an undergraduate in the Master's program here. And then, unfortunately, they had a very poor intake process from their sort of college programs into the corporate program. So I got my truck, and I picked up my best friend in North Carolina and drove cross country. No job, slept on a couch, found a startup, went to a failed startup, then my next one exited, started my own, failed, went back to Apple a second time after six years total at Apple and eight years in the Bay Area just decided to shake it up again. And that's where the next big one came from. Ken WhiteYeah, no kidding. Shake it up. You left the country, and you went to Asia, and you wrote a great piece about this, about some of the small mistakes. If you could do it over again, some of the things you did. Tell us about that experience. What made you do that? Bay McLaughlinSo just had turned 30, and my wife and I were looking at each other and just had that moment thinking, are you ready to kind of hang up the hat now and get the kids and get the Tesla and sit in the North Bay in Marin and do the thing, or do we have more gas in the tank? And it was for me she had been to Asia before, but I'd never been so sight unseen. I sold everything but a couch and got in a plane, and flew over to Hong Kong. Never been there. And started looking to figure out what was going to be the right fit and very, I think, luckily, to be honest. Found some fantastic partners in Asia just by running around and doing the circuit, going to conferences, joining a lot of other startup events, and just learning my way through it. But found some great partners that had done the exact opposite. Had gone sight unseen to China when they were 22. Met a whole other generation of people just like me, but had taken a very different path and realized that partnering was a lot better than trying to plow your way through China by yourself or Asia and just show up as an American and try to plant your roots. Ken WhiteWhat about the language barrier? How did you deal with that? Bay McLaughlinHong Kong is the easiest place. Hong Kong is a great stopping-over point. Go to Central. Everyone speaks English for the most part. Everyone expects you to speak English. From there, you have to make a decision. For me, learning Mandarin is more about authenticity, just like learning how to code. So I didn't learn how to code to ever be hired to code, but I needed to hire and manage engineers. And so the same thing in China. So it's not that I am ever going to be some amazing Mandarin speaker, but it's nice to be able to speak to my partners, to speak to the cab driver, to talk to the front desk or the waitress. It just shows that you care enough. And we have a tutor. She teaches my wife and myself, and my friends actually all now get tutored by the same lady. But it's never something I expect that I'll be incredibly proficient at, but it's certainly something that I expect my kids will be very proficient at. Hopefully, fluent, which I think it's going to be very important for that next generation. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. What about culture? What were some of the you had to adapt, obviously? Bay McLaughlinThe culture was surprisingly they're open, but you have to look at it from a different angle. They accept you, and they accept that Americans do business in China, that there are good relations there, and that there's benefits to both parties. But I always call China in particular, so it's hard to speak about Asia. I'm opening offices in Malaysia and Thailand also, so different cultures there. Ken WhiteSure. Bay McLaughlinBut in China, in particular, it's a business first. I always say that the religion is business. It's certainly not capitalistic. It is communistic. It's 100% capitalistic. Ken WhiteRight. Bay McLaughlinIt's a business first, always mentality. So as long as you approach it as such and you realize that if there's a partnership, there's a way to mutually gain, you're in great shape. And they will always be looking for that. They'll always be looking for a way to do a deal, but also protecting their own wealth and their own partnerships and relationships too. I think it's more of that military mindset in a lot of ways. You create a foundation and a structure, and families are these massive corporations in ways that you probably remember the Rockefellers and things like that, but imagine that's the way it always is all over Asia. Ken WhiteWow. Bay McLaughlinAnd they approach that I think they approach that a little differently. Ken WhiteNow, what about you mentioned knowing the business first and the families? When you're interacting in most areas of Asia, there's not a lot of small talk. It's pretty much get down to it. There's not a whole lot of self-disclosure. Bay McLaughlinSure. So it's not as personable if that's what you mean. Ken WhiteRight. Bay McLaughlinBut it is, really. Actually, all the business happens after anyways. It's never during the meetings until you already have a relationship. So you'll hear about Guan Xi in China. Same thing happens in Russia and Japan. Like in Japan, until you sit down to dinner and the boss takes his jacket off, no business is going to be done. It's just part of the culture. So I think in America, you expect to get business done in the meeting. Over there, it's more of chitchat, chitchat, chitchat, go get lunch, chitchat a little bit more. But the end of the day, we're not doing anything until we've had drinks, we've done dinner. I trust you at that point, you can start doing real work, but it's certainly more curt or to the point in that. So it can be a little uncomfortable from a cultural perspective, very blunt, which is different, I think, for Americans, you like to tiptoe around things a lot more PC, but you definitely don't kid yourself. You have not done any business all day long until you've gone out for drinks and dinner, and they trust you. Ken WhiteAbsolutely. Now, in the piece you wrote, you talked about three mistakes I made when I moved from Silicon Valley to Asia. And the one is name-dropping, which has cracked me up when I read it. Tell us about that. Bay McLaughlinSo we actually just talked about this today. Someone else brought this up in the career center, I think. It's this idea that when someone says, I know someone, or they see them in your LinkedIn network or whatever it might be. In Asia, they just ask for it that's it. Just seems like it makes sense. Ken WhiteOh. Bay McLaughlinFor me, it was Peter Thiel who said, oh, you know Peter Thiel, you're part of the Thiel foundation. I would like him to come to Asia. We'll invite him. He should be the keynote speaker. I just laughed, thinking, well, I personally don't know Peter. I've been a part of his foundation for a long time. He actually just recently came to our office a couple of weeks ago, so now I do but didn't then. But I had a formal invitation written and signed to invite Peter to Hong Kong. And this is something I said casually in drinks a week prior that would never happen here. Right. People understand the cultural context of they're in my network. If it's really that important, I'll find a way in for you. But if it's really not that big of a deal, I'm probably not going to go out of my way to do that. Right. And generally, in Silicon Valley, I'll send you an email introduce you two. If you care to talk up to you, but I have no, you know, no credibility or reason to care if it does or doesn't. My job is just to make a quick email introduction. Asia, they will expect to actually have access to that person, have a formal meeting, do something of substance, which is definitely a different expectation than growing up here. Ken WhiteSo be careful about who you say, you know. No question. Bay McLaughlinDefinitely. Ken WhiteYour second point was old money doesn't matter. What does that mean? Bay McLaughlinFor me, it was being in Silicon Valley, it was so cool because it was this tech thing, and I always call it the web one, web two, web three type people. So web one would be your IBMs, Microsoft, Oracles, Steve Jobs, Apple. Web two would be the Jack Dorsey, and Twitters and Facebook and Zuckerbergs and Airbnb, and all these other people. And now you have all these new ones like Oculus and Nest and all these other people. But this money is not that big. But people are blown away by the fact you have 100 million dollar business, or you have a billion dollar where it's really just like an equity deal or stock deal. So people have a hard time, I think, understanding what wealth really is. And I thought, well, that's the real wealth, right? That's what I've been told my whole life. Move to Asia, and you find out. Okay, A, you've never seen money like what Asia has. It's kind of like the Middle East in that way. American money and European money is incredibly small compared to the money out there. And you also recognize that the normal person you just hung out with and had drinks is a conglomerate of a family. And you had no idea because you can't search it. It's very opaque. There's almost no transparency. You can't go to LinkedIn and find out the guy who you sat down with family, invented Roulette, have sapphire mines, own all of the TV stations on all of Hong Kong and everything else, and you just played basketball with them. Ken WhiteInteresting. Bay McLaughlinYou can't find it out like you can here. Ken WhiteRight. Bay McLaughlinWe tout it in the west in a way, and the east, they're very quiet about it, and they don't want you to know, and they want you to have access to their sort of empire that they've built. So I didn't really pay attention to it. I've quickly realized that if you want to do anything of substance in Asia, you'll be dealing in the families in that country, like the eight families in Japan or the Korean families. There are a very small group of people that run these countries. Ken WhiteRight. Bay McLaughlinIt's not the government, just like it's here. But yeah, you definitely have to pay attention, learn, figure out what you can do to support them. Again, you have to bring value to the table first. Ken WhiteSure. Bay McLaughlinAnd they have to trust you. I think there's a lot of ability to access that. It takes a lot longer than you think it would, but if you do it correctly, you can really learn a lot about the cultures there because they have built those countries, and they can teach you a lot more. So that's my other point with that, is partnering first versus trying to go build something by yourself in Asia. Ken WhiteAnd that takes a long time in any kind of a business relationship, whether you're doing it at home. But here you're dealing with two different cultures. So patience sounds like it's pretty important. Bay McLaughlinCritical, and for me, again, it was this idea that I could do something in Asia but didn't know how much impact I could really have. And then, when I partnered with my two co-founders, that was when I realized just the access they had, having been there for so much longer, and the kind of level of game that we could start playing together because we are so much stronger as a team than as individuals. But for me, I had to leverage their access. There's no question. Ken WhiteYour third point in the piece is I can figure it out. I can do this on my own. And you learn some lessons. Bay McLaughlinYeah, that goes to the partnering thing. It certainly wasn't out of arrogance. I realized. I told myself I'd give myself around a year. That was my mental time saying I've been doing business in the States my whole life. Of course, I would need some transition time to just educate myself. So I got on a tour, and I started flying to as many countries as I could, as fast as I could, just to learn. And I popped on a couple of these Silicon Valley kind of flight things that people do, and you just go meet other entrepreneurs and investors. And it was actually surprising, to be frank. There was impact and value to add very quickly. They really do value the Western leadership style. They really are looking for it. They're very hungry for that, however, not in a vacuum. You need to find a way to apply those lessons and logic to the local ways of doing business, the local talent, the local culture. So there was real value to add there. But I realized that you can't just come in by yourself and do that. You have to tweak it and change it. And so again, through partnering, I've been able to learn, get access, and figure out how can I actually utilize what I was good at in a way that applied to the east and actually now turning it around. I just gave a talk in Manhattan around manufacturing distribution and trade in China, which I could have never spoken about a year and a half two years ago. But now I'm able to come back and take those lessons in such a short time, and I'll bring it back to the west. So it's really pretty interoperable, but you can't just outright apply either to the other. You have to tweak it. Ken WhiteSo you said one culture to the other. You're over there one day. You're back here another. What kind of adjustments do you have to make when you do come back home, and you're in a business setting? Bay McLaughlinIt's been crazy. I didn't expect it. I thought it would be the same old, same old. So I've been to San Francisco twice on this trip. I'm going again for the third time next week, and I was there for almost eight years, so I figured it would just be like coming home. Ken WhiteRight. Bay McLaughlinIt is in a lot of ways. But it was surprising how different it was, even just having been gone a year and a half, two years. It was far more dramatic. And I don't know if I could probably describe it perfectly off the top of my head, but a couple of things were the pace. The pace in the west is just so much slower. Even Manhattan seems slow, having been in Asia now. We have two offices in China. You come back from China. You're exhausted. They work tirelessly. There's just nonstop energy, and also the volume of people, the amount of international deals, and people you're talking to on a regular basis. It's super energizing when you're there. But coming back here, just a quick realization of, wow, we actually move so much slower. And that's okay. It's just different. Ken WhiteSure. Bay McLaughlinBut I was surprised how dramatic it was, how much slower it was on a day-to-day basis and simple cultural cues that, let's say, the directness or the desire to get a deal done, which I think is probably more of a Manhattan thing than a West Coast but I was there for so long. Ken WhiteSure. Bay McLaughlinIt was more of a how do we get the community involved, how do we do what's right for this, how do we do what's right for that? Versus in Asia, it's what's in it for me. What's in it for you? Let's do this deal right now. Ken WhiteGot it. Bay McLaughlinAnd it's to the point as long as it's clear we're in good shape. But they don't like to waste a lot of time just chitchatting. It's like they like, you know, going back to later. Once you have that relationship, I can get more done in a week than I can get done in a month over there. Once we have the Guanxi, once there's a relationship, I started looking back at the west and realizing how inefficient business meetings are and how inefficient the relationships are here because you're always having to recommit to the relationship. Versus in Asia, once you're in, you never have to go back again. Ken WhiteInteresting. Bay McLaughlinYou establish it once. Ken WhiteOh, that's interesting. Bay McLaughlinSo I can speed through business deals afterwards. I spend a lot of time upfront, and then I can get infinitely more done afterwards. So you have to invest it on the front, but you get it back very quickly on the back end. Ken WhiteSo it's got to be a little frustrating for you. You really have to shift gears and get your head together when you're going from one place to the other, don't you? Bay McLaughlinI mean, I'm learning. I've only been doing it for a year and a half or so over there, so it's new. But I think from all the mentors that I have, I think that you start realizing that it just becomes ingrained like any other skill. I think it was just translating East Coast to West Coast for the first couple of years, and then I started doing it enough where you fall into a rhythm, and now I'm in Asia, so I'm falling into a new rhythm. But most of the people that I've known that have done this sort of east and west business life, that it becomes a muscle like anything else. But right now, I'm sort of in that new transition, so I'm able to identify those. Probably a good time to talk about it because I'll probably forget it very quickly, but yeah, it's new. It's conscious now, but I assume that goes away pretty quickly. Ken WhiteSo many MBA students and younger business professionals, and not so younger, are thinking about what if I were to do that. And when I talked to, especially some of the younger ones, it's the social aspect. Yes, I'm ready to work. What about when I'm not working? What's the social life like? How was that for you, to, and for people in your situation? Because I'm sure, you run across so many Americans over there. Bay McLaughlinYeah. So the big reason we ended up doing our headquarters in Hong Kong was exactly for this. So in San Francisco, a big part of my life at Apple and in startups is building community and culture. So that's something that I am very aware of. And generally, the Asian mentality is real estate first. Build a building. People will come. Well, that works for rentals and everything else, but for culture, that's not how it works. And so Hong Kong seemed like a natural place after having been to Shenzhen and Guangzhou and Shanghai and Beijing and Thailand and all these other places, realizing these are all fantastic places. They have skills and capital and things that you need to do in those various cities for different reasons. But that's not going to be where someone from London or someone from New York, or someone from San Francisco decides to uproot their life and just drop into Shenzhen. It's just not going to happen. And the people that do hats off. Fantastic. Most of them come back to Hong Kong and go, glad to be out of China. It's great for certain reasons, and a lot of people do love living there, but for the normal kind of swath of people, you take 1000 people, 998 of them are going to rather live in Hong Kong and realize that it's actually pretty much wherever you could be. You could be in Manhattan. You could be in LA. You could be in San Francisco. You could be anywhere. It's very simple. It's a fantastic life. It's very fast, it's very humid in the summer, but you literally could be anywhere in the world. It's super comfortable. And now you're a five-hour flight from 70% of the world's population, and the coolest beaches and jungles and fun things to go explore. Ken WhiteYeah, no doubt. So someone who's thinking about this comes to you and says, I think I'm ready to take the plunge. What kind of advice do you give them? Bay McLaughlinI just had this happen in Manhattan. I generally say first thing is you get your ten-year China visa right now. It's $100 guaranteed. Obama passed all that, so just go get it's. $100. Just do it once. You save $1,000 if you do it, and you end up going once a year, so might as well get it. That gives you the comfort and ability just to go to China anytime you feel like. Hong Kong, as an American, you can just pass through freely. So you get 90 days, no issue. And then I make a joke, but I'm serious. Just type in Brinc with the C and Google Maps and come to the office. We're in Central, right off the escalator, happy to show you around. It's the comfortable neighborhood to be in, but I don't think you have to overthink it. I think a lot of people really do think like there's all these websites. Plan your first trip to China. It's not that big of a deal. I think I was surprised. Hong Kong, you literally could just be anywhere, and then you pop over 45-minute shuttle bus or taxi, and in three years, we'll have a 15-minute bullet train into Shenzhen and a 45-minute bullet train into Guangzhou, which is now 2 hours. You could just pop over for the day, go get some dim sum, go hang out, walk around, see what's there, go to the wash on Bay, the electronics market, or whatever, and then come back to Hong Kong and just try it out. It's not as difficult as people think it is, so I think don't overthink it. Just come check out Asia. Ken WhiteExcellent. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with the COO of Brinc, Bay McLaughlin, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Bay McLaughlin, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time, have a safe and productive week. |
![Dr. Kelly Crace](images/kelly-crace-3-thumb.jpg)
![How to Handle Stress](images/kelly-crace-3-thumb.jpg)
Dr. Kelly Crace
Episode 3: September 15, 2015
How to Handle Stress
Dr. Kelly Crace is a psychologist and the Associate Vice President for Health & Wellness at William & Mary. He studied stress and helps athletes, students, and teams understand the types of stress and how to deal with them.
Podcast (audio)
Kelly Crace: How to Handle Stress TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
|
TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Stress. Regardless of who you are and what you do, you experience stress every day. Experts tell us there are two types of stress the kind that can be helpful and motivating and the kind that can be harmful to your life, your mood, and your relationships. Dr. Kelly Crace is a psychologist and Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at the College of William & Mary. For over 25 years, Crace has worked with individuals, athletes and teams, companies, and organizations to understand stress and how to deal with it. He shares his expertise with us on today's podcast. Here's our conversation about stress with psychologist Dr. Kelly Crace. Ken WhiteKelly, thank you. Thank you greatly for sharing your time and your expertise. I've heard great things about you. I'm really interested to talk about the topic of stress. It seems to be something that so many people in all walks of life talk about. How do you professionally what is your role in terms of stress and stress management? Kelly CraceOur role in the university campus and in working with organizations is really trying to help people have a deeper understanding of stress. There's a lot of connotations around this concept of stress. Most of it is a negative connotation that stress is bad and that we need to do what we can to reduce stress which research tends to show that's actually not the case. In fact, the most negative health aspect of stress is the belief that stress is bad. And so it's about being able to understand stress at a more complex level. And we do find that there are some aspects of stress that are bad. One of the main considerations is the stress I am experiencing, purposeful stress or more fear-based stress. And they actually go hand in hand. And so it's something that one has to manage, and we find that people that one part if you could think of stress of having two components. One is the stress that's associated with caring. It's physiologically impossible to feel stress over something unimportant to you. Ken WhiteOh, sure. Kelly CraceWhenever we feel stress, we know that that's something that's important to you, and that's a good thing. So it's really about kind of looking at the neuroscience of caring what happens in your brain when you decide to care about something, and that brings up the other aspect of stress, which is uncertainty because everything we care about has some level of uncertainty. There's always an unpredictability to either something or someone we care about. So once I decide I care about Ken, one of the things that will then immediately come up to me is the what-if question. What if something happens to this person that I care about? Ken WhiteSure. Kelly CraceAnd so that's the uncertainty component which then brings fear into place. And so what we've learned is stress is this kind of very dynamic dance between what we care about and what we fear and how do people hold that well. When we look at the area of flourishing, we find that people that flourish are not less afraid. They just hold fear really well. Ken WhiteWell, what is the difference, right? You're talking about some things that are pretty near and dear to our hearts. This is important stuff. And so some people do seem to get, I guess, for lack of a better term, worked up, then others do what makes the successful person in terms of this successful what tools they employ. Kelly CraceRight. When we look at how we kind of fell into this is our work that first started with the work of values. Is what do people do when they clarify that this is important to me, and you can recognize that, especially in the age population that I work mostly within the university setting. These are young adults that have been raised with certain values, and now they're coming into an environment and starting to clarify for the first time which of these will I own as mine and which of these do I disagree with in developing my own value system. When you look at that kind of values constellation, that value system that is now personally yours or personally mine, what that starts to help us understand is values is your they are your purest form of motivation, and they're your number one source of fulfillment, but they're also your number one source of stress. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceSo there's that two-edged sword, that double-edged sword between once we decide to care, we experience the benefit of motivation. We experience the challenge of stress, and what we essentially find is people that struggle with managing stress well. And by that, I mean struggle with resilience when they struggle with being able to manage the hardness of life, the unfairness of life, the challenges of juggling so many things that we care about. People that struggle with doing that drift into this place of defining themselves more by the outcomes of what they do than the expression of their values. So why are we vulnerable to do that? That's just a human thing that's not a if you dare to care then you dare then you are absolutely bringing in the portal of fear. So what we find is the reason why we're overstressed we're unhealthfully stressed is human beings are not really taught how to in a sophisticated way manage fear. Ken WhiteYeah. Kelly CraceAnd so if we're not taught how to manage fear, you'll go the natural way. The neurologically natural way of coping with fear is basically two pathways. One is either through overcontrol and mastery, and the other is through avoidance and escape. So if I can do this perfectly, then I don't have to worry about failing. I don't have to worry about the fear of the what if. Or if I can just step away from this uncomfortable fear until it has to be done. Well, when it has to be done, then it doesn't matter if you're afraid. So if you look at that kind of overcontrol, which we define as perfectionism, or if you look at that avoidance and escapist kind of approach, which we define as procrastination. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CracePerfectionism and procrastination are the neurologically natural ways we cope with values-based fear, the values-based uncertainty that's what we know. That's what we're. That's what we've learned. And so that's what we do because we're not taught a different way. So we become aware of that as early as middle school, eighth or ninth-grade young adolescents and emerging adults become aware of these things are starting to matter to me. And then they start to become aware of all the things that can get in the way of that. So then they develop that short path, that short path of how do I get there. And that's usually based on outcomes if I can get these grades and get these opportunities to get into this school, to build this portfolio, to get into this graduate program, and get these relationships. The short path becomes their way of managing that fear through control. And fortunately too well, fortunately, or unfortunately, however, we want to determine they can escape instantly today. They can immediately distract themselves and escape away from when they're too stressed. The problem with that the vulnerability of that is we start to define that short path by outcomes so that any detour from those outcomes or unexpected outcomes or disappointment becomes something that is threatening to us, something overwhelming to us. So it's no longer just a disappointment. It's a failure. It's a it's actually an obstacle that might threaten my ability to get where I want to get. Ken WhiteSo how do you teach people to manage fear? Kelly CraceSo we work on actually moving them toward a place of holding fear better, and what that actually looks like is that values are in the foreground, and fear is right in the background. It's not about eclipsing fear or getting rid of fear. It's recognizing they go hand in hand. It's how do you lead with values instead of leading with fear. So if I, if I followed you around in this very annoying manner all day and asked you over two minutes, why did you do that? Why did you do that? There would be, honestly, times during the day where you and me, if we were asked that question we, would say because I'm afraid that if I don't, this will happen. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceThere'll be other times in the day when I ask you why did you do that. You'll say because it's right for me to do it. It's right because this is something that matters to me. It comes down to this kind of simple equation. We find that during a day, if you will lead more of the why you're doing something, if you lead more with your values than with fear, we tend to flourish, and if in a day's time, by the end of the day, you lead more with fear than with your values. Then you tend to kind of plateau and stay stuck at good. Not an awful thing. It's not a bad thing. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceIt's just a more stressful thing. It's a less-than-healthy stressful thing. The hard part about all this, Ken, is our most natural way when we lead with fear when we say so. How do you know that? What does that mean? The reason is when we lead with fear, that puts us in a need state instead of a values state. And when I'm in a need state, what I'm needing is reassurance that everything's gonna be okay. When I'm leading with fear, I need to know that everything's going to be okay. The only way I have to be able to determine that everything's going to be okay is through outcomes. So I'll start really investing a lot of my worth and identity on what's happening to me. The experiences that I'm having and what that then leads to is this chronic level of evaluation. This chronic scorekeeping. How am I doing now? How about now? How about now? Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceIn fact, chronic the chronically evaluative mindset is the number one cause of insomnia today. When I'm quieting my body and activating my mind, am I keeping score on the day of what I'm doing? Well, we shift into work is moving from this very outcome-oriented or experiential mindset of I'm defining myself by what I experienced today to more of an expressive mindset, and by expressive, we're talking about the expression of your values. That if I start to define myself by the expression of what I believe is right for me and focus on the actions of that we tend to find ourselves very resilient because we're more process-oriented we're able to go into a deeper level of critical thinking a deeper level of creativity, and we're less judgmental. So if you look at the heart of what trumps fear, essentially, what trumps fear is trust, and so when we are in a state of trust, we put fear in its right perspective. Well, the question then is, what do you trust? The one thing that we can always trust is our personal truth, and our personal truth are our values. Ken WhiteInteresting. Kelly CraceSo if I define the day, if I start to define the day by what I express, the expression of my values, and hang my hat on that and let the outcomes just be the mood of the day, I'm not saying outcomes aren't important they're critically important that it's with those outcomes. If they're more the mood of the day than the worth of the day, that determines whether you flourish or whether you just kind of stay stuck at good. Ken WhiteYou mentioned insomnia which made me think of maybe meditation. People thinking the mind just going and checking off the list. This was good. This was not so good. Meditation seems to be so discussed so often in the business world. Many people, CEOs included, are experimenting with it. What actually is meditation? What's it do for an individual? Kelly CraceMeditation is that it's kind of a catch and recover kind of process. When we are in the state of stress, when we lead with fear, when we're vulnerable to this kind of doubt and uncertainty, our mind either goes very forward or very backward. We were either thinking forward as to the what if we were reflecting back and judging ourselves. Ken WhiteYup. Kelly CraceAnd so we just naturally, if you allow your mind to drift, you're either going to go forward or backwards. It's unnatural to stay in the present. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceYet we find to the degree we can be very mindful and accepting what is happening around us and focus on what is right for me to do right now. What's the right devotion of my time and energy right now? That's when we find that not only are you working at your best, but that's when you're also the most curative. That's when you're kind of in a healing state. Because when I'm able to be absorbed in the moment and be expressive in the moment, that's when we're the most productive, the most fulfilled, and the most present. It's actually we you've heard of the zone flow experience. Ken WhiteSure. Kelly CraceEverything just clicks. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceThat is something that we used to think we can't control that we just hope for. At the right moment of our training, when it's time to perform, we hope for that zone. We actually can train that more successfully because when you're in the zone, you're actually in a fully expressive mindset. Ken WhiteAnd the fear is just put away. Kelly CraceIt's there. It's just managed well. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceSo if you, when you're in the zone, what is actually happening is you're in a completely expressive mindset, and it looks like this. In this moment, I am completely accepting that this is the most right thing for me to do right now that I am fully enough to do it. That I'm going to trust my training and talent to date, you don't have to be perfectly there yet, but I trust that my training and talent today is enough. And then this is the last one, which is the kicker, and I fully accept whatever happens. When you're at that place of acceptance and expression, that's when you're in the zone, and that's what we train people to do. To focus on defining themselves more by what's the most right devotion of my time and energy today. Be fully engaged in it with full acceptance of whatever happens, and that moves us to a deeper form of excellence. Ken WhiteYou've been at this for a while. You were talking earlier, you know, a couple of decades now. How have you seen the work world change in regards to what you do and what you study? Is it are we more or are we tighter than we used to be, or are we more tense? How have you seen the changes? Kelly CraceFor very real reasons, for very understandable reasons, at a systemic level, we have become more fear-based. We have we lead with fear more at institutional levels. Are we more reactive to what is going on, or the decisions we're making more reactive based on the fear of the what-if? We're much busier out of fear when we when you look at one of the number one causes of unhealthy stress. When you ask people in the workforce what's the biggest source of stress to you right now. Most of them will say email management, and part of the reason for that is the fear of not being responsive, the fear of being judged negatively if I don't immediately respond to this person when they're asking for that response, and they stay it's ongoing. So being able to kind of help them understand that because of things that are going on around them that are very real and very pressuring, like in the university environment, we are demanded since, you know, the college life changed a few years ago with Virginia Tech. Ken WhiteOh, sure. Kelly CraceIt changed forever. And with that, there became this pressure of us being perfectly predictive and perfectly protective and which is something we will perfectly fail at. But from that, with that fear-based need for us to pay attention to that, are the decisions we're making more protective and more trying to reduce fear, or can they come back to what is right for us to do, what is really right for us to expect of ourselves to provide as healthy an environment as we possibly can and to train young adults to be very active consumers active and mature consumers of health. Part of that is about helping them redefine what wellness really is, instead of this kind of dichotomous level of sick or well, to help them understand the multiple dimensionality of wellness. That helps us made a stress better. Ken WhiteIf someone struggling in this arena, and many people I talked to are. There's so much going on in technology. Of course, email and I agree when we teach corporate groups at our Center for Corporate Education. Email management comes up every single time. So many people, I think, have probably a higher level of fear or stress than they'd like. What's step one for them to just sort of feel a little bit better? What is one of the first things they ought to do? Kelly CraceThe courage to set boundaries and that is so hard because what we find when we look at people that are overstressed, and we do some assessment in terms of what is their knowledge level what is their content knowledge of stress management. We find especially in the workforce and at the college level. Individuals know what to do to take care of themselves. They don't need certain techniques and strategies. They know how to manage time. They know the techniques of stress management. They know what they're supposed to do in terms of eating. They know what rest is about. It's not that we need to teach them necessarily the content. It's when you ask them what keeps you from doing what you know is healthy. The phrase usually always starts out with I am afraid that. Ken WhiteWow. Kelly CraceAnd so they don't set boundaries for themselves out of the fear of whatever the fear of failure, the fear of disappointing others, whatever it is, they keep saying yes, and they don't say no. So the courage to boundary, the courage to boundary your email responsiveness, the courage to boundary your commitment to activities. What we try to help them see that is as a fight. There is no just to that you don't just set boundaries. You don't just do these things. You recognize that it takes courage to do it and that you fight to do it for the rightness of it for the health of it, which is just really important to be able to do. So one of the things that we always tell the individuals that are coming to college campuses is that, and we have found it especially relevant working with organizations. My background is working with multigenerational family organizations. And so that's particularly relevant during transition. But one of the things, if you do nothing else, commit to this one strategy, and that is give yourself a 24-hour pause before you say yes to anything, even if you know you're going to do it. Say sounds great. Let me get back to you tomorrow. It's the campaign of give it a day, then during that one 24 hours if you will go back and look at what you're doing and assume that you're 100 percent committed because you will be. If I'm going to take off on this thing. What value does it have to me, and at what cost to take it on? If they'll do that work, then they'll know that if I take this on, I've got to give something up. Ken WhiteRight. Kelly CraceWhere if I cannot give up anything. Then I have to do this awful thing which is say no but doing so in the faith that something else is going to come along. It is the hardest thing in the world to say no to something that has that's connected to our values and because it's just it feels wrong to say no to something that has meaning to us. And so one of the things that we find with people that flourish is they ask a very important question to themselves that's attached to their values. They not only ask what's right for me, but they also ask at what cost. And so that's one of the best ways to boundary our lives is to keep that question alive of at what cost to take on this thing. Ken WhiteKelly, thank you. This is fascinating. We could talk for hours but thank you so much for sharing your expertise. We really appreciate your time. Kelly CraceIt's a real pleasure, Ken. It's nice spending time with you. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with psychologist Dr. Kelly Crace, Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at the College of William & Mary. If you'd like to learn more about understanding and dealing with stress, especially in terms of how it relates to your values. Dr. Crace shared a website with us that he helped develop. The address is lifevaluesinventory.org. That's lifevaluesinventory.org. It's a free site that focuses on values clarification and a personal development plan. Well, that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Dr. Kelly Crace, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe and productive week. |
![Joe Cohen](images/joe-cohen-2-thumb.jpg)
![The Evolution of Public Relations](images/joe-cohen-2-thumb.jpg)
Joe Cohen
Episode 2: September 11, 2015
The Evolution of Public Relations
Joe Cohen is the immediate past Chair of the Public Relations Society of America. He's also the Senior Vice President for Communication with KIND Healthy Snacks in New York City. We chat with Joe about the new role of PR professionals and how social media has changed the industry.
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Joe Cohen: The Evolution of Public Relations TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host, Ken White. Thanks for listening. Public relations. It's come a long way from the days of the news release. Today's PR professionals are experts in strategic communication and reputation management, and they can have a positive, measurable effect on a business or organization. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is PR's professional organization, with over 22,000 members worldwide. Joe Cohen is the immediate past chair of PRSA. He's also Senior Vice President for Communication at KIND Healthy Snacks in New York City. We sat down with Cohen recently in New York to discuss public relations, how the field is constantly evolving, and what it can do for your organization. Here's our conversation with Joe Cohen, Senior VP for Communication at KIND Healthy Snacks. Ken WhiteJoe, thanks. It's nice to see you. You're in a new role, but before we start, let's talk about your previous role, where you and I got to know each other at the Public Relations Society of America. What was your role there? Joe CohenSure, Ken. It's always great to see you. Now, if we go back a couple of years, more than a couple of years at PRSA, I was the Volunteer National Chair, and for a time, I was co-interim CEO because we had a CEO transition during the middle of my year as National Chair. And it was a very interesting time to serve as the Chair and co-interim CEO of the organization. Within PR, there's been so much change in recent years. Social media just really caused a paradigm shift within PR, whereas in the past, public relations had been really all about earned media and securing placement in the press for the companies you represent and your clients if you're on the agency side. Once the social media revolution took place, PR people found themselves wearing more hats than ever before, playing a role in advertising, working much more closer with marketing professionals, being challenged to measure their work at a deeper level because you were able to with a lot of the different social media platforms, being able to measure sentiment in real-time and commentary and how often articles are shared and all that good stuff. And also, PR people began to have more of a role in content creation, whereas, in the past, PR sometimes was acting in a little bit of a silo. When you look at platforms like Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, and dynamic websites, you started to see a lot more necessary collaboration between the disciplines. And serving as Chair of PRSA during this time frame, when social media was more or less leveling the playing field between the disciplines, it was just an amazing time to serve. And as an organization, we were challenged to help our members become more adept at wearing new hats and understanding the fundamentals of integrated marketing and advertising, and media buying because more and more of those competencies folded into their jobs. So, amazing experience. I had a chance to work on some pretty cool programs, such as the MBA initiative, with you. Ken WhiteRight. Joe CohenAnd now, as I conclude my tenure on the National Board this December, I feel as though I'm leaving the organization headed in a really exciting direction where you just see PR expanding and shifting and literally expanding. I mean, the category is one of the fastest growing sectors, according to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics. So, in addition to all the change, now is a really exciting time to go into PR, and I see a lot of companies and leaders who are more and more beginning to understand and value the role of reputation management and strategic communications within a larger business strategy and an integrated marketing framework. Ken WhiteI was on the bus from LaGuardia into town the other day and sitting next to a college student who is majoring in public relations. And we were talking about the difference that you just said social media made, and we really didn't measure back in the day. There was no way to measure. And you could see your eyes just saying, really? How did you quantify what you did? We didn't that much. It was really a persuasive presentation to the board or the shareholders is what you would do. So it is interesting to see that shift in social media. Would you say that was the biggest thing you've seen in your tenure? Joe CohenThat was a game-changer. I think that with in the past, the way you typically would measure would be the number of articles, the amount of editorial space you'd have in articles, the ad equivalency, which is a metric that we don't use too often anymore. But I think social media and really when you look at a lot of the changes in the way people just consume media and share information. When I had started, I went from radio into PR in 1999, and when I made that jump at the time, there was no Facebook. Their email was still pretty relatively new back then, and I think that also people looked at that time to their local radio stations, terrestrial radio, to their daily newspaper for news, and it was still kind of a new thing to use new media like websites to get information. And now you fast forward to this age of information overload when people are just absorbing bite-size information and news travels so quickly. One, it's had a big ability in impacting PR people to more effectively measure their work. It's definitely changed the landscape because we have these new mediums to communicate. I think part of it also is it's really heightened the importance of reputation management because whereas we used to talk about a 24/7 news cycle. Now it's a three-second news cycle. And information travels so quickly that the reputations of venerable brands could be tarnished in an instant. So I think in addition to a lot of the differences in the way people consume media and the way we measure PR and the expanded role of PR just because of the nature of this media environment, the importance of having a strong PR function in place is just critical. I think that's really helped business leaders begin to understand on a deeper level the value of the function and embrace it wholeheartedly more and more. Ken WhiteSenior Vice President Communication for KIND. What an interesting product, an interesting company. Tell us about KIND. Joe CohenSure. I mean, KIND is a great brand. I'd been on the PR agency side for 15 years, and I did that concurrently while I served on the National Board of PRSA. And I made the jump in-house to KIND for a number of reasons. One is it was a brand that I enjoyed for years and years. It was when I was going through Business Traveler at Hudson News I would grab a KIND bar, and it was kind of my go-to. And at Starbucks, I would grab a KIND bar. And what I always liked about it was you could tell it was a great product. It was a little bit better than the other products out there. And I was always kind of a bar guy. And as I learned more and more about the company, I started to realize that it was real premium ingredients, whereas other products were kind of these mashed-up emulsified slab bars. This was a bar using whole ingredients. One of our trademark sayings is ingredients you can see and pronounce, and part of the brand presentation and identity is transparent packaging. KIND of was one of the first to do that. It really shined attention on the ingredients. And now that was back in 2004. Now you look at the snack category, and there's just a lot more brands using whole ingredients and a lot more brands that are focused on creating snack foods that consumers can feel good about eating but also tastes good. So I liked just functionally that the bars tasted good, and I felt like I was eating something good. Also, what really resonated with me about KIND is that it's a purpose-driven brand, and one of the core parts of the business is giving back and spreading kindness. And we have an arm within the company called the KIND Movement that's all about supporting causes, and we like to say spreading kindness one snack and one act at a time. There's many purpose-driven brands out there that are just changing the way companies do business, like Patagonia and Warby Parker, and having a chance to run the communications team at KIND and represent a brand that I was excited about that I still feel has so much potential, and also a brand that really just has such incredible values. That was something that I felt like I had to make the leap, and I'm really glad I did, and it's been an exciting year. I think also part of what I liked about KIND is that our CEO and founder, Daniel Lubetsky, really values communications. And he has a deeper understanding of the mechanics of communications than I've ever seen a CEO exhibit before. And the level of support, the level of focus, the role of what we call our comms team, having a seat at the table, those are all things that excited me about KIND. And having been here now almost ten months, it just feels great to be part of what I believe is a terrific company and also a movement that's reshifting the focus within the snack foods category and also, in many ways, the way companies do business. Ken WhiteHow is that movement affecting communication in KIND? What are some of the things you're doing that maybe others aren't doing or others are doing? Joe CohenYeah, well, I think part of it is that we're very transparent with the press, and I think that's something that more and more brands are doing. Whereas you kind of think about old school PR thinking, where you kind of want to only give so much. For us, it's one because one of our values is transparency. We feel inclined that we need to walk the talk on transparency, but also, we genuinely just embrace the press and bring them within our doors. Often times we entertain media at our headquarters, where we answer questions head-on. And I think it's something that when media asks questions, where do your products come from? Where do your ingredients come from? That sort of thing. Those are questions we address. And I think it's easy when you have a product that you really believe in and that's great, and that is made from great ingredients. But I think, in general, that's something that you see more and more brands doing. Ken WhiteWell, in the old days, it was sort of write a release and tell them to print a story. It's just not the case at all, is it? There's got to be a relationship between the media and the organization. Joe CohenOh, sure. I think when you look tactically at the way we approach interacting with reporters, it's very different now. I think a lot of it comes down to part of what's always been essential to PR is relationship building. But I think that now what you're seeing is there's less media, there's many more outlets, but I think a lot of outlets are working with smaller teams. And because they're constantly under pressure to crank out content, reporters are less likely to have time to meet up with you or to go to press events, and there's tighter deadlines than there had been. And so, in this real-time environment, we look for different ways to build relationships. And also it's important for us to deliver upon the belief that many press have that we're going to be a kind company. So I think that some of that comes down to figuring out creative ways to meet with reporters, to creating experiences, to engage with them digitally. But also, a lot of the old-school PR practices of getting out there and doing face-to-face meetings and going on the road and doing events, those still exist. You just have to do them in a manner that makes it less of a burden on press. And some of that comes down to timing, some of that comes down to making the extra effort and going to them. And a lot of it comes down to just having really cool stories that they want to report on that they'll make time to meet with you. Ken WhiteWhich is kind of the key, isn't it? It's about content. We were talking just the other day a group of MBA students about that, and some of them were business owners and had worked in the field, saying that I had a CEO that wanted this in the press regardless of content. And they'd scream if it didn't get placed. But why would a reporter run it if it wasn't all that interesting? So it's about content. Joe CohenYeah. Well, I think, Ken, that's a really good point. Before I had gone into PR, I mentioned to you that one of my early jobs was radio. And I also had studied broadcast journalism. And I think that having that understanding of what happens on the other side of, we used to say, the fax machine back then, what happens in a newsroom? And understanding the pressure on reporters and journalists to crank out compelling content that will make people buy a magazine or click on a website, or not flip the switch on a radio. I think that understanding that it's on us as communicators to give the press content to work with, that is something that was true back then, it holds true now. And I think that you need to approach interactions with the media not as transactional but as a relationship where there's a certain amount of give and take. Ken WhiteSmall businesses don't have a considerable amount of money to have employees and to hire people. What would your advice be to someone with a fairly small business who doesn't yet have that communication or PR function? What might they do to get started, or what might they focus on? Joe CohenSure. Well, I think that there are a lot of good solo practitioners. And I think that, as in with any trade, within any trade, you want to begin to understand the fundamentals, and you want to begin to understand the mechanics of the way the business works. Certainly, there's people who will pick up the phone and call reporters themselves. I think, within certain contexts, that's fine. I think it's always good to have a little bit of knowledge in how to approach that. I think there's great universities where you could go to, and I'm sure just as your one is a fantastic one where you could go to begin to understand some of the fundamentals of what goes into strategic communications. I think it's also good to consult with PR people. I think that one thing that I like about PRSA is that it's very much a community of individuals who help one another. And I think that even if you don't work within the field, you could go to Prsa.org and find your local PRSA chapter. There's 115 chapters across the country. Go to a meeting and start speaking to some of the pros, and you may get some good ideas. So I think in between investing in education and actually going out and meeting some pros, I think that's a good combination for you to be well suited to launch your own PR campaign. Your own PR program and strategy. Ken WhiteSo back to KIND. What are you focusing on in your role? What are you looking to do in the next year or so? Joe CohenSure, I mean the business is growing rapidly. And believe it or not, even though we're now one of the fastest growing brands in the snack food category and certainly within the bar and snack bar space, there's still a lot of people who don't know the brand or they'll see our bars, and they may recognize them but not know the name. So we're still very much driving awareness, getting in front of consumers, getting in front of not just reporters, but health and nutrition experts because we found that a lot of doctors and registered dietitians and personal trainers all kind of look at our snacks as a go-to item that they recommend to their clientele. So building relationships within those verticals are very important to us, and I think also just as a company, making people aware of both the taste and nutrition aspects of our bars, but also telling our company story. And our CEO just penned his first ever book, which is called Do the KIND Thing. And in that book, he tells the story of how he built KIND from a startup into a national brand. And also, he speaks not just about the products and the idea of creating a purpose-driven brand, but he gives a lot of life lessons that basically espouses the values that we follow within here, which he calls his Ten Tenets. And I think that those are real. I mean, the ten tenets that he goes through, such as the end philosophy and the idea of avoiding false compromises, that you could create a product that's healthy and nutritious, and you could have a business that's profitable and delivers upon a social good. I think that's cool philosophy. That's something that certainly appealed to me when I made the leap to join here. I think telling that story is a huge part of our focus now. I think that in the coming years, as we continue to grow, it's just exciting to be a part of that. Ken WhiteWhat about the field PR communication? If you have a crystal ball, what do you think is in front of us? What might we see in terms of changes and, trends, strategies? Joe CohenThat's a great question, Ken. I think there's going to continue to be more and more integration between PR and the other disciplines. You see a lot of the big PR agencies that are shifting their business models to function more like an advertising agency or a media buying agency. And I don't think that they'll switch over to that, but I think having those capabilities where they could offer one-stop solutions to the brands they represent, I think on the same breadth, a lot of ad agencies are hiring PR experts to help build out that function. So I think you'll see agencies that may specialize in advertising or specialize in PR but are offering a much wider suite of services. And I think as the years progress, you'll continue to see more integration and possibly consolidation. I think measurement. We're getting so much more sophisticated at being able to measure. And as a CEO or a CMO or a brand director, or any leader within an organization, I recommend that you do challenge your PR teams to quantify their results. In the past, people may have said it wasn't possible. It definitely is. I think that, in general, the value of communications, particularly when it comes to crisis comm and reputation management, I think that'll only increase, especially when you look at all the it seems like there's a crisis du jour with different brands having issues every day. Ken WhiteYeah. Joe CohenSo I think that in between the continued integration, bigger focus on measurement, and I think continued elevation and perceived value of PR, I think those are some of the trends I'm seeing. I think also very specific within our field, a lot more specialization. Twenty years ago, you had a lot of PR generalists. Now you have a lot more people who specialize in food or in, automotive or in healthcare, and I think that will only continue. Ken WhiteJoe, thanks very much. It's great to catch up with you. Congratulations on a wonderful and successful term at PRSA, and good luck to you at KIND. Really, it's great to see you here. Joe CohenHey, Ken. Thank you so much. It's just wonderful to be a part of this podcast. Ken WhiteThank you. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with Joe Cohen, immediate past chair at the Public Relations Society of America and Senior Vice President for Communication at KIND Healthy Snacks, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Joe Cohen of KIND Healthy Snacks, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time, have a safe and productive week. |
![Dave Cote](images/dave-cote-1-thumb.jpg)
![Advice from a World Class CEO](images/dave-cote-1-thumb.jpg)
Dave Cote
Episode 1: September 9, 2015
Advice from a World Class CEO
Dave Cote is the chairman and CEO of Honeywell International Inc. Dave became chairman of the board in 2002 and is now one of the highest-paid executives in America.
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Dave Cote: Advice from a World Class CEO TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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|
TranscriptKen WhiteFrom the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies and tactics that can help make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. This week our podcast features a conversation with the Chairman and CEO of Honeywell, Dave Cote. Honeywell is a Fortune 100 diversified technology and manufacturing leader serving customers all across the world. Cote has served as Honeywell's leader since 2002. He's been recognized by several major media outlets as one of the most successful CEOs in all of business. He recently spoke to MBA students at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. We sat down with him shortly after his talk to get his views on leadership, corporate culture, and success. Here's our conversation with the chairman and CEO of Honeywell, Dave Cote. Ken WhiteThank you for taking the time. What we're looking for, and I know in a couple minutes after we're done, you'll be talking to the students at William & Mary. They're looking forward to it, and they love to see leaders and hear from leaders because they're aspiring leaders, as is our audience. What advice do you have for the aspiring leader who's listening? Dave CoteWell, I guess a couple of items. The first one, especially for a bunch of kids go into a school where everybody smart. Is it takes more than just being smart, and there's a I see plenty of smart people get beaten every day by others who are either more hungry and ambitious, have more common sense and good judgment, have better interpersonal skills, and an ability to work with others, and they beat smart people all the time. So it takes that combination of things. It's not like you can be not smart Ken WhiteRight. Dave Coteand you are fine, but it takes more than just being smart. The second one I think I'd point to is that when I talk about good leadership, and I have this discussion with my own folks is that it takes three things. Only one of which is really visible and is the one that everybody talks about. The first one is the ability to motivate a large group of people, and I have to say, for most of the stuff that I ever see on leadership, that's what it focuses on. How do you motivate a large group, but in reality, I have always thought that was 5 percent of the job, and you can do it with a rousing speech. Some people do it that way. Others do it through quiet example. There's a bunch of ways to motivate people. Ken WhiteSure. Dave CoteThe second one, though, that I don't think gets as much attention, and that's that good leadership requires being able to pick the right direction. If you can motivate a bunch of people, but you spend 40 years wandering in the desert, you're not a good leader. You might be able to motivate them, but you picked the wrong direction. And being able to pick that direction ends up being important, and I see too many leaders do something that I love the phrase. I didn't coin it, but I love it. But I refer to it as fad surfing. Where whatever the hot thing is, you can find that leader talking about it. Analysts will like it. Their people will like it because it's the hot thing. But fad surfing is a good way to lose money and get burned, and you just need to be really thoughtful about what direction you pick. And it is not as visible as that first item, but it is a heck of a lot more important. Then the third item I point to on leadership is okay. You've motivated everybody. You've picked the right direction. Can you now get everybody moving step by step in that direction? And the bigger the organization you have, the tougher that is to do because they all have different motivations themselves, no matter how motivated you think you've got them or how good the direction. You can't just devolve that to a bunch of others and say okay, now make everybody move. You have to be involved in how do you, step by step, move everybody in that right direction. And I've always thought those are the three big principles of leadership I actually covered in my share owners letter one year. That first one is 5 percent of the job, but it gets, I swear, 90 percent of the attention when people talk about good leadership. Ken WhiteRight. So in order to get them moving, what kind of a role does the CEO have to play? You've got a lot of things to do. How do you do that? Dave CoteI've learned that the big thing is to get out there. So I travel a lot in this job. I've been to over 100 countries, and what I do is actually meet with my people, meet with customers, and I just ask them how things are going. If there's something that I'm trying to get going in the company. I'll go out there and just say so what do you think of this. And the response you get is pretty interesting sometimes when people say um gee, I don't know what is it. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave CoteYou get a sense, oh, okay. Whatever I'm doing is not working right now, or when I go out there, I'll ask a group so what do you think I should be doing. What's hot on your agenda, and what do you wish I would do? What do you talk about when you get amongst yourselves and start to talk about things? What do you say, gee, you know what I wish Dave knew, or you know what I wish Dave would do is what are those things? Ken WhiteYeah. Dave CoteIt's remarkable the stuff that you end up learning. I also, of course also, try to set up metrics because I like to get some sense of movement, but I'm very cautious on metrics, and I always tell them again my own training classes, and this is kind of a takeoff on something. But I'd say if you measure something, the metric will get better. It doesn't mean anything actually gets better. Ken WhiteGood point. Dave CoteThe metric, though, will get better because everybody understands the metric is what's going to drive it, and if that's what you're going to look at by golly, organizations have learned to make metrics look better. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave CoteSo you have to be very careful what you pick and always try to make sure that you have like a counterbalancing measure if you're going to get the right things done. Ken WhiteSo it sounds like you're out a lot. I was going to ask you what your day is like what percentage of your day is spent on this and that. What percentage is spent being out there? It sounds like you're listening even more than you're talking when you're out there. Dave CoteWell, I try to. It's an interchange because they want to hear from me. Ken WhiteSure, sure. Dave CoteWhen I have like country dinners where I go to a country and get all the leaders are as many people as I can have dinner, and I break it up into two pieces. The first piece is a business review where they go through their businesses, and I ask them questions, and then for the second half, when we actually go to dinner, I say, okay, your turn, open season. What do you want to know? So I try to have it go back and forth and try to get a sense for what the politics of the country are like in terms of how my people view it versus others. So I spend about 50 percent of my time on the road would be I guess. I can't say I have a standard day, but I do have what I would call standard work during the course of the year. So I have the strategic planning reviews, the operating plan reviews, the people reviews, which I do three and four times a year. I have set aside growth days, board days, operations days to focus on specific topics I'm interested in. Then the rest of it, I do all kinds of stuff, whether it's operations, strategy, people, analysts and investors, government folks. It's really all over the place, and it's one of things I like about my job. Is I always said maybe a slight bit of ADD is not a bad thing because I have a tough time doing anything for more than two hours so? Ken WhiteYeah, perfect. You're in the right role. Dave CoteIt seems to appeal to my personality. Ken WhiteYeah. You're talking about you teach a lot of leadership to the folks in your company. I do a lot of that here through our Center for Corporate Education. The thing that the topic that comes up over and over and over again is I wake up, and I'm behind because of technology, and you're with a global company, so the emails are coming in 24 hours a day. How do you handle that or how do you coach others to handle this being inundated? Dave CoteThe onslaught. Ken WhiteIt's something, isn't it? Dave CoteI'd say I changed the way I work about 20 years ago because I used to, so email I hadn't even started yet, but I used to take two weeks off in the summer, and I would say no mail, no nothing for two weeks. And I came back after two weeks, and it took me a full day and a half to get through the entire stack of mail and phone calls and all that. And I said this is horrible. I don't want to do this again. So instead, I've come to basically, well, I guess it's 16 hours a day in touch. So first thing I do in the morning is email. I do it all during the course of the day, traveling with my iPhone so that I can do it on the way back to the airport. I do it at night before I go to bed to make sure that I'm caught up with people in China and Europe and others who are starting, and I just stay absolutely religious about keeping up with that. I also try do my mail every day. I get it shipped to me if I'm going to be anyplace for any period of time. And I just try to make absolutely certain I keep up with everything and respond as quickly as I can because I'm always scared to death that the organization is held up somehow because they're waiting for me for a decision. Ken WhiteRight. Dave CoteAnd I do not want to be the impediment to decision-making in the company. Ken WhiteCommunication is a big part of what you do. And also it's not hard to find you in the media. The media like you. They like to interview you. Dave CoteThat's a nice change from where things started 13 years ago. Ken WhiteTell me about that. You really interact with the media. You do a great job. Why? Fun, useful. Why? Why do you do that? Dave CoteActually, I stayed away from the media for the first seven years. I think that I was in the company, and it was because we were in so much trouble that I always said I gotta have develop a story before I start talking to the media. I'm going to work on the, so I basically didn't talk to anybody. So I refused interviews from magazines. Occasionally I'd do one if it had to do with earnings on one of the TV networks, but I basically just stayed away from everything. That's changed in the past four or five years because I was on Simpson-Bowles, which added a lot of visibility, and then people noticed that we'd been doing pretty well for about seven or eight years at that point, and it started to build upon itself. So I just kept doing it. Ken WhiteDid you prepare any differently, whether it's a radio or a print, or a TV interview? Dave CoteNo, actually, I don't know that that's one of the things. In fact, my communications guy can probably reinforce that with you, but I usually I say this is one of the nice things about having your internal story be the same thing as your external story. Is that there's not a lot of adjusting you have to do? So I don't have to do. I don't do any prepping before I go somewhere to do something because I generally know what it is I want to say. Ken WhiteAnd you probably know what they're going to ask. Dave CoteWell, generally, I mean generally, they say this is what we're interested in. Ken WhiteRight. Dave CoteSo you have some sense of the topic. Every once in a while, you get a ambush question which happened to me about seven months ago, and it was kind of funny because that was, I won't say, the network, but they were aware of the that I was coming on, and they didn't give me a heads up that there was going to be an ambush question. But I looked over, and it was on the teleprompter. Ken WhiteOh, that's beautiful! Dave CoteSo I got like a 60-second head start because I just happened to like I do. I have this distracting habit of looking around while I'm thinking. So I'm talking. Looking around, I saw the teleprompter. Ha. Well, that's a good one to know. So the ambush question happened, and my response to the guy was I come all this way to talk about this. This is the thing you want to talk about. Ken WhiteVery good. Dave CoteHe blushed and said I'm sorry, but you know they put it on. The producer put it on. I had to ask. Ken WhiteBlame the producer, right? Yeah. Dave CoteIt was pretty funny. Ken WhiteYou're obviously very good at what you do. The numbers speak for themselves, the culture, the brand. It's all there, and you it seems like you have fun. You really enjoy it. Dave CoteI actually do. I like my job. Ken WhiteYeah. How did you get here? Was it your what prepared you for this? Upbringing? Education? Personality? What was it that prepped you for this role? Dave CoteWow. That's an interesting one because I'm not sure what because my path to getting here is not typical. It took me six years to get through college, and if my wife at the time hadn't gotten pregnant not had to work, I'd probably still be an hourly employee somewhere because I hated school. It took me six years to finish, and then early on, I was just driven by I needed money. I had a family support, and I didn't have any money. So I just did whatever would pay better next. There was no career planning, nothing. Whatever would pay better, I was willing to do, and I just kind of started to grow, and I ended up I started manufacturing ended up in finance. Then realized after a while that, geez, you know, I kind of seen with general managers do. I think I could do that. So I pushed to get into general management and did and then went from GE to TRW and then to Honeywell and just kind of grew into it. I'd say I was 40. I'd say before it even occurred to me that, gee, maybe I could be a CEO. As I start looking at all this, I think I could probably do this. I would say one of the things that I do think has helped me is because it took me six years to get through school, and I worked the last couple of years of school. I was an hourly employee for two and a half years working in a factory, and I'd say that gave me even though it wasn't a fun job, it gave me a lot of insights into how an organization thinks about things, and just because you're at the top thinking, this is a wonderful thing that's not necessarily how people in the organization are going to view it. And if you make it too complicated, they're not going to spend the time to learn it, and their motivations are different than yours. Ken WhiteYeah. Dave CoteI end up learning that whenever I go to a town hall in a new plant, or something and or a existing plant, and I'm ready to talk about the stock price and what are all the things we're doing to stay competitive and what they really want to know is is this plant still going to be here ten years from now. Am I still going to have a job? That's what's relevant to them, not my grand strategy, and yeah, it's nice their 401k's going to do better because the Honeywell stock is in it, but what they really want to know is, am I gonna have a job here ten years from now? And you need to be able to recognize that just because you think you have a hundred thousand person organization aligned. They're like 40 percent aligned. So that's why getting everybody to move in the same direction is tougher than people think sometimes. Ken WhiteNo doubt. So for, those who would like to be a CEO, they figured it out, and they think that this is something they'd like they want to lead. They want to make a difference. What advice do you have? Dave CoteWell, I'd go back to the stuff we talked about at the beginning, and that's make sure you recognize it takes more than being smart and on the leadership side that it takes those three things, and it's more than just being able to give a good speech or a good presentation, and it takes those other things also because you've got to be able to interact with people. They aren't always going to agree with you, and how do you get all the opinions and make a good decision? It's not as easy as the books make it sound when you read leadership books. Ken WhiteGreatly appreciate your time. This was wonderful. Dave CoteHappy to do it. It's fun. Ken WhiteThank you very much. Ken WhiteThat's our conversation with the Chairman and CEO of Honeywell, Dave Cote, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. I'm Ken White. Thanks for joining us. Until next time have a safe and productive week. |
Christen Barber
Episode 21: January 5, 2016
Social Media 101
Christen Barber is a Strategist with CreateDigital.com. She gives us an introduction to social media and how it can be a viable marketing channel for businesses. Social media is a mystery for many businesses, but the best brands are making it a big part of their overall marketing and sales strategies. Christen helps us unpack this hugely popular sector and uncover some secrets to staying ahead on social.
Podcast (audio)
Christen Barber: Social Media 101 TRANSCRIPT DOWNLOAD (PDF)
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Show Notes
Transcript
Ken White
From the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from all across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Social media. It has exploded since Facebook was first introduced just over a decade ago. Over two billion people actively use social media. In fact, in the time it takes to listen to today's podcast, 12 million people will log on to Facebook. The best businesses and organizations in the world have embraced social media. They've made it a major part of their outreach and branding strategies, and they've seen results. Still, though social media is somewhat of a mystery to some companies, organizations, and individuals. Christen Barber is a strategist with CreateDigital.com, a social media agency in Richmond, Virginia. She helps businesses and organizations connect with their customers by creating their social media strategies. She joins us today to discuss social media and the effect it can have on customer relationships, the brand, and the bottom line. Here's our conversation with Christen Barber.
Ken White
Christen, thank you for taking the time. It's nice to be here in your office. This is a fantastic facility, but thank you for taking the time to talk with us today about social media and social media strategy.
Christen Barber
Yeah. Thanks so much. Good to be here.
Ken White
So if you met a CEO or a business leader who knew nothing about this space, what would you tell them? Where do you start with them?
Christen Barber
I think with them. I would get started, you know, in terms of starting to do some research. I would start with places like entrepreneur and Ink magazine have specialized blogs that write about social media all the time. That have some really great perspective, not only from how do you get into it, the nitty gritty, and the tactics but also from a high level on what can social do for your business in terms of return on investment as well as all the different ways that social can be utilized. I would also say that social media can be used in so many ways that businesses probably don't understand it's more than just having a Facebook page. It's more than just getting likes. Social media is a viable marketing channel just as much as any other TV, direct mail. You know, it's social is definitely up there in terms of an actual channel that you want to have in your, you know, tactical armory. So from that perspective, it's really looking into and understanding what are your goals and objectives and figuring out if social media is going to be able to meet those goals and objectives for you. So everything from if you're trying to increase sales if you're a B2C company and you're trying to increase sales of a specific product or if you're in the service industry and you're trying to create a channel for customer feedback. I always say that social is just like any other channel except your customers can talk back. So they're really trying to, but I wouldn't try to. I wouldn't say that to make people get scared or not want to do it. I think it's just understanding that you know to be in social media is to be prepared and open yourself up for that. You know back and forth conversation with your customers.
Ken White
Yeah, I mean, you can't, as a business, open a Facebook page and walk away from it.
Christen Barber
No, no way. And I think you know that's where you know, I always hear it's, you know, everyone says we should be on Facebook, or we need to be on social media, and I always ask, well, who is everyone? And I always say that you know you always have to have a strategy and a plan, and when you're getting into social media, having a strategy which is the why. Why are we doing this? You know, where do we want to be which channels? It's not all of them. You don't just turn them on, and it's not set and forget. It's definitely not turning on, you know, TV commercial, you know your flight, and it's over. It's definitely a daily, you know, almost 24-hour cycle well, not almost it is a 24-hour cycle in terms of it's always on, your customers are awake, they're using it, they're on it all the time 24/7. You just have to look at people standing in line at Starbucks in the morning to see them on their phones to know that they're using it. And you know, understanding that having that plan isn't just how are we going to respond, it's how are we going to keep this active. How are we going to keep our customers engaged? How are we going to keep those likes that we get on our page? And look at continuing to engage with us time over time.
Ken White
A little bit different than, say, traditional print or broadcast, where you just push it out there, and it sort of takes care of itself. This has to be monitored, and you want to take care of this. It's like a child 24 hours a day.
Christen Barber
No, it's very true. Traditional media channels are much more. You know, the broadcast media gets its name for a reason. You know you're broadcasting your message. You have control of it. You created the ad. You created the commercial. You decide on the flight, and you push it out to your audiences. You hope that they receive it and respond and engage with your call to action, whereas social media, in the nature of social, is that it's meant to get various engagements. All of the channels have them, whether it's a like on Facebook or it's a repin on Pinterest. All of them have engagement metrics. All of them do different things better than others, just like print or, you know, TV or radio.
Ken White
Right.
Christen Barber
Or direct mail, but all do different things as well. It's all goes back to your goals and objectives and making sure you understand the strategy of why you're trying to get into social.
Ken White
So if you have your strategy, you know what you want to do in your business, and you're looking at these various outlets, Facebook, for example, why would somebody want to be there? What does that do? What does that offer?
Christen Barber
Well, Facebook is the largest social media network. That's where everyone is. So everyone from the teens, although a lot of people want to say teens aren't on Facebook, they just don't want to tell you they're on Facebook anymore. All the way up to a fastest-growing segment on Facebook right now is the seniors. So your retirees that over 65 age group, they're trying to connect and see pictures of grandkids and keep in touch with people that they've, you know, fallen out of touch with. That makes it a little easier. And so Facebook is your I've heard people talk about it as like your ongoing scrapbook. That's how people use it. They're talking about what's happening in their day. They're sharing photos and videos. That's where people are most often in terms of spending the most time from a social media network perspective. Facebook, from a business perspective, it has a lot of marketing options for companies who decide to create a page. So if you create a page and you want organic reach, which organic means that you put a message up and you hope your fans and followers will you know Facebook will serve it up to them. You can expect a 1 to 3 percent engagement rate which means that they'll like, comment, share it, et cetera. If you want more than that, you have to pay for it. So Facebook, as we all know and most people who are using Facebook, it's definitely turning into a pay-to-play model. Facebook decided a long time ago that they want businesses to pay their shareholders.
Ken White
Sure.
Christen Barber
So putting the owness on businesses to do that. So they have a paid ad model to be able to reach fans and followers as well as other people, and because they have so much data on the users, you can get a very granular advertising, you know, targeting together so you can you know target say for instance you're in the bridal market, and you're trying to reach at this time of year is when everyone's getting engaged and say you're a venue well you can target people who are engaged because guess what they click that relationship status with their ring photo the minute that they get it. So there's lots of opportunities. You can, you know, target men women, you can target specific age groups, you can target geo-location down to the zip code, so you can get really specific with your targeting. So Facebook is a pretty general platform. It's where most people are, and you can pretty most anybody can find their demographic on Facebook.
Ken White
What are some of the others? Is Twitter number two? I say that because I'm on Twitter. I like Twitter, but I mean, is there a number two, so to speak?
Christen Barber
It's hard. I mean, I think Twitter, in terms of size and user base, is still, you know, considered the number two social network. Twitter is more of a. I would say, a niche community of where you'll find everything from, you know, people who are into digital marketing, you know, people like myself. Twitter is a great medium for that. I've also seen niche markets of crafters and hobbyists. I've also seen niche groups of you know human resource managers and you know that whole group, technology groups, companies those types of things so people the way that Twitter works obviously you only have a hundred and forty characters it's super quick and there's a metric out there right now that your tweet only lasts about eight seconds. In terms of its pushed down in the feed, and you've lost it forever. So it's a right now engagement option. It's definitely one where a lot of brands and companies, as well as individuals, get themselves into trouble because they quickly fire off that quick tweet and kind of don't stop to think about it. So Twitter is really a great place if you're looking for a niche kind of conversations. It's also a great customer relationship tool if you're, you know, if you have a call center and you are currently managing a high volume of calls using Twitter can be a great place for customer relationship management and responding to inquiries and helping customers resolve issues. So we've seen a lot of companies and one of our past clients, that's how we managed it for them. Instagram is a big one that's growing popularity, especially in the, I would say, you know, younger, you know, 20s up until, you know, mid-30s and especially the stay-at-home mom, you know, realm sharing a photo visual medium is really growing a lot lately especially on all the other social networks as well. Pinterest happens to be one of my favorite. I happen to be in their main demographic. It's 85 percent of their user base is women, which makes men the fastest grow at target just because men aren't using it as much.
Ken White
Right.
Christen Barber
But Pinterest is really great in the fact that it is set up to push you out to a company's website. So it's a visual pinning platform where you're pinning the user is pinning content from visual websites. Whether it's products, so you're do it yourself weddings, food, recipes, those are the most popular categories. And so Pinterest is really great because you can actually measure purchase intent. So if someone's pinning your content and you know you're into their boards, you can measure the referrals back to your company's website and ultimately purchases. So those are kind of the top ones that we look at here. There's others. There's Snapchat that we know is really popular with the, you know, teen demographic and some others.
Ken White
You mentioned something you sort of touched on the crisis. I mean, crises do come up in social media. How do you, in your position, manage this, and how do other people who do what you do for a living? Where does the crisis come in crisis communication?
Christen Barber
Yeah. Crisis is a really important part of social media, that if you're going to turn it on, you need to be prepared for any type of crisis. And it could be we like to talk about crises here at CreateDigital as crises of opportunity. There's always an opportunity within potential crises that are happening with social media for you to utilize this as an opportunity to make your customers feel even more loyal to you and potentially come out even better on the other side by actually implementing change or, you know process change within your company. So, for instance, I think when you're getting ready to start on social media, and we do this with our clients as we always create a crisis communications plan for social media before we even turn the channels on. Though we go through an exercise with our internal copywriting team as well as with the client, and we go through potential crisis scenarios, what are potential things out there that could happen that we need to be prepared for? So we brainstorm and develop a list of potential crises, and then we come up with predetermined message and messages that we can share on behalf of the client. And so we kind of go through that process and kind of determine. So if this happens, then this, if this happens, then this, and then we also come up with what we call our crises workflow as well as our the levels of different crises. So we have, you know, in ours, we have a five-step crises system from a low, you know, low potential risks to a very high level of risk like you know code red.
Ken White
Yeah, no doubt.
Christen Barber
That the level of crises, and so we go through a different process where we grade each of the different crises and determine what level of response would be necessary. Working with our client and then looking at the workflow in terms of, you know, from the frontline, our social media managers who are monitoring the platforms on an ongoing daily basis all the way up into getting into, you know, the CEO of our client getting them involved in determining what's the right response. So there's lots of, you know, levels. Everybody does it a little bit differently. But we are big proponents of preplanning, going through the potential situations with the clients, and that everybody is aware. So as soon as we turn them on, we're pretty much prepared for anything.
Ken White
You know when talking to people in your line of work the war stories are just amazing, right? Everybody has all these examples of companies that have faced certain issues. It can be incredibly serious and huge, can't it?
Christen Barber
It's very true. And I think a lot of times where I've seen, you know, here, we like to watch those and see what we can learn from obviously and how we can bring that back to our clients.
Ken White
Sure.
Christen Barber
From my perspective, I think the biggest thing that always comes up when I'm looking at some of those things that are going on the biggest thing that comes up is that the company waits too long to respond. So I think sometimes the company thinks that, well, it's just social media, you know, it's going to blow over, you know, and it's going to be rather quick. People will be on to the next thing, and I think that that's a really poor, you know, management strategy of a crisis. I mean, I think one of the biggest things that in social to do is to respond swiftly and quickly. If you don't have all of the information or you don't have a resolution in social, it's okay. They just want to know that you're working on the issue and a potential timeline for when you're gonna get back to them with potential next steps or a resolution, or a way to solve the problem. And I think sometimes is what happens is companies again ignore something that seems really small. Whereas if you can nip it in the bud very quickly, you know you can potentially also you know kind of avoid any future issues are turning into you know you know a code red you know, like the worst possible crises.
Ken White
And you can turn it around maybe to a positive right.
Christen Barber
Exactly. And a lot of times, you know if the company does act swiftly or does attempt to resolve a potential issue in the beginning, usually your loyal followers others within the platforms will also come to your aid to show that hey the company is trying to make you know you know make amends here. Let's give them a chance.
Ken White
Sure.
Christen Barber
You know you're usually you'll start to see your loyal followers rally.
Ken White
Right.
Christen Barber
However, you'll quickly see the loyalists turn on you if they don't think that you're responding in an appropriate manner quickly enough as well. So you know that that can also, like I said, not responding quickly and swiftly can really get a lot of companies in hot water.
Ken White
If someone is leading a business, whether CEO, small business, you, or you're the leader. How much should that leader be involved? I mean, there are some people when we say social media. We think of the Richard Branson's of the world. There are tweets flying out of there, you know, constantly, and you wonder, can he possibly be doing that? Is that a team? How does that how do you feel about that, and is that the CEO really speaking? Is it a team and how should they be approaching that?
Christen Barber
Well, I think it's really up to the individual business and, again, like, what are the goals and objectives. How visible is your CEO? How much does your loyal followers or your potential customers know about the CEO, or are they a public figure? I think you'll see that a lot of brands out there, for instance, there is always, you know, a brand social media presence whether it's on Twitter or Facebook or, you know, the proper channel. But then there could also be, you know, a profile for the CEO or the CMO if it's the chief marketing officer. So there's various levels. I think, obviously the small business perspective, I think I would always recommend having a brand handle. If you're only going to have one have a brand handle.
Ken White
Got it.
Christen Barber
Even if it is the CEO behind the scenes that's managing it, I think having a brand handle again can give you a lot of credibility. It can make the brand seem larger if you're in a growth period, that sort of thing. As you grow, though, and the CEO becomes or you know the person in leadership becomes a public figure, and you're trying to lend that person's credibility or expertise to the business. That's where having a separate handle can really become valuable. I think that you know if you have a unique perspective as a leader in your industry, not just your organization. If you have a level of expertise that you bring to the table that you know by lending your opinion or your spin on things into the market that people would find valuable and want to follow and learn from you. That can be immensely helpful to any business organization if you have a leadership team out there. So it's just like going to speak at an event or serve on a panel or, you know, give a talk at a conference. Social media can do that 24/7 for you, so by creating, you know that level of expertise. So Twitter is an area where I recommend that those leaders do it, as well as on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a new tool called Pulse where industry leaders can, as well as any business leader or any person on LinkedIn, really now can use this pulse feature to create microblogs where people can follow your expertise and kind of learn more about your opinions and thoughts. And again, it's really about having a unique expertise and opinion that you can lend to the current news cycle the things that are going on in business. And sharing that out because just retweeting somebody else's thoughts or being a parrot to what's happening right now isn't going to, you know, get you any followers or get anybody to really kind of see you to have that level of expertise. But from you did ask earlier also from. Is it a team? I think you know a lot of times. I mean, any leader of a business would tell you that they're busy.
Ken White
Sure.
Christen Barber
They don't always have the time to manage their own social media channel. So sometimes it's one. It's just a writer that helps. I mean, the president doesn't write his own speeches.
Ken White
Sure.
Christen Barber
So I think it's good to realize that sometimes if it's not something that you have time to do and do well. One, question if you should have it or not, and two if you do have the opportunity to hire a team to support you. Great. I would recommend that you do often monitor your own channels also. In case you know, if you're putting up a blog post, make sure that you're responding to the comments and, you know, kind of still lending your unique expertise. I think it's hard sometimes to get a team to still have the level of expertise, you know, even if they are ghostwriting and doing some of that, and you know you're signing off on sometimes the monitoring and the replying you know, should be done by the individual.
Ken White
If you're a business leader or professional and you don't know a whole lot about social media, start where?
Christen Barber
I think, you know like I said before going back, I think there's a lot being written and talked about on social media. Like I mentioned, you know Entrepreneur Inc. There's also Marketing Sherpa is a blog online that I like a lot. I also follow it's called the smart insights brief. I get it in my inbox every week. Recently I've gotten into it's a blog called contently.com that has a it's called the content strategist. It's their blog every week that I really get into. There's also the content marketing Institute. They talk a lot about social but also other content areas, and I think one not only read about it and kind of make yourself a student of social media and like what's happening out there but also look at the CEO of Starbucks. Look at the CEO of Whole Foods. Those are two CEOs that have done it well to kind of again. They're a public figure, and then they also have their own social channels and look, you know who in your local business community is doing a good job from a CEO or business leader perspective. See what they're doing. What are the hashtags in your industry? How can you kind of start? I would just start looking and monitoring conversations and then again coming up with a plan and a strategy. It's not just turning it on and deciding one moment that you're going to do it. It's what's the value. How is this going to benefit me as an individual in my position and my expertise? As well as how is this going to benefit my organization overall. And how can what I'm planning to do benefit and elevate the organization.
Ken White
That's our conversation with Christen Barber, strategist at CreateDigital.com, and that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization by designing and delivering a customized leadership development program that specifically fits your needs. If you're interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education, check out our website at wmleadership.com. That's wmleadership.com. Thanks to our guest this week, Christen Barber, and thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week.
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