April 9, 2025 • 25 mins
Lawrence Armstrong is an acclaimed author, speaker, artist, and Chairman of Ware Malcomb, a leading design firm. With a career over three decades, Lawrence has been at the forefront of innovative leadership, guiding Ware Malcomb to national prominence. His unique approachintegrates art, architecture, and business principles, providing a holistic framework for effective leadership. Lawrence’s expertise and thought leadership have made him a sought-after speaker and consultant in business.
In “Layered Leadership,” Lawrence Armstrong presents a transformative guide that blends architecture’s precision with art’s creativity to redefine modern leadership. Through practical advice, real-world examples, and thought-provoking exercises, Lawrence explores the concept of layered leadership—building a robust and dynamic organization by integrating strategy, creativity, and execution. This book equips leaders with the tools to embrace innovation, foster collaboration, and achieve sustainable success in a rapidly changing business landscape.
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Hi. My name is Lawrence Armstrong. I live
in San Clemente, California.
I absolutely love working in the design industry
for commercial real estate. Right now, I serve
as chairman at design firm Ware Malcolm, headquartered
here in Irvine, California.
Let's see. The last book I read
was The Formula by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan
(01:40):
Clegg.
It's all about the history of formula one,
which I love. I just wrote Layered Leadership.
It's my new book, and it's all about
creativity and leadership.
I've worked in, the design industry for over
forty years. My greatest mentor was my father,
my mentor and my idol, and he was
awesome. Do you oh, hold on. Do you
wanna give him a name? Do you wanna
(02:01):
put his name up? Sure. Robert f Armstrong
was my father, and he was awesome and
a big influence on me. Thanks. I love
to create, ski, golf, travel, fly fish, create
art, build my business.
I'm inspired when I am traveling or creating.
I stay connected to people by proactively reaching
out.
I create value by inspiring positive thinking.
(02:25):
The absolute best advice I received was from
my father to not sweat it so much
all the time. Sounds like dad was pretty
cool. Was your dad from Ohio or no?
So,
yeah, I was he was from Ohio, and
I was raised in Ohio before we moved
to California. Lawrence, it's a blast to have
you here because we've got a little bit
(02:47):
of history that crossed paths incidentally,
Kent State University.
What exactly were you doing at Kent State,
and how did you get to where you
are now?
First of all, thanks for having me on,
Edwin. It's awesome, and I appreciate that. Yeah.
I grew up in Northeast Ohio.
I was lucky enough to attend Kent State
University
for their to their architecture program,
(03:09):
which was an amazing time there.
As an architect,
you already had a rooting I'll I'll say
a rooting, a a foundation
of being a visual creator? Definitely. Yeah. I've
been an artist my whole life as well.
Architecture
was just an amazing
find, I think, for me when I was
(03:29):
young to I decided to go to architecture
school and learn everything there I could about
architecture.
Yeah. It is extremely visual. Definitely. I think
a lot of people don't really realize
the thinking that goes into
erecting anything vertically or, you know what I
mean, a building
that combines so many different elements and so
many different perspectives,
(03:50):
let alone the materials. Yeah. Exactly. Architecture is
sort of the ultimate whole brain profession.
You have to be very creative. You have
to be technical. You have to understand
engineering and design, and you have to have
people skills to work with people on teams
and
and understand
building codes, and it's a whole bottle of
wax that you have to It is something.
(04:11):
Yeah. No kidding. And that's a lifelong learning
journey.
Right? I mean, you it's like you don't
stop. You didn't just get the certificate and
say, boom. I'm done. No. It you are
always learning. There's always something new, and there's
always something to learn in design for sure.
Well, let's go into the book and talk
about this
creative leadership and whole brain leadership or being
(04:34):
that. Can you talk to the listener a
little bit and set the stage of what
your perceptions were when you built that concept
or created that those wordings that put that
pen to paper for you? Yeah. First of
all, the sort of a development whole brain,
right brain, left brain, like I said, is
very much rooted in architecture. You know, it's
one of those things that when
(04:55):
you are an architect
and like any profession, you are trained, maybe
you do a good job, maybe you get
promoted, all of a sudden, you're leading and
managing people, which is not what you went
to school for. Right? So you have to
learn how to do that. Over time, as
I stumbled and made mistakes, tried to understand
how to how to lead and to build
(05:16):
something. I sort of stumbled upon this idea
that, well, I should put the way I
think and the way I've learned to practice,
not only in architecture, but to leadership
technical skill to leadership,
continuous
learning, put that all together for sort of
this whole brain creative leadership idea. Well, I
(05:37):
hear the mechanics. I hear the pieces of
the puzzle that you're talking about,
but the thing I don't hear, and I
think that's a
the kind of the missing link for me
is that I don't hear maturity anywhere in
that because having those parts and pieces is
one thing.
Understanding parts and pieces is one thing.
Wisdom
making, understanding,
(05:59):
comprehension, I guess, is a big word about
all this. You have to comprehend a lot
of different things and be able to adapt
to different levels all the time. Yeah. That's
for sure. And, you know, that's, I guess,
part of the continuous learning because with anything
new that you're trying to learn and trying
to be proficient at, you're gonna make a
lot of mistakes. And so I guess there's
(06:19):
a certain amount of wisdom that comes with
time from learning and then applying
that learning to what you're gonna do next.
Well, answer me this. Do you think everybody
can be a leader?
I think they yes. I do. I actually
do think anybody can be a leader if
they want to do that. That's a distinction
a little bit. So motivation. They gotta have
(06:40):
motivation.
Yeah. It's gotta be something you want to
do. Yeah. I guess that's the thing. Like,
could you be a
virtuoso
in an opera, or could you be something
that's highly skilled? Well, yeah, I guess everybody
could. They have some baseline
capabilities.
Some are better than
others. But motivation is the thing that really
pushes
(07:00):
someone to go beyond. Yeah. I mean, ambition
is important,
if you are building something Sort of inherent.
If you want to be a leader and
you want to build something,
there's a certain amount of ambition that needs
to be present to be able to do
that or even so that you would want
to do that. In your experience,
what's your motivation? My motivation well, I'll tell
you what my motivation was that originally in
(07:30):
opportunities for leadership and ultimately to buy my
company and take it over for leadership and
ultimately to buy my company and take it
over and run it. And it was an
amazing opportunity that I was given at a
pretty young age.
From that, I was inspired
to say, look. We can build this company
into something awesome
by giving as many people opportunities
(07:52):
to grow in their career and help the
company just as I was given. Okay. You
know, the idea that I was given opportunities
by our founders, Bill Ware and Bill Malcolm,
inspired
really a lot of what happened after that.
Let's just say that your wisdom building,
my assumption,
your wisdom building from schoolhouse to practice to
(08:12):
business builder, a leader, took certain steps.
And do you think that the text that
you're talking about, the layered leadership,
is that the how to?
Is this going to be a model for
others to did you shortcut and make a
checklist of how to get there? No. It's
not really a checklist. No. I wouldn't try
(08:33):
to do that. But I put in the
book different inspirations that I had that I
took from various sources
and found a way to adapt to our
strategy and our company
to motivate our people. And so over time,
it developed kind of a little at a
time. And over time, we I sort of
synthesized all those together Got it. To end
(08:55):
up with what we ended up with. Well,
let's go with the model that you created.
The listener, just think of tinker toys. If
you're of the age to know what that
is,
that's what we're talking about. But he's created
a visual model to help
gather and gain
deeper understanding. So please, Lawrence. Oh, thanks. Well,
you know, I've I've used various tools and
(09:18):
metaphors and inputs from
business books and
people that I was inspired by.
And so this idea of whole brain
development and thought and leadership,
I I used a tool with tinker toys
where we took one of the spokes,
and we challenged all of our leaders to
think of what you're really good at, what's
(09:40):
your best skill, and take one of the
longer tinker toys and stick it into the
hub.
And then think of something you're not very
good at that maybe you wanna improve on
and find the shortest one and stick it
in, and then fill the whole circle in
with various lengths of tinker toys.
You will find, like everyone, you have kind
of an unbalanced looking wheel almost.
(10:01):
Spokes coming out Yeah. From a Yeah. The
second exercise is to then take only long
ones, Tinkertoys, and stick them in and make,
you know, sort of your perfect spoke and
wheel,
understanding
where you are now and what you could
ultimately
work towards
and filling out your brain. And so this
(10:21):
sort of idea
illustrates and helps you focus on what you
wanna get better at, I guess. I would
say that probably changes week to week because
your perception of how you think you're doing
shifts. Yeah. It's a state of mind. Right?
It's a state. It's It's an exercise to
take on a a state of mind of
continuous learning and and always improving. It's a
(10:42):
demonstration.
And once we made these things, you you
know, we kind of sat them on our
desk. They're there to look at. And, yeah,
they probably shift from week to week. With
that parameters
of how you outline the structure of this,
I want everybody to think of it. It's
kind of a self awareness take because you're
doing a self assessment. Mhmm. You're creating something
external to help understand that relationship.
(11:03):
And I think that's where people may lose
some traction. They get horned in on one
thing or they get down a rabbit hole
in another, and they lose perspective of all
the other components.
And does that not give that motivation
to address the short stick, the the lacking
part? Yeah. And, you know, I think it's
all dependent on the person and how inspired
(11:26):
or committed you are to this idea. But
for me, it was a way to demonstrate
what I learned from Leonardo da Vinci, which
was always developing your whole brain. You know,
he was the ultimate whole brain thinker, the
most curious person, greatest genius that we've ever
seen,
and he was always trying to fill out
areas that he was not as good in
(11:48):
or strong at or is knowledgeable about. And
so he set a great example, and then
this tinker toy is kinda just a a
tool to help you think about that. And
I'll say in most human behavior, you ignore
the things you're not great at. You don't
spend time on them to try to get
better. I think a lot of people just
go with what they're good at or what
they can do really well. And the small
(12:10):
things that are distractors or they're not skilled
in don't get the presence of mind to
think, you know, I should probably work on
that. So what makes the difference between an
inspirational leader
in inspiring others to think like that? You
know, first of all, we always want to
acknowledge people's strengths. I mean, people
naturally feel comfortable working towards their strengths and
(12:32):
wanna build those, and there's nothing wrong with
that, and that's great. I just feel like
to be a leader and an effective leader
and a creative leader, it is helpful to
build out these ideas,
these strengths that you're not as good at.
And because it makes you a a more
well rounded leader, it makes you a more
relatable to people that have different strengths than
you do.
(12:54):
It just sort of inspires this continuous learning
throughout your life, which can only help you.
So I wanna talk about how you create
a culture
that cares, and these are my words, a
work culture that cares about itself and cares
about others in a fostering,
nurturing way.
I would say you're a
(13:14):
outlier
in that model. I don't know. I've not
studied all the businesses, but my experience, that
doesn't exist. That's a rare diamond, if you
will.
What makes that doable? For someone listening to
this right now, they got a little heat
going for them. The blood's going a little
bit, and they're like, wow. Mhmm. I really
need to find out about this. I'd like
(13:34):
to try it where I work. What advice
would you give them? The culture is everything,
really. So for us,
we have as we built our company,
we have offices scattered across North America now,
and so we have a lot of awesome
people working in different places.
It takes a lot of focus and hard
work to keep
(13:55):
sort of this one team attitude across the
platform.
And we've done that over time in various
ways. The first and foremost is, you know,
working with our people to understand what their
ambitions for their career is and helping them
in any way we can as a company
to reach those goals.
The other thing is just sort of this
one team attitude. Everything we do as a
(14:17):
company is to help each other be successful.
And by working together, we will provide the
best service to our clients and most successful
projects. Mhmm. There's a lot of things we
put in place over the years
to emphasize that team culture
and this idea of growth and support.
(14:38):
Everything from
we fly everybody in every year for our
annual holiday party. We're all together.
We have business review meetings with every office
every other month. I I wanna bring up
one that we talked about earlier, which is
the Leadership Academy. Yeah. Can you tell me
about the leadership academy? Yes. And, you know,
this leadership academy idea was inspired by Jack
(15:00):
Welch. He built a tremendous
leadership academy at GE, and so we tried
to apply this to our company.
And so we have an extensive mentoring and
coaching program at our company, but also,
leadership meetings three times a year where we
bring everybody in,
and it's more of a conference, a leadership
conference.
We work together on the strategy for the
(15:22):
company,
developing different skill sets, helping each other. So
it's all a sort of a work together
kind of an environment where, we also align
so that we're all headed the same direction
with the same mission, and we understand
what's going on in the industry. There's all
sorts of things we have put in place
over time
(15:43):
to emphasize this idea of a leadership academy.
Yeah. Because we, as a company, as we
grow, we need leaders. Yeah. Our culture is
specific, so we have to we have to
train up our leaders
in our culture so that it works for
our company.
And it's pretty specific, and we've developed it
over a period of years. Everything you've just
outlined
(16:03):
gives me the environmental
oxygen of the word trust.
Everything you're talking about builds
and enables
contact
relationship
and trust relationship
that I think is key element. It's really
a key element to success. Yeah. I think
trust obviously is important to any relationship or
(16:24):
anything you do, really.
Empowerment is a big word at that we
use that you've heard, and we live by
it at Aware Malcolm. We really want to
empower our people
so that they can grow in their careers.
Delegation and empowerment is a big deal we
spend a lot of time with our leaders
on
so that they are likewise inspiring,
their teammates. In my experience with the United
(16:46):
States Army,
leadership has its own
set of
I don't wanna say standards. Expectations. It has
its own set of expectations.
As you go up in rank, you have
more authority and more responsibility,
but you also have a wider birth.
You have a wider
array of being in your decision zone. You
can make decisions at certain ranks or elevations
(17:09):
that you couldn't at lower elevations.
So with rank, a bigger piece of the
pie.
Within that, though,
you think of an authoritarian structure like the
US army where it's very regimented and very
much for a good reason. But in an
organization
that lets people
experience the workplace
and have some liberty or have some
(17:31):
availability
of being more involved in a bit of
a free agent. Is that something that is
okay. I see your head shaking. Go ahead
and tell me about that. You know? And
and so our people work on projects. Right?
Real estate projects, design,
and development of buildings and space. And
so by nature, our teams have to make
decisions
(17:51):
every day, all day.
And it's a very collaborative
environment to be able to do this.
And so we try to inspire the same
attitudes when it comes to leadership, building your
team,
and working together.
We're lucky in that way that we've taken
sort of what the strengths of our business
is,
extend that to this idea of empowerment and
(18:13):
leadership.
Can you define for me what leadership is?
What it is for you. Yeah. What it
is for you. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's
inspiring
a team to do awesome work over a
long period of time. Are you more of
the carrot or the stick? Very much a
carrot, I think.
(18:34):
I think. He's scratching his head, ladies and
gentlemen. I hope.
Most days. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Now listen, we're none of us is
perfect, so I'm sure I the stick comes
has to come out every every once in
a while. Like, I'll give you a give
you a good example of that. Okay. Okay.
Because our culture is important to us, and
everyone knows it. And so if we see
(18:57):
behavior that doesn't fit the culture, then, you
know, we'd have to,
we have to work on that. Ignoring it
makes it worse. Definitely. So I I went
through your text, your your layered leadership book.
I searched the word
leadership. How many times do you think it's
in there?
I I have no idea, but I'm sure
it's in there a lot. 199.
(19:19):
Okay. Awesome. That's very well strengths term here.
The way I'm saying that is because I
want you to tell me who is this
book for. K. So it is for anyone
who is trying to build an organization.
You know, it could be a new leader
who's just learning leadership. It could be somebody
that's
just running a nonprofit or a small business
(19:40):
or a branch or a department in a
company or really any organization
because I think the
sort of the concepts
are crossing all of those types of instances.
And from my review,
I did not read it, ladies and gentlemen,
but from my review of the text in
PDF format,
I find two things
(20:01):
intriguing.
One,
Lawrence has got a smattering
different pieces of artwork
I presume you are the creator of. Yes.
It is I wouldn't say it's textbook
format. It's not academic
format.
It kinda reads from what I'm seeing. It
kinda reads like you're talking to me. Yeah.
That was the intention. I put my art
(20:23):
in it because I'm an artist and I
love it and no.
But I it also helps to emphasize the
point I'm trying to make, which is to
be creative.
You know, not everyone's an artist,
but I make a big point in the
book. It's like, look. I believe everybody can
be and is creative.
Part of the book challenges you to
(20:43):
open up your mind about creativity and, you
know, all the different examples of the input,
different types of input that are in the
book are an example of you know, I
drew inspiration from such a variety of sources
that we were able to sort of, like
I said, synthesize.
And I think the art is sort of
emblematic of that, you know, and and the
idea that say things like being an artist
(21:04):
made me a better CEO and being a
CEO made me a better artist. And
art doesn't have any boundaries, really. You can
do whatever you want, So it's sort of
the ultimate creative pursuit. It's free flow. I'm
trying to bring that idea into this idea
of leadership. Let me read the dedication from
this book on page three.
This book is dedicated to all the people
(21:26):
who have helped and inspired me
and all the people I hope to help
and inspire.
That's a pretty cool concept right there, my
friend. Are you a sage? Are you a
practicing
sage?
Or
I don't I don't know about that. But
what I am is grateful
for all the inspirations I've had in my
(21:48):
life. You know, this book is hopefully gonna
help inspire some other people,
and that's the idea. Living inspired is a
positive stroke. I like it very much. So
before we walk out the door and go
have a cup of coffee,
what is your definition of knowledge management?
Knowledge management. Wow.
(22:09):
Well, I don't usually
I'm not sure I use that term so
much, but what I like to do is
figure out how and this is a big
part of the whole thing. How do you
take this collective
knowledge and wisdom
and information
and
effectively
pass it through your organization so that your
(22:30):
company can be on the same page and
always learning all the time?
You know, that's kind of a big concept
in kind of a tall order,
but it is one we work really hard
at because we want to have our people
all be aligned and feel great and feel
like they're growing
and be on the same page. I would
have to assume with that approach,
(22:51):
you're gonna have a pretty high retention rate.
Yeah. We've had a lot of people that
have been with us, built their careers with
us and have been with us a long
time. Not everybody as we you know, we've
grown and people, like any company, come and
go a little bit, but
everyone has added to the ultimate idea of
what we've become. But we have had a
lot of people with us for a long
(23:12):
time for sure. I like the idea of
what you put together. I think having an
established
ethos
of cohesiveness
and knowledge sharing as a baseline
is a big plus for me. So kudos
to you, and thanks for being on the
show. I think a lot of folks,
are probably gonna dig into this because
leadership is a challenge.
(23:33):
I think most organizations don't foster growth and
leadership
as they probably should. They don't look at
it as a resource option. You know, it
seems to be a cost thing for them.
Oh, we gotta send somebody to class. Oh,
we gotta send you know? Do you? Do
you really? No. You you don't really.
You can create something like you did. Yeah.
It's an investment, and it there's no better
(23:54):
investment for sure. Oh, alright. You said the
magic word. So
so you're setting with your CFO,
and he's like, oh, boy. You got all
these great big ideas,
all this great big stuff.
What's the ROI on that? Yeah. A scoreboard.
You know? Just look at the last twenty
years of Where Malcolm and it's, fairly obvious.
So, obviously, if you're just starting out, there's
(24:17):
a little bit of,
faith that you have to have to try
these things and but, you know, for us,
which you know, we're a service business.
Your biggest asset is your people, and you
want them to be awesome and love where
they are. Fantastic.
Any last words of wisdom that you would
like to impart maybe from dad?
Oh, gosh. I'm sure he's got a few
one liners you're well accustomed to. Yeah. He
(24:38):
did. You know, unfortunately, he's not here with
us anymore, but he he inspired me a
lot every day. You know, I said earlier,
he said to me a lot, don't sweat
it because I was kind of a hyped
up, tense kid when I was growing up.
And so he he calmed me down a
lot, but he had a lot of faith
in me, which it was very inspiring and
tried to pass that along. Alright, my friend.
Well, thanks for being here. Thanks for having
(25:00):
me. It was awesome. Really appreciate it. I
like the attitude. Keep it up.
Thank you for joining this extraordinary journey and
we hope the experiences gained add value to
you and yours.
See you next time at Because You Need
to Know. If you'd like to contact us,
(25:20):
please email
byntk@pioneer-ks.org
or find us on LinkedIn.
Pioneer Knowledge Services welcomes you to the next
Because You Need to Know. I'm your host,
Edwin k Morris.
I serve as president and founder of this
organization, and we are thrilled to offer this
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bring you people's experiences
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Hi. My name is Lawrence Armstrong. I live
in San Clemente, California.
I absolutely love working in the design industry
for commercial real estate. Right now, I serve
as chairman at design firm Ware Malcolm, headquartered
here in Irvine, California.
Let's see. The last book I read
was The Formula by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan
(01:40):
Clegg.
It's all about the history of formula one,
which I love. I just wrote Layered Leadership.
It's my new book, and it's all about
creativity and leadership.
I've worked in, the design industry for over
forty years. My greatest mentor was my father,
my mentor and my idol, and he was
awesome. Do you oh, hold on. Do you
wanna give him a name? Do you wanna
(02:01):
put his name up? Sure. Robert f Armstrong
was my father, and he was awesome and
a big influence on me. Thanks. I love
to create, ski, golf, travel, fly fish, create
art, build my business.
I'm inspired when I am traveling or creating.
I stay connected to people by proactively reaching
out.
I create value by inspiring positive thinking.
(02:25):
The absolute best advice I received was from
my father to not sweat it so much
all the time. Sounds like dad was pretty
cool. Was your dad from Ohio or no?
So,
yeah, I was he was from Ohio, and
I was raised in Ohio before we moved
to California. Lawrence, it's a blast to have
you here because we've got a little bit
(02:47):
of history that crossed paths incidentally,
Kent State University.
What exactly were you doing at Kent State,
and how did you get to where you
are now?
First of all, thanks for having me on,
Edwin. It's awesome, and I appreciate that. Yeah.
I grew up in Northeast Ohio.
I was lucky enough to attend Kent State
University
for their to their architecture program,
(03:09):
which was an amazing time there.
As an architect,
you already had a rooting I'll I'll say
a rooting, a a foundation
of being a visual creator? Definitely. Yeah. I've
been an artist my whole life as well.
Architecture
was just an amazing
find, I think, for me when I was
(03:29):
young to I decided to go to architecture
school and learn everything there I could about
architecture.
Yeah. It is extremely visual. Definitely. I think
a lot of people don't really realize
the thinking that goes into
erecting anything vertically or, you know what I
mean, a building
that combines so many different elements and so
many different perspectives,
(03:50):
let alone the materials. Yeah. Exactly. Architecture is
sort of the ultimate whole brain profession.
You have to be very creative. You have
to be technical. You have to understand
engineering and design, and you have to have
people skills to work with people on teams
and
and understand
building codes, and it's a whole bottle of
wax that you have to It is something.
(04:11):
Yeah. No kidding. And that's a lifelong learning
journey.
Right? I mean, you it's like you don't
stop. You didn't just get the certificate and
say, boom. I'm done. No. It you are
always learning. There's always something new, and there's
always something to learn in design for sure.
Well, let's go into the book and talk
about this
creative leadership and whole brain leadership or being
(04:34):
that. Can you talk to the listener a
little bit and set the stage of what
your perceptions were when you built that concept
or created that those wordings that put that
pen to paper for you? Yeah. First of
all, the sort of a development whole brain,
right brain, left brain, like I said, is
very much rooted in architecture. You know, it's
one of those things that when
(04:55):
you are an architect
and like any profession, you are trained, maybe
you do a good job, maybe you get
promoted, all of a sudden, you're leading and
managing people, which is not what you went
to school for. Right? So you have to
learn how to do that. Over time, as
I stumbled and made mistakes, tried to understand
how to how to lead and to build
(05:16):
something. I sort of stumbled upon this idea
that, well, I should put the way I
think and the way I've learned to practice,
not only in architecture, but to leadership
technical skill to leadership,
continuous
learning, put that all together for sort of
this whole brain creative leadership idea. Well, I
(05:37):
hear the mechanics. I hear the pieces of
the puzzle that you're talking about,
but the thing I don't hear, and I
think that's a
the kind of the missing link for me
is that I don't hear maturity anywhere in
that because having those parts and pieces is
one thing.
Understanding parts and pieces is one thing.
Wisdom
making, understanding,
(05:59):
comprehension, I guess, is a big word about
all this. You have to comprehend a lot
of different things and be able to adapt
to different levels all the time. Yeah. That's
for sure. And, you know, that's, I guess,
part of the continuous learning because with anything
new that you're trying to learn and trying
to be proficient at, you're gonna make a
lot of mistakes. And so I guess there's
(06:19):
a certain amount of wisdom that comes with
time from learning and then applying
that learning to what you're gonna do next.
Well, answer me this. Do you think everybody
can be a leader?
I think they yes. I do. I actually
do think anybody can be a leader if
they want to do that. That's a distinction
a little bit. So motivation. They gotta have
(06:40):
motivation.
Yeah. It's gotta be something you want to
do. Yeah. I guess that's the thing. Like,
could you be a
virtuoso
in an opera, or could you be something
that's highly skilled? Well, yeah, I guess everybody
could. They have some baseline
capabilities.
Some are better than
others. But motivation is the thing that really
pushes
(07:00):
someone to go beyond. Yeah. I mean, ambition
is important,
if you are building something Sort of inherent.
If you want to be a leader and
you want to build something,
there's a certain amount of ambition that needs
to be present to be able to do
that or even so that you would want
to do that. In your experience,
what's your motivation? My motivation well, I'll tell
you what my motivation was that originally in
(07:30):
opportunities for leadership and ultimately to buy my
company and take it over for leadership and
ultimately to buy my company and take it
over and run it. And it was an
amazing opportunity that I was given at a
pretty young age.
From that, I was inspired
to say, look. We can build this company
into something awesome
by giving as many people opportunities
(07:52):
to grow in their career and help the
company just as I was given. Okay. You
know, the idea that I was given opportunities
by our founders, Bill Ware and Bill Malcolm,
inspired
really a lot of what happened after that.
Let's just say that your wisdom building,
my assumption,
your wisdom building from schoolhouse to practice to
(08:12):
business builder, a leader, took certain steps.
And do you think that the text that
you're talking about, the layered leadership,
is that the how to?
Is this going to be a model for
others to did you shortcut and make a
checklist of how to get there? No. It's
not really a checklist. No. I wouldn't try
(08:33):
to do that. But I put in the
book different inspirations that I had that I
took from various sources
and found a way to adapt to our
strategy and our company
to motivate our people. And so over time,
it developed kind of a little at a
time. And over time, we I sort of
synthesized all those together Got it. To end
(08:55):
up with what we ended up with. Well,
let's go with the model that you created.
The listener, just think of tinker toys. If
you're of the age to know what that
is,
that's what we're talking about. But he's created
a visual model to help
gather and gain
deeper understanding. So please, Lawrence. Oh, thanks. Well,
you know, I've I've used various tools and
(09:18):
metaphors and inputs from
business books and
people that I was inspired by.
And so this idea of whole brain
development and thought and leadership,
I I used a tool with tinker toys
where we took one of the spokes,
and we challenged all of our leaders to
think of what you're really good at, what's
(09:40):
your best skill, and take one of the
longer tinker toys and stick it into the
hub.
And then think of something you're not very
good at that maybe you wanna improve on
and find the shortest one and stick it
in, and then fill the whole circle in
with various lengths of tinker toys.
You will find, like everyone, you have kind
of an unbalanced looking wheel almost.
(10:01):
Spokes coming out Yeah. From a Yeah. The
second exercise is to then take only long
ones, Tinkertoys, and stick them in and make,
you know, sort of your perfect spoke and
wheel,
understanding
where you are now and what you could
ultimately
work towards
and filling out your brain. And so this
(10:21):
sort of idea
illustrates and helps you focus on what you
wanna get better at, I guess. I would
say that probably changes week to week because
your perception of how you think you're doing
shifts. Yeah. It's a state of mind. Right?
It's a state. It's It's an exercise to
take on a a state of mind of
continuous learning and and always improving. It's a
(10:42):
demonstration.
And once we made these things, you you
know, we kind of sat them on our
desk. They're there to look at. And, yeah,
they probably shift from week to week. With
that parameters
of how you outline the structure of this,
I want everybody to think of it. It's
kind of a self awareness take because you're
doing a self assessment. Mhmm. You're creating something
external to help understand that relationship.
(11:03):
And I think that's where people may lose
some traction. They get horned in on one
thing or they get down a rabbit hole
in another, and they lose perspective of all
the other components.
And does that not give that motivation
to address the short stick, the the lacking
part? Yeah. And, you know, I think it's
all dependent on the person and how inspired
(11:26):
or committed you are to this idea. But
for me, it was a way to demonstrate
what I learned from Leonardo da Vinci, which
was always developing your whole brain. You know,
he was the ultimate whole brain thinker, the
most curious person, greatest genius that we've ever
seen,
and he was always trying to fill out
areas that he was not as good in
(11:48):
or strong at or is knowledgeable about. And
so he set a great example, and then
this tinker toy is kinda just a a
tool to help you think about that. And
I'll say in most human behavior, you ignore
the things you're not great at. You don't
spend time on them to try to get
better. I think a lot of people just
go with what they're good at or what
they can do really well. And the small
(12:10):
things that are distractors or they're not skilled
in don't get the presence of mind to
think, you know, I should probably work on
that. So what makes the difference between an
inspirational leader
in inspiring others to think like that? You
know, first of all, we always want to
acknowledge people's strengths. I mean, people
naturally feel comfortable working towards their strengths and
(12:32):
wanna build those, and there's nothing wrong with
that, and that's great. I just feel like
to be a leader and an effective leader
and a creative leader, it is helpful to
build out these ideas,
these strengths that you're not as good at.
And because it makes you a a more
well rounded leader, it makes you a more
relatable to people that have different strengths than
you do.
(12:54):
It just sort of inspires this continuous learning
throughout your life, which can only help you.
So I wanna talk about how you create
a culture
that cares, and these are my words, a
work culture that cares about itself and cares
about others in a fostering,
nurturing way.
I would say you're a
(13:14):
outlier
in that model. I don't know. I've not
studied all the businesses, but my experience, that
doesn't exist. That's a rare diamond, if you
will.
What makes that doable? For someone listening to
this right now, they got a little heat
going for them. The blood's going a little
bit, and they're like, wow. Mhmm. I really
need to find out about this. I'd like
(13:34):
to try it where I work. What advice
would you give them? The culture is everything,
really. So for us,
we have as we built our company,
we have offices scattered across North America now,
and so we have a lot of awesome
people working in different places.
It takes a lot of focus and hard
work to keep
(13:55):
sort of this one team attitude across the
platform.
And we've done that over time in various
ways. The first and foremost is, you know,
working with our people to understand what their
ambitions for their career is and helping them
in any way we can as a company
to reach those goals.
The other thing is just sort of this
one team attitude. Everything we do as a
(14:17):
company is to help each other be successful.
And by working together, we will provide the
best service to our clients and most successful
projects. Mhmm. There's a lot of things we
put in place over the years
to emphasize that team culture
and this idea of growth and support.
(14:38):
Everything from
we fly everybody in every year for our
annual holiday party. We're all together.
We have business review meetings with every office
every other month. I I wanna bring up
one that we talked about earlier, which is
the Leadership Academy. Yeah. Can you tell me
about the leadership academy? Yes. And, you know,
this leadership academy idea was inspired by Jack
(15:00):
Welch. He built a tremendous
leadership academy at GE, and so we tried
to apply this to our company.
And so we have an extensive mentoring and
coaching program at our company, but also,
leadership meetings three times a year where we
bring everybody in,
and it's more of a conference, a leadership
conference.
We work together on the strategy for the
(15:22):
company,
developing different skill sets, helping each other. So
it's all a sort of a work together
kind of an environment where, we also align
so that we're all headed the same direction
with the same mission, and we understand
what's going on in the industry. There's all
sorts of things we have put in place
over time
(15:43):
to emphasize this idea of a leadership academy.
Yeah. Because we, as a company, as we
grow, we need leaders. Yeah. Our culture is
specific, so we have to we have to
train up our leaders
in our culture so that it works for
our company.
And it's pretty specific, and we've developed it
over a period of years. Everything you've just
outlined
(16:03):
gives me the environmental
oxygen of the word trust.
Everything you're talking about builds
and enables
contact
relationship
and trust relationship
that I think is key element. It's really
a key element to success. Yeah. I think
trust obviously is important to any relationship or
(16:24):
anything you do, really.
Empowerment is a big word at that we
use that you've heard, and we live by
it at Aware Malcolm. We really want to
empower our people
so that they can grow in their careers.
Delegation and empowerment is a big deal we
spend a lot of time with our leaders
on
so that they are likewise inspiring,
their teammates. In my experience with the United
(16:46):
States Army,
leadership has its own
set of
I don't wanna say standards. Expectations. It has
its own set of expectations.
As you go up in rank, you have
more authority and more responsibility,
but you also have a wider birth.
You have a wider
array of being in your decision zone. You
can make decisions at certain ranks or elevations
(17:09):
that you couldn't at lower elevations.
So with rank, a bigger piece of the
pie.
Within that, though,
you think of an authoritarian structure like the
US army where it's very regimented and very
much for a good reason. But in an
organization
that lets people
experience the workplace
and have some liberty or have some
(17:31):
availability
of being more involved in a bit of
a free agent. Is that something that is
okay. I see your head shaking. Go ahead
and tell me about that. You know? And
and so our people work on projects. Right?
Real estate projects, design,
and development of buildings and space. And
so by nature, our teams have to make
decisions
(17:51):
every day, all day.
And it's a very collaborative
environment to be able to do this.
And so we try to inspire the same
attitudes when it comes to leadership, building your
team,
and working together.
We're lucky in that way that we've taken
sort of what the strengths of our business
is,
extend that to this idea of empowerment and
(18:13):
leadership.
Can you define for me what leadership is?
What it is for you. Yeah. What it
is for you. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's
inspiring
a team to do awesome work over a
long period of time. Are you more of
the carrot or the stick? Very much a
carrot, I think.
(18:34):
I think. He's scratching his head, ladies and
gentlemen. I hope.
Most days. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Now listen, we're none of us is
perfect, so I'm sure I the stick comes
has to come out every every once in
a while. Like, I'll give you a give
you a good example of that. Okay. Okay.
Because our culture is important to us, and
everyone knows it. And so if we see
(18:57):
behavior that doesn't fit the culture, then, you
know, we'd have to,
we have to work on that. Ignoring it
makes it worse. Definitely. So I I went
through your text, your your layered leadership book.
I searched the word
leadership. How many times do you think it's
in there?
I I have no idea, but I'm sure
it's in there a lot. 199.
(19:19):
Okay. Awesome. That's very well strengths term here.
The way I'm saying that is because I
want you to tell me who is this
book for. K. So it is for anyone
who is trying to build an organization.
You know, it could be a new leader
who's just learning leadership. It could be somebody
that's
just running a nonprofit or a small business
(19:40):
or a branch or a department in a
company or really any organization
because I think the
sort of the concepts
are crossing all of those types of instances.
And from my review,
I did not read it, ladies and gentlemen,
but from my review of the text in
PDF format,
I find two things
(20:01):
intriguing.
One,
Lawrence has got a smattering
different pieces of artwork
I presume you are the creator of. Yes.
It is I wouldn't say it's textbook
format. It's not academic
format.
It kinda reads from what I'm seeing. It
kinda reads like you're talking to me. Yeah.
That was the intention. I put my art
(20:23):
in it because I'm an artist and I
love it and no.
But I it also helps to emphasize the
point I'm trying to make, which is to
be creative.
You know, not everyone's an artist,
but I make a big point in the
book. It's like, look. I believe everybody can
be and is creative.
Part of the book challenges you to
(20:43):
open up your mind about creativity and, you
know, all the different examples of the input,
different types of input that are in the
book are an example of you know, I
drew inspiration from such a variety of sources
that we were able to sort of, like
I said, synthesize.
And I think the art is sort of
emblematic of that, you know, and and the
idea that say things like being an artist
(21:04):
made me a better CEO and being a
CEO made me a better artist. And
art doesn't have any boundaries, really. You can
do whatever you want, So it's sort of
the ultimate creative pursuit. It's free flow. I'm
trying to bring that idea into this idea
of leadership. Let me read the dedication from
this book on page three.
This book is dedicated to all the people
(21:26):
who have helped and inspired me
and all the people I hope to help
and inspire.
That's a pretty cool concept right there, my
friend. Are you a sage? Are you a
practicing
sage?
Or
I don't I don't know about that. But
what I am is grateful
for all the inspirations I've had in my
(21:48):
life. You know, this book is hopefully gonna
help inspire some other people,
and that's the idea. Living inspired is a
positive stroke. I like it very much. So
before we walk out the door and go
have a cup of coffee,
what is your definition of knowledge management?
Knowledge management. Wow.
(22:09):
Well, I don't usually
I'm not sure I use that term so
much, but what I like to do is
figure out how and this is a big
part of the whole thing. How do you
take this collective
knowledge and wisdom
and information
and
effectively
pass it through your organization so that your
(22:30):
company can be on the same page and
always learning all the time?
You know, that's kind of a big concept
in kind of a tall order,
but it is one we work really hard
at because we want to have our people
all be aligned and feel great and feel
like they're growing
and be on the same page. I would
have to assume with that approach,
(22:51):
you're gonna have a pretty high retention rate.
Yeah. We've had a lot of people that
have been with us, built their careers with
us and have been with us a long
time. Not everybody as we you know, we've
grown and people, like any company, come and
go a little bit, but
everyone has added to the ultimate idea of
what we've become. But we have had a
lot of people with us for a long
(23:12):
time for sure. I like the idea of
what you put together. I think having an
established
ethos
of cohesiveness
and knowledge sharing as a baseline
is a big plus for me. So kudos
to you, and thanks for being on the
show. I think a lot of folks,
are probably gonna dig into this because
leadership is a challenge.
(23:33):
I think most organizations don't foster growth and
leadership
as they probably should. They don't look at
it as a resource option. You know, it
seems to be a cost thing for them.
Oh, we gotta send somebody to class. Oh,
we gotta send you know? Do you? Do
you really? No. You you don't really.
You can create something like you did. Yeah.
It's an investment, and it there's no better
(23:54):
investment for sure. Oh, alright. You said the
magic word. So
so you're setting with your CFO,
and he's like, oh, boy. You got all
these great big ideas,
all this great big stuff.
What's the ROI on that? Yeah. A scoreboard.
You know? Just look at the last twenty
years of Where Malcolm and it's, fairly obvious.
So, obviously, if you're just starting out, there's
(24:17):
a little bit of,
faith that you have to have to try
these things and but, you know, for us,
which you know, we're a service business.
Your biggest asset is your people, and you
want them to be awesome and love where
they are. Fantastic.
Any last words of wisdom that you would
like to impart maybe from dad?
Oh, gosh. I'm sure he's got a few
one liners you're well accustomed to. Yeah. He
(24:38):
did. You know, unfortunately, he's not here with
us anymore, but he he inspired me a
lot every day. You know, I said earlier,
he said to me a lot, don't sweat
it because I was kind of a hyped
up, tense kid when I was growing up.
And so he he calmed me down a
lot, but he had a lot of faith
in me, which it was very inspiring and
tried to pass that along. Alright, my friend.
Well, thanks for being here. Thanks for having
(25:00):
me. It was awesome. Really appreciate it. I
like the attitude. Keep it up.
Thank you for joining this extraordinary journey and
we hope the experiences gained add value to
you and yours.
See you next time at Because You Need
to Know. If you'd like to contact us,
(25:20):
please email
byntk@pioneer-ks.org
or find us on LinkedIn.
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