MBS967- Herminia Ibarra Act Like a Leader Think Like a Leader

In this episode, Matt is joined by Herminia Ibarra who is an organizational behavior professor at London Business School. She is also the author of Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader.

Ibarra turns the usual “think first and then act” philosophy on its head by arguing that doing these three things will help you learn through action and will increase what she calls your outsight—the valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation. As opposed to insight, outsight will then help change the way you think as a leader: about what kind of work is important; how you should invest your time; why and which relationships matter in informing and supporting your leadership; and, ultimately, who you want to become.

Packed with self-assessments and practical advice to help define your most pressing leadership challenges, this episode will help you devise a plan of action to become a better leader and move your career to the next level. It’s time to learn by doing.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Problem is that as as organizations get bigger, as they go through those phases that you talk about, there is a tendency for the initial culture of accountability that everybody shared when you were a small group of 15 to kind of start to get diluted. Maybe because people are busy, it's not getting reinforced in the same way, it's not coming across as loud and clear to the new employees, and then there's a tendency to switch to the more formal type of accountability. The problem with that has its place. The problem with that is that you cannot necessarily specify every eventuality, particularly if the firm is in an evolving and dynamic kind of environment.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Hi there, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the Matt Brown Show. Today we are joined all the way from London in the United Kingdom by Hermania Ibarra. She is regarded as the Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at the London Business School. Prior to joining the London Business School, she served on the NCID and Harvard Business School faculties. She is an authority on leadership and career development. Thinkers 50 ranks Ibarra among the top management thinkers in the world. She is a member of the World Economic Forum's Expert Network, a judge for the Financial Times McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, one of Apolitica's 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy, and the author of two best-selling books: Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, and Working Identity, Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. So in today's episode, guys, we talk about the importance of leadership today, but we tackle it in the context of a business environment that is accelerating more and more and more. We explore ideas about adaptation to an accelerating world. We unpack this idea called the authenticity paradox, which is an idea that she talks about on one of her TEDx talks. We also explore how to drive accountability through bridging the skills gap, driving authenticity, and ultimately driving teams to accept extreme ownership. And pay careful attention, guys, to one of the big aha moments, which is can leadership be taught? And we share some contrarian views to that subject. And before we get into the meat and the potatoes, guys, if you would like to get in touch with me directly, you can tweet me at Matt Brownza or why don't drop me a mail. Hello at mattbrown show.com. So without further ado, enter Hermania Barra. Hello everybody, welcome back to yet another cracking instalment of the Matt Brown Show. Today we are joined all the way from Londres, London, by Herminia Ibarra. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Thank you, Matt. It's fantastic to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh it's always great to uh to connect with people in other parts of the world. So I'm super excited about uh this episode in particular. Uh the least of which is because we're going to be talking about leadership. And I think in today's C19 kind of business environment, it's a conversation that we need to be having more often. So up on your screen here, guys, you'll see uh the book is called Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader. Uh, it's got some crazy amount of five-star reviews. So obviously bringing you the best talents, and uh Humania is certainly one of that portfolio. So uh for those of us um Hermenia who haven't heard of you, maybe haven't read your book, uh why don't you kick us off and give us the elevator pitch? Who are you? What are you about? Um, and give us the kind of premise. Why did how did this book come about, etc.? So kick us off.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Right, fantastic. Right. So I'm Herminia, Hermenia Ibarra. I'm a professor at the London Business School where I teach and I do research. I've always been an academic. I've been at this for 32 years, uh, working with uh companies and with people to do research on how they make important transitions in their career. So I've looked at a whole range of things, how people make important uh career changes, what happens when you have the midlife crisis, uh, what happens when you're moving up into more senior roles, what happens when the world around you changes and you've got to adapt. And so that's really my focus is how we make these transitions, especially transitions that are emotionally challenged because they touch at the heart of who you are and how you define yourself.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

And those are some very big questions, right? Who are who are who am I, who are you? And uh these things, I think these questions change over time and also they require a lifelong focus because um I don't think we ever we kind of get a sense, but we never really know. Um keep coming back up. Yeah, exactly. Right. So so and so why did you write the book? I mean, obviously you've got a very distinguished background. You mentioned you're obviously an expert in the space, 25 years um of practicing, you know, the about the subject matter, researching and practicing and learning and so forth. But where did the spark come from to say, you know what, I need to actually put this into a book?

SPEAKER_02 5:04

I was teaching uh uh I was teaching executives at INSAD uh business school where I was before London Business School. I had um a program for mid-career executives that was meant to help them step up into bigger leadership roles. You know, they they would come uh to hone their leadership skills, they would come to kind of round out their skill set. And as I um as I talked with them, as I taught them, it became very clear that the big issue was um something that I call the what got you here won't get you there problem. You know, the big issue was not so much their weaknesses, but it was their strengths. The fact that they had become hugely successful. You know, you don't send people to expensive business schools unless they're successful. They'd become hugely successful. And but that skill set that made them successful was no longer the most relevant one. Um, and it was particularly not uh going to be the most relevant one in terms of their capacity to advance and lead on a broader organizational-wide perspective. Their skill set was more about their specialty expertise, you know, whether it's marketing or finance or their IT skills or what have you. And as they increasingly moved up and had more people to manage and also more people, more cross-functional groups to be a part of, um, what they really needed to do is have a better sense of the big picture organizationally, strategically, kind of helicopter view, where are we going? And they also particularly needed to hone their so-called soft skills, their ability to get people on board, their ability to get people to tell them what they really think, their ability to get people to work together. And it was a really hard shift, and it was a really hard shift to make, despite knowing that they had to make it, despite knowing what the shift was, despite skills, you know, skill practice in those areas, um there's a real tendency to kind of revert back to form because it's who you are.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah, I love so much of what you said. So I really want to double down on a few things there. Um I'm a big uh when it comes to leadership, I want to pick up on something you said there. You you said strengths beat weak beat weaknesses typically. Um and this goes back to an old adage which goes like this it's like, well, focus on your strengths or focus less on your weaknesses and get other people to pick up where you're weak, uh or weaker, should we say. Um and so as leaders, um, you know, I think it's so in critical now to recognize that as leaders, you cannot solve problems with the same point of view that created it in the first place. Um and so, you know, to your point around how do you you know inspiring your fellows and your colleagues, etc., and getting them to mobilize around a vision, these are some uh there's no rule book for this stuff. That's very hard to learn this stuff. Oftentimes it's from the QBE, you know, like qualified by experience. And that's what typically gets you over the start line, you know. Um I wanted to pick up on that last part that I mentioned there around um uh envisioning the future. Um, how important is that today in the context of leadership?

SPEAKER_02 8:11

Envisioning the future. Uh sometimes it's very hard to have a clear perspective of where is it that we want to go, right? Um just yesterday with my students, uh, we were looking at a case study of Alibaba, uh, the Chinese company that has been so phenomenally successful. They brought the internet to China. That was their original strategy, but then they found that people couldn't pay for stuff that they'd be buying online, so they created a payment system. And then they found that as people were using it more and more, it was really hard to get the parcels to them. So they created a delivery and logistics systems. And and and then, you know, it just kind of built that way, a kind of um very dynamic evolution of that vision for the for the future. Uh, and so in some cases, you actually you don't know, you know you need to evolve. Uh, and what's what's very important is to have a sense, if not specifically a clear vision, is to have a sense of the trends that are really going to shape your business, what's kind of happening outside that's gonna create both dangers and opportunities, and how do you learn about them? And how do you experiment around them? And how do you start to formulate a point of view around them? That I think is probably one of the biggest skill sets today. And that's why when we kind of get trapped in our narrow area of expertise, we're basically looking to improve on problems we already know, as opposed to having that more view over the horizon that is so necessary to keep our organizations evolving towards the future.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, I love what you said. I one of the um great um old stories I remember was the canary in a mine cage or in a in a cage and send them down a mine shaft. And when the canary fell off the perch, you knew it was time to get the hell out of Dodge, right? Um, and um I use that analogy to talk about the future sometimes, at least when I was doing talks to in front of real people. And uh and uh what uh I believe like at least what I've learned is that the warning signs in any particular industry are always there. They're always there. We just don't pay attention to them because we're think with we're working in the business, not on the business, as an example. Um can you describe to us what you've learned about working with trends, spotting the trends that will shape the future of industries, terminate uh existing paradigms of products and services? Um, what have you learned uh about that space?

SPEAKER_02 10:44

So a couple of things. It's such a good question, and I absolutely think you're right. The signs are there for anybody who wants to see them. I think there's two different things. Um, first of all, in terms of spotting the signs or the trains or seeing the canary kind of fall off the perch, um you know, it that's a discrete event. The canary fell off, the train passed by. In real life, it's not like that. It's it's these trends are kind of evolving. It's a bit of a boiling frog thing. When is the water hot enough that we've got to get off our butts and actually do something? And so it's not just about spotting the trend, it's also being able to infuse a broader group of people with a sense of urgency that now's the time to act, that it's it's the trend is coming, you know, actually came yesterday as opposed to in a few months' time. And so now's the time to kind of get moving. So that that's that's one piece, the urgency bit. Then the other bit is, you know, people are not idiots. They also live in reality and they also see the trends. And what happens is they get scared about what those trends mean for their job, for their power, for their status. And so the second bit of it, and that's why those soft skills are so critical, is you got to get them to tell you what they think, to tell you what's feasible, what's not feasible, to work together, all of those things that impede organizations that have actually very accurately read the science, but aren't able to do anything about it. And I can give you a quick example. One of my co-authors was hanging out at Nokia at the time the smartphone was invented by Apple. And Nokia had all the technology to do the same things. It's just that they hadn't put it into practice because the margins were gonna be a lot smaller and they were set up to produce their cheaper version of the phone that everybody was afraid of everybody else, of kind of sharing their perspective of telling their boss I'm not gonna meet that deadline or that project's not feasible. And that's how they went down the drain. And so, as good as as important as it is to be able to see those signs, you also have to be able to mobilize people around those possibilities.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

How important, I know there's this whole idea of experimentation, you know, uh, and people love to talk about experimentation. It's like, well, um, if you're gonna combat organizational inertia, you know, you set up an innovation hub outside of the normal structures of day-to-day operations, and that's how big corporates should, you know, combat organizational inertia. And part of that is obviously testing and testing fast, failing fast, you know, Google very famous for their 40% failure rate, you know, in order to get to uh the kind of scale and impact that they want ultimately. Um I mean, is this still true today? And and if it is still true today, why is it that so many uh uh corporates fail to innovate as fast as they uh should do in order to take advantage of these uh changing trends?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Hey there, I know being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely experience. You sometimes get stuck, don't you? Well, if you're like me, being stuck sucks. But what if you could access the minds of over 850 CEOs who have built companies generating billions of dollars in revenue and access all of that knowledge in a fraction of a second? Well, the good news is you can literally do that today. What my team have built is Matt Brown AI. It is trained on all the interviews, over 850 of them that I've done to date, all my books, all the knowledge capital that has been generated over the last 10 years right here on the Matt Brown Show. And you can get access to all of that right now for free. So, how do you get access to this? Well, head on over to mattbrown show.com and at the top you'll see community. Hit that link, sign up, it's absolutely free, and you'll be given instant access to MacBrown AI and a community of over a hundred thousand subscribers.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Yeah, so there's a lot to unpack and say there. And I think I'm gonna begin at the end. It's absolutely true that large corporates fail to innovate as they should. They've had a very hard time with digital transmission, and they've had a very hard time with anything that really requires that level of experimentation and agility, and it's simply because the big company is not set up to do that. The big company is set to ex is is designed to execute at scale on something you already know how to do, something that doesn't have that uncertainty about it. Whereas this kind of experimentation is stuff that requires an organization that is set up to discover, to innovate, to create what's new. And inevitably it doesn't look as attractive as the cash cow. You know, um, the guy who ran Pixar always had this wonderful analogy. He talked about it as the difference between the hungry beast and the ugly baby. The hungry beast is it is the system that wants you to produce a Toy Story 14, you know, because you know that franchise makes money and you know you've already got the system and the players and so on. And the ugly baby is the new thing that has a different format that people don't quite recognize. They don't know how to, they don't know how to work with it, it doesn't come out right at the beginning. It has to develop, it's nascent. And and how most big organizations are set up always to favor the hungry beasts, and that's why they have such a hard time. Now, oftentimes the solution is let's just put it out there in this innovation hub. And most of the time that doesn't work because that innovation hub does its thing and it never gets a chance to infect the rest of the organization. And so I believe those experiments really have to take place in the heartblock of the organization for them to have any effect at all. Um, the other big theme is, you know, experimenting is a science in and of itself. It's not just, oh, let's just try something and see what happens. Experimenting is you have a hypothesis, you design something to test that hypothesis, and if it's confirmed, you advance in the next direction. If it's not confirmed, you test a different hypothesis. And so that's it's quite rigorous. It's not just let's just try something new. And most people fail to understand that that's what's needed if you're going to learn from experimenting.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Um yeah, I use this. I can't remember who who mentioned this on my show, um, but it I want to talk about perspective for a second. Um, in that uh it was, you know, if you're stuck inside the bottle, you can't read the label. So most corporates are kind of stuck inside the bottle of corporate shareholder value. So we're gonna keep doing the same thing the same way, and when it's pretty hard for us to innovate. We like to talk about innovation. Maybe we'll acquire a startup that will help us, you know, drive that innovation agenda. Like I learned less yesterday that Apple has acquired over a hundred companies in the last like two years or something crazy. Um, and so it's it's a it's a thing that happens, right, to help drive this innovation uh machine. Um and I had Bo Lotto on the show um just before you um and he spoke, he's a neuroscientist, specializes in behavior and this kind of stuff, and he was talking about um perspective and how the way that we perceive the external business environment internally will drive our actions as individuals and as human beings, as employees, as leaders, we will always take the action to d that will drive certainty. We seek certainty uh a a lot, right? And in the uncertain business environment like C19 is as we touched on earlier, feels to me that this is such a poignant point for us to to double down on. And I'd love to get your view. If perspective drives action, how does lead how do how do we as leaders, as entrepreneurs, as startup founders, trying to build something of value unlock perspectives that will drive the kind of action that will truly drive the growth that we want in our companies?

SPEAKER_02 18:43

With regard to seeking certainty, yes, of course, we prefer certainty to uncertainty. Although we often make the mistake that doing more of the same has a certainty to it, a certainty of success, when in fact we actually know that doing more of the same leads us down the path of decline. The thing is we don't know how swift or how slow that decline is going to be. So I think there's something more than certainty seeking. And I think it has to do with the structures, processes, systems of an organization that are set up to extract that level of certainty. How is it that we evaluate people? What gets them promoted? What do we do when we do a quarterly business review? Is it a show or is it actually a conversation in which we might learn something? What happens in teams? Is it are they just kind of a representative thing so we've ticked all the boxes, or are they somehow designed in a way that's real that allows us to get things done? And I just think that a lot of the infrastructure of organizations, the kind of the archaeological piles that are the legacy of years and years and years of doing things, they are set up to extract that kind of predictability and certainty. Those are management systems. That's what management systems are set up to do. And that's why newer organizations like Google can actually create that environment of experimentation and innovation and risk taking because they did not start out with all of those legacy systems that are basically nudging human behavior in a particular kind of direction.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Stay with us. We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Hey there. I know being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely experience. You sometimes get stuck, don't you? Well, if you're like me, being stuck sucks. But what if you could access the minds of over 850 CEOs who have built companies generating billions of dollars in revenue and access all of that knowledge in a fraction of a second? Well, the good news is you can't literally do that today. What my team have built is Matt Brown AI. It is trained on all the interviews, over 850 of them that I've done to date, all my books, all the knowledge capital that has been generated over the last 10 years right here on the Matt Brown Show. And you can get access to all of that right now for free. So how do you get access to this? Well, head on over to mattbrown show.com and at the top you'll see community. Hit that link, sign up, it's absolutely free, and you'll be given instant access to Matt Brown AI and a community of over a hundred thousand subscribers. Great answer to a very technical question. Well done. Great job, Professor.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Complicated question. You know, um, one of the people that I have admired in terms of leadership is is Satya Nadella and what he's done at Microsoft. Yeah. Because that was a company that has lost, had lost its taste for innovation, really spent a decade in which nothing new came out, maybe the Xbox, but missed mobility, missed a whole bunch of different things. And what happened was they just got stuck trying trying to get the good grade on the performance appraisal and kind of manifest. Their own internal politics and which were quite heavy. And when Satya Nadella came in, because he came out of cloud, which was a different business model. And because he had been running it where they were doing things differently because they had a different purpose and a different goal and a different thing they did, is he said, guys, you know, the future is in the cloud, but we're going to miss it if we stick to the culture we have now, which favors doing what we can do flawlessly, what we know how to do always over that which we haven't learned how to do yet. We're going to have to start making the choice the other way. Now that's a hard thing to do for all the reasons you've just described. But when you have leaders that come in and say, hey, that's the name of the game. It's learning now. If we can keep performing flawlessly on the wrong things and become irrelevant, we've got to learn how to do things we don't know how to do yet. That means we're going to make mistakes. That means we're going to fail. That means we have to work with other units. And what I'm going to do as your leader is help you understand why it's important, help facilitate it, help create changes in the way we do things so that becomes increasingly possible. And that's what needs to happen. It has happened very successfully for them. I mean, look at look at, you know, even just looking at the stock price, it's such a success story.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Yeah, it is. Uh, I was actually going to ask you about um who else do you feel is getting it right? I was watching um a clip with uh Jeff Bezos, and he was talking about how Amazon have lost literally billions in dollars of on failed, failed experiments. But one of the successes was uh AWS, Amazon Web Services, talk about Microsoft and Cloud, AWS being bigger than Microsoft, from my understanding, anyway. Um I wanted to maybe just get a simple question over the fence to you for a change, uh, which is who else is getting it right that you, in terms of your research, in local examples, who's getting this right? Who are some great references for our viewers around the world and listeners around the world to reference?

SPEAKER_02 24:04

It's really hard as an outsider to be able to have that window. Um I can talk about the Microsoft example because I spent a lot of time researching that particular company and looking at how the changes that they put into place were kind of trickled down and reinvented in different parts of the organization. Um, certainly an organization like Amazon is famous for its capacity to experiment in a very, very rigorous way. Um, one of the things that they do that I think helps them enormously is try very hard to stay away from anything that falls under the label of corporate theater. That is the kind of the song and dance, fancy PowerPoints, you know, all these things that make it look like, you know, you're just going to be making money without really rigorously looking at what the factors are, what the arguments are. And they do that through they have very specific practices. They have to write memos, the famous six-page memo, kind of explaining why to pitch an idea in a way where you have to work it all out so people can tease it apart, take the logic apart, and therefore make it better and make better decisions. And I just think that um being able to sort through what is it that we're doing for internal show, for politics, for helping people get promoted, and what is it that we do to actually give ideas the best chance to develop is a big part of what makes it work or not.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Yeah, couldn't agree with you more. Um, Professor, I'd like to change gears for a second and talk about uh a TED talk that I came across while doing my research on your incredible work, uh, all about the authenticity paradox. Uh, could you unpack that for us and explain what its implications are for the business uh leaders of today?

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Yeah, okay. So I noticed that um the term authentic leader and authentic leadership had become very popular. And in fact, I got some data, and you know, just looking at how often it comes up in the business press, and you know, you had a curve like this, you know, we're talking a lot about authenticity, which made me wonder why, you know, why why so much attention to just simply being yourself? And the reason for it, as it turns out, is that a lot of people in organizational life feel that they're often put in a position of having to choose between being themselves as they see it and doing what it takes to be successful. You know, it's one or it's one or the other. Either I um play the politics, or I'm candid and one's gonna help me get promoted and one's not. Or either I do a kind of a very instrumental networking that I find distasteful, or I simply won't get the job I want, or I won't get promoted, and and and so on and so forth. Um it was very common in my research for my book, act like a leader, think like a leader. There's there's kind of what you know and how you're perceived. And a lot of times people wanted to be able to base their sense of who they were on what they know and not the other stuff. And so what I uncovered is that um oftentimes when you're in a transition to a different kind of work, when you're trying to um do things you haven't done before, um, you're out of your comfort zone. The problem that I saw is when you don't know what you're doing, the only thing you can do is experiment your way into figuring it out. And when you experiment with things outside your comfort zone that you don't know how to do, that you haven't been doing habitually, they don't feel natural and they don't feel like you. And so um, if you get really defensive about that sense of self, I've got to be true. And that definition of what you're being true to is actually just simply historical, who I've been in the past. You gotta condemn yourself to being as you always have been, which isn't particularly helpful from a learning and adaptability point of view. Ultimately, we've got to figure out ways to be both authentic and adaptable. And to be adaptable, you have to try stuff that isn't gonna fit right away. It's like learning a new language. And so I noticed that a lot of people kind of um almost rationalize their way into a fairly rigid approach to their own development, you know, calling it being authentic when in fact what they were doing is keeping themselves inside a comfort zone.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It does. Um there's something going on in my business which maybe you can um use as a as context for what, you know, this does this particular area of authentic leadership and learning and development. Um you know, we're at a stage of growth now where as a company we're building structures in order to scale and putting systems, not technology systems, we've had that for ages, but systems and processes and things like that to get everybody doing the same thing the same way, especially now that everybody's working at home. And so um we one of those acts one of those structures was an exco. And so we took our best performing people and we put them into this ex go position and we said, right, now you're an executive, you've earned the seat, so to speak. Um now here's what we need you to do. Um and if I'm honest with you, being perfectly op open here and all of I love being transparent and showing where we make mistakes in our company, is that um it was a failure. It was largely a failure. We went we probably lost about 40%, 50% of the people that were initially identified to be on the exco because they were ineffective in their execution, they were ineffective in their leadership, they were ineffective in management. They for instance, they couldn't look at something big and connect all the dots and then bring it down to the little things that need to happen every day. And it was a huge learning for me personally as CEO to recognize that oh shit, like maybe we maybe we push people too far, maybe they weren't ready. Um and obviously, you know, we pay a price for this this um this type of outcome simply because we're trying to execute quickly. Um and so I'm in the situation where we're trying to scale, or we we are scaling, but not as fast as we would like to be, because we have ineffective leaders sitting in the right in the wrong seats on the bus. So I'd love to get your view with that context. Like, how do you identify when to put somebody into a more senior role?

SPEAKER_02 30:28

Such a great question. So that's a classic what got you here won't get you there situation. People who are grade in one role who approach the new role and try to do it the same way, and it's no longer relevant because what's expected is is very different. Now, what you've just described is a kind of throw them into the pool and see if if they swim kind of approach, which is usually what happens in organizations that are scaling up, right? And you know, it's always a kind of a mixed result because some people don't really want to make that transition or don't know how to make that transition. I think what you what needs to happen, and this is really hard when organizations are still young, is to try to suss out who's got at least an interest and a taste for it because they're taking on, you know, kind of projects. And and who can you get to follow you around and kind of do some things with you, or who can you match up with somebody else who already knows a little bit about that, so that they get some exposure to it before actually being in the role. Um, because when you're just kind of plopped into the role, and particularly in you know, in organizations like this, you don't even have a role model for what it looks like because everybody's making it up as they go along. Um, I think you know, trying to give them smaller doses of it early on as a way of assessing is it this person or that person? And you know what? Oftentimes the smartest ones, they want to remain experts, the one the ones that are the best performers. They want to be able to go up through some kind of um expert path. And sometimes it's the ones who maybe aren't the strongest performers, but have a taste for people or have a taste for strategy that are the ones that you need to elevate. It's not past performance that should be the determinant of who gets that promotion. It's a prediction about who's gonna do well in that role.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Yeah, because one in one doesn't always equal two.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

No, no. And you know, it's both skill and will. You know, some people don't have the skill yet, but they want to develop it. And you can send them to a course or give them a coach. But the person who doesn't want to, um they're not gonna, they're not gonna pick it up the same way. And sometimes actually you don't know if you want to or not. That's why the the small experiments or small dose approach um is really is really valuable.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah. Um as a consequence, I actually told everybody that they're now all acting in their seats. So until they can demonstrate that they can actually do the the the job of being an executive, they're all acting. Um and what was really interesting for me to your point around skills, I actually spoke to my mentor and he he owns hundreds of businesses, and he said to me, How many people do you have? And I was like, Well, we'll be 55 people like next month. And he goes, Well, um So he said there's three numbers in business there's 15, 45, and 150. Look, every business that reaches those employee sizes reaches the same pain. Uh it's this uh the stages where suddenly you everything's confused, uh you have to look at systems and structures. It's just stages of growth that requires different types of leaders, different types of structures, different types of people in different seats. Um and the moment he said that I was like, ah, great. Because I actually said to him, I don't know what to do about it. I actually don't know what to do about it. It's incredibly frustrating when you're trying to grow things quickly because if you have the wrong people in the in the wrong bus seat, it ruins everything. The bus is just like it goes in the wrong direction uh and this kind of thing. Um and so he said to me, CC's Matt, I hope you understand that you're on a two-year journey with this. And I was like, Well, I don't I'm not waiting two years to develop an ex-girl, are you crazy? I don't like what business environments change too quickly to wait two years. If you could do it in two months, maybe that would be ideal, but not two years. And so maybe he's right, maybe I'm wrong. Um, maybe we just don't know what you don't know. Um, but I'd love to get your view around skills development. I mean, how how long should it take? I mean, if you think about it, I'm a very big um uh proponent of hiring from within, promoting from within, um, rather than taking someone outside and bringing them in into a senior level, even though that's a good idea in some cases. Uh, but if you give people the opportunity, then you should give that to them. If they fail, they fail. That's fine. But at least you gave them the opportunity. Because if they succeed, it's a win for everybody. Um but yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 34:59

No, go f finish up.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Yeah, the question was uh like how long does it actually take to develop leaders? You know what I'm saying? Like if you promote from within, like how long should it practically take? Is it is it two years, is it six months? What have you learned about growing leadership within a a scaling company?

SPEAKER_02 35:20

You know, it it depends on a lot of different things, right? It's not just giving them the opportunity, it's also giving them the support that they need to do it. And so I would ask you, how much mentoring are you doing? How much mentoring do you feel capable of doing? How much one-on-one time you have with your direct reports? Because that's oftentimes where that coaching kind of happens. And if there are gaps that you don't feel necessarily prepared to coach them on, you know, can you work out a plan with them about a very specific targeted course or a coach that's gonna help them on that particular skill set? But it's, you know, it it will stretch your own capacity. It's it's how fast it goes is gonna be a function of your capacity and how much in time and taste you have for doing that kind of development of people. And if you don't have it, because a lot of founders don't, then you need to either bring in external coaches or actually hire externally until those people um are able to go up the learning curve more slowly without your active mentoring and coaching.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Yeah, it's a great question. I think to answer you specifically. Yeah, to well, no, it's a great question. I mean, to answer you specifically, um, I give as much time as I can. Uh, it's difficult to say what's X number of hours per day. I mean, oftentimes I'll tell people why they need to do something, what they need to do, but never how. Your job is to do the how bit and then come back to me and surprise me with the results. It's a saying I read somewhere about business. But anyway, um, but I I guess the frustration and I think a challenge for a lot of companies that are scaling up is the time that it takes to do that. Um and and sometimes people just don't have the coping skills for that shift, right? Even if they have the skills, they don't have the internal coping, you know, um mechanisms or systems to deal with the pressure.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

You're still asking them to do the old job too. You know, you're asking them to do the old job of executing and making sure kind of things happen within their business or within their function. And so it's that's a hard one too, there to be doing two jobs at the at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I'd love to change gears and talk about accountability. How do you drive accountability? What have you learned about best practice in the space? Because uh it's it's a frustrating one because across most businesses, if you want to scale quickly, you have to have accountability uh as a culture, right? So as a team, everybody's executing in an accountable fashion to order to meet certain uh business outcomes at a certain time. Um, where does it go wrong driving accountability and how do we get it right?

SPEAKER_02 38:04

So you can drive accountability in one of two ways or a combination of them. One is through formal process, that is, you have KPIs, you have your dashboards, you review them regularly, and it's very clear that if you don't meet them, you um you don't get your bonus, you don't get the high performance rating, you're not gonna get promoted, you know, it's through a formal system. And the other way is through culture, and that is through nurturing a culture of accountability where um people internalize that sense of what is it that they need to do for the sake of the organization and for the sake of the group. Um, in the formal process, slackers get punished by through formal incentives. In the second one, slackers get punished by um lack, you know, of admiration, respect, you know, not being part of the group. To be part of the group, you've got to be accountable, you've got to uh perform. And um, the problem is that as organizations get bigger, as they go through those phases that you talk about, there is a tendency for the initial culture of accountability that everybody shared when you were a small group of 15 to kind of start to get diluted, maybe because people are busy, it's not getting reinforced in the same way, it's not coming across as loud and clear to the new employees. And then there's a tendency to switch to the more formal type of accountability. The problem with that has its place. The problem with that is that you cannot necessarily specify every eventuality, particularly if the firm is in an evolving and dynamic kind of environment. And so ultimately, what everybody comes back to is what really is the essence of our culture? Do we give mixed messages? How do we convey it? Um, what does the founder say about it? And not in the words, but in terms of what he or she pays attention to, his resources to, who's part of the inner circle, all those very symbolic things that really communicate to people what really matters. And so what I would say to you, if you're in that scaling up mode, pay a lot of attention to the culture. Is it what it used to be? Does it need to be spruced up? Does it need to be um heightened, made more clear, um showcased uh as you as as you grow in in employees and in scope and scale?

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah, it's an interesting one because we went through a whole organizational design exercise and culture was quite uh obviously a key focus for us. And so in that space, we have six founder values and not organizational values. We have a clear vision we're working towards for 2024, we have a mission, um, and then there are you know six founder values. One of those things, funnily enough, is opportunity creation and visionary leadership. Um, and uh but I I if I could share something and then maybe I get you to weigh in on it. I it's hard to get people to internalize something like opportunity creation. I think KPI is quite easy to read and go, okay, cool, I get now what I need to deliver. But and and equally I would go so far as to say uh a vision. If you paint a vision for three years ahead, it's not really real. It's hard for me as an individual employee to really resonate with that, to really internalize it, digest it, and go, hell yes, I want to be a part of that 2024 vision. Um and so it's it's I guess the question I have for you is how do you make something intangible like a vision, intangible like founder values, visionary leadership, opportunity creation, etc., or even just resilience uh tangible to a team? How does a leader address that over time?

SPEAKER_02 41:37

You've got to know what it looks like so that then you can um reinforce it, celebrate it, make people who do it role models, you know, opportunity creation. Uh maybe, maybe that's not always clear to people what opportunity means. Uh can you distill it? Is it about taking initiative? Can you, you know, do you give mixed signals? Do sometimes people take initiative and have their hands slapped, and so then they worry about what does it actually mean to create opportunities, only the right opportunities, how it's the right opportunity. So you've got to you've gotta um understand to how clear it is, you know, for these, for things like values to become part of the culture, they have to be, they have to be widely shared. So people have to say, yeah, we're all about opportunity creation, and they have to believe very intensely in them. When they are developed, like here's our six values, um, they still are not kind of internalized by people, and the only way they're gonna internalize them is because they're gonna see examples of it. I mean, usually the way these things get anchored is stuff happens and people create opportunities and their stories come out of it. Oh, you know, when we had this crisis, you know, Joe here created this opportunity that saved our butts. And since then, you know, he's become really key to the organization, and that's a shining example of what that looks like. So other people can say, oh, okay, this is the kind of thing that I'm meant to do. But without the stories, and particularly with without the events that really pushed you up against the wall, the the events that kind of made you have to show your metal, what you're made of, which is what the culture is, um, it's it's it's hard to, you know, just architect them. These are what we want them to be. You have to bring them to life.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Yep. Couldn't agree with you more. Um, Professor, I just wanted to bounce something off you. Another piece of advice I was given about leadership was this don't teach leadership, you discuss it with your leaders. Does that resonate with you?

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Yes, it does. Um, because what that what that comes to is um I think one of the ways In which leaders teach is by having a point of view that they're able to transmit to people. And you can't just say to people, you know, here's here's my point of view, take it. What you do is you discuss, you know, here's what I think, what do you think? Here's been my experience, what's been your experience, what do you crystallize from it? Here's what I've crystallized from mine. And in that sense, I completely agree that you discuss it. Um, one of my um favorite colleagues who's a professor at Harvard Business School, his name is Boris Groisberg. He wrote this wonderful article called Leadership is a Conversation. And it's just that it's your sharing perspective in a way that hopefully gets other people to think more broadly and to expand their horizons, but also to pull out of themselves what they know, what they believe that they can apply in their leadership.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Um, Professor, who do you most admire when it comes to the subjects of leadership?

SPEAKER_02 44:59

So, so many. My gosh, this is a this is a toughie. Um, one of the people who was one of my mentors, a guy named John Cotter, I think um did a lot to advance um how we understand um the topic of change leadership, whether you're talking about transforming an established firm or creating something new and scaling it up. And it's it really is thinking about what leaders do, not as a set of things like having vision and communicating it, but as a process that unfolds over time in which you are trying to kind of see those trends and sense them, but you're also trying to kind of bring people in who um who have bought into that or who are also as eager to create something new as you, and and and you're together trying to shape that perspective or that vision and then put it into practice. And and and really uh what he did was bring together um a lot of practice and a lot of research to show that there's some there's a process that has a certain rhythm and sequence could be faster, could be slower, but really you need to follow when you're in a leadership role and you're trying to get things to unfold in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

Great stuff. And what book have you gifted the most? Or is there a book about leadership that you have gifted to other, you know, professors or the people in your network?

SPEAKER_02 46:27

It's horrible, but I do give mine a lot. Because you know, I I'm not trying to be arrogant here, but um there's few, there's so much, there's so many studies of, you know, or or there's so many leaders saying, here's what I did. Um, but there's there's fewer perspectives of how do you go from not leading to leading and developing that capacity. And so most of the people that talk to me, what they are trying to do is develop that capacity in themselves. Um, but there's there's lots of great stuff. Um, Adam Grant's book, Originals, um gosh, um John Carter's uh books about leading change, I've given a lot. Um loads, you know, I spend my entire life uh recommending readings and recommending books on leadership.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Tell me, um, Professor, um what is a common point of view, or maybe better said, uh a common piece of advice that you come across in the context of leadership that when you hear, you just go, that's just plain wrong.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Yeah. Um focus on your strengths. That's wrong. That's you know, that's wrong. If your weakness is I'm not a good listener or I'm not a good collaborator, you're really gonna screw it up in the leadership realm. So I I think yeah, I I you know, I I think you don't focus on um things that you don't enjoy doing. You don't put yourself into situations that are um counter to your preferences, but you we always have to grow and develop and expand our capacities, especially when they're very human capacities. So I think I think that's wrong. Just be yourself is wrong. You've got to develop your skillfulness in how you present yourself if you want to get other people on board. Follow your passion is also wrong. Um, most of the time, people don't even know what that is. Um, find something that's useful that people want is is actually a more helpful thing. So there's lots of truisms out there that are not particularly helpful to people.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

Um, yeah, I couldn't agree with you more, especially on the find your passion one. Uh my view there is like create it, create that passion. Don't find it's not a set of car keys. So be be at cause, not effect, not at effect. Um, and then uh one of the I want to talk very quickly about tactical stuff around leadership. So one of the things we've implemented here is um something called the 5 a.m. Club. So obviously this is off the back of Robin Sharmer's book, which I didn't actually read. I just liked the idea of getting up early and getting the team to get up early and uh you know talk about things that aren't really discussed in the business environment. Like this morning we spoke about this idea of extreme ownership and uh you know the relationship between desire and commitment and how we all desire things, but we don't get any any of those desires if we don't fully commit to that and the relationship to extreme ownership and what have you. So we talk all about you know decision making, being our ultimate power, blah, blah, blah, etc. etc. So it's all very much around the inner game of business, I guess. Um and the hope from my perspective, through the structure of the 5am club, is to empower people with new coping skills and to your point about perspective, give them perspective on what they are trying to build while they work uh with us. Um what are some other tactical things like that um that you've come across um that uh you know leaders can implement to create a better conversation um in the context of leadership or just in general, you know, how to become better human beings.

SPEAKER_02 50:07

So you mean things like the 5 a.m. club?

SPEAKER_01 50:09

Yeah, tac tactical stuff like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:12

Yeah. By the way, I'm horrified. I if I had to get up at 5 a.m. to discuss extreme ownership, I'd say, okay, maybe I'm not in the right place. Um you know, I think I mean I think you've hit on the formula, whether it's 5 a.m. and what format it is, you've got to have places where you can have regular conversation with people about concepts, about ideas, about the way you think uh about things that are going to be affecting the future of the organization. And what I like about that is that you're not waiting for the once-a-year annual off site. That's the wrong way to go about it. Is how do you have an ongoing conversation in which you're also just sharing with people your point of view. This is kind of back to the don't don't teach leadership, discuss it. Uh, and and and so you know, the question is where does it happen and does it include the right kinds of people? But I think I think that's a fantastic, that's a fantastic approach. Just a little later for me.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

Yeah, yeah, too. No problem. You can watch the recording on Teams. We'll give you a license. Um Professor, just a couple more questions and then we'll wrap up. If you could get into a time machine and go back to yourself when let's just say uh you were much younger, 21, whatever, and you were to give yourself one piece of advice about leadership and/or life, what would that one piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Maybe don't try to plan so far ahead. You know, don't there's no need to have it all figured out. Actually, yeah, there's no need to have it all figured out uh before you take a step forward. You know, it's a long, very long journey. A lot of the times where we get stuck is where we actually don't know where we actually see ourselves five years down the line or 10 years down the line. Um, I think, you know, not having to have it all figured out before you take some steps is is a good one, especially today when we live longer and longer and our careers take all kinds of twists and turns that um often we didn't expect.

SPEAKER_01 52:13

Yeah, that's a great piece of advice. It takes the pressure off yourself having to know I have all the answers right now. It's crazy the pressure we put on ourselves, unnecessarily so in many cases. Uh, last question for you. Um, Professor, why do you do what you do? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

SPEAKER_02 52:30

You know, I'm a researcher at heart. I want to understand things and I want to um I want to bring insight into some of the basic problems that confront us in organizational life. And um I think I think that I bring a unique point of view to it that um, you know, in a in a methodology that allows me to see what may be obvious once it's said and uncovered, but but hadn't actually been seen before in a way that helps people uh navigate these these pretty challenging moments and transitions and inflection points in their career. So um that that's what drives me.

SPEAKER_01 53:10

Great stuff. Uh thank you, Professor, for being on the show. I've really thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm sure many of our listeners would have as well have would have as well. Um Tommy, um, have you got another book coming?

SPEAKER_02 53:20

Not at the moment. Um, it'll be a few years probably before the next one comes out. There's not a there's not a new one coming out next.

SPEAKER_01 53:27

It's uh it's it's a tough thing to invest in. I've got another one coming. It's a huge distraction for me. All right, thanks, Professor. We'll wish you well and all the best for the future. Thanks everybody for tuning in. We'll see you again soon. Cheers. Thanks for listening to the MapRound show, guys. Don't forget, you can catch me on all social media platforms for the latest updates, news, and a show history. So if you've been catching us on the podcast, please head on over to our YouTube channel and pound that subscribe button. It would be great to catch the video version there. And if you want a free copy of my number one Amazon best-selling book, You're in a game for free right now today, you can grab that on maprownshow.com forward slash ebook. Ever wanted to become a best-selling author? Well, I'm in the influence business and I work with business owners and CEOs and business leaders to help them scale their influence. And we do this as a team by helping you to become a best-selling author, sought-after speaker and industry influencer in only 30 days. My team and I have developed a system that delivers a best-selling book and a launch campaign 300% faster and a 50% less cost than anyone else in North America. This system is incredibly efficient. One of my clients, haiku, went from a 2% share of voice globally to an 11% share of voice globally in only seven days. If you'd like more information, head on over to showworksmedia.com for more. That is showworkswithinx.com. Ever wanted to become a best-selling author? Well, I'm in the influence business and I work with business owners and CEOs and business leaders to help them scale their influence. And we do this as a team by helping you to become a best-selling author, sought-after speaker and industry influencer in only 30 days. My team and I have developed a system that delivers a best-selling book and a launch campaign 300% faster and a 50% less cost than anyone else in North America. This system is incredibly efficient. One of my clients, haiku, went from a 2% share of voice globally to an 11% share of voice globally in only seven days. If you'd like more information, head on over to showworksmedia.com for more. That is showworkswithinx.com.