September 15, 2024 • 30 mins
In this episode, Rick Williams, a seasoned executive, advisor, board director, prolific writer - - and the author of the new book, Create the Future, shares his journey writing the book and key leadership takeaways.
Rick’s core idea in Create the Future is that leaders create the future by the decisions they make Impactful leaders believe they can create the future, and they change uncertainty into hope and possibility.
Rick discusses the CTF process of making great decisions for companies and individuals including the importance of board dynamics and how to harness the collective wisdom of a diverse group to make impactful decisions.
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Big Ideas/Thoughts/Quotes
1. Journey of Writing Create the Future
· Initial book concept during travels in North Africa while sitting in a café in Casablanca
· Wrote the book and refined it with the help of a professional editor.
· It took more time than I expected to choose the right publisher, Amplify, to bring the book to market.
2. Overview of Create the Future
Create the Future outlines the process and the tools successful leaders use when they must make an important decision - when they must get it right. Rick profiles the Five Step decision making process major consulting firms recommend for making important decisions and brings the tools and techniques to organizations off all sizes.
Create the Future is a guidebook for leaders who want to turn their leadership team into a powerful creative engine for defining the challenge, imagining success, creating realistic options, evaluating execution barriers, and finally choosing the path forward.
3. The Five-Step Decision-Making Process
“I spent quite a bit of time on how do you as a leadership team - a board of directors for example - how do you actually go about deciding what you're really going to do.”
“This book outlines the five steps that we all either instinctively use, or should be using, when we have an important decision to make.”
· Define the real opportunity or threat.
· Identify what success looks like
· Be creative about the options.
· Evaluate execution barriers.
· Make the final decision.
4. Factors to be Considered in Decision Making
· How close do the decisions come to achieving t
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Hello and welcome to On Boards, a deepdive at what drives business success.
I'm Joe Ayoub and I'm herewith my co-host Raza Shaikh.
Twice a month, On Boards is the place tolearn about one of the most critically
important aspects of any company ororganization - its board of directors
or advisors, with a focus on theimportant issues that are facing boards,
(00:28):
company leadership, and stakeholders.
Joe and I speak with a wide range ofguests and talk about what makes a board
successful or unsuccessful, what it meansto be an effective board member and,
how to make your board one of the mostvaluable assets of your organization.
Before we introduce our guests today,we want to thank the terrific law firm
(00:49):
of Nutter McClennen & Fish who areagain sponsoring our On Board Summit
this year, taking place on October22nd in their beautiful conference
center in the Boston Seaport.
They've been incrediblepartners with us in every way.
We appreciate all they havedone to support this podcast.
(01:09):
Our guest today is Rick Williams.
Rick has a breadth of experienceas an executive and board
director for technology companies,including medical technology,
software and financial services.
He is a nationally publishedthought leader who provides CEO
and board advisory services formiddle market technology companies.
(01:32):
He has been a board member, boardchair, mentor, and coach to CEOs.
He is also the author of aneagerly anticipated new book
entitled Create the Future.
It is about how to make great decisionsfor your company and yourself, and
will be published in September.
(01:53):
And last, but not least, he is one of therare guests back for a second episode.
Rick was our second guest onthis podcast back in February of
2020, and we promised to have himback when his book was published.
We thought it would be in the fallof 2020, but all the better, four
(02:13):
years later to have Rick back with us.
The book is excellent.
Raza and I have reviewed it and we'relooking forward to discussing the book
and the book adventure with Rick today.
Welcome back, Rick.
Thank you for joiningus again on On Boards.
Well, thank you, Joe, and thank you, Raza.
It's a pleasure to be here.
(02:34):
I never imagined it would take this longto be on the program again, but things
always take longer than they seem.
And writing a book is an adventure, solet's start, talk a little about the
journey from February 1st, 2020, which waswhen you appeared on our show, to today.
As I said, you expected it atthe time that it would might
(02:57):
be published in the fall.
I know you're a prolific writer,but I also know this is your
first book, so a lot to learn whenyou're publishing a first book.
Talk a little bit about what you learnedand how you picked your publisher
and the amount of work that you'redoing and what you're doing actually
to bring it to people's attention.
(03:18):
Well, Joe, I'm happy to do that.
This has been such a convolutedand truly wonderful process.
Yes, it took longer, but Idon't regret having taken the
time to really get this right.
If you don't mind, I'm going to take 20seconds and fill your audience in a little
bit more about what the book is about.
You said it's a leadership book to helpyou make better decisions for your company
(03:41):
or yourself, and it's really intended tohelp the middle market and smaller company
leaders who don't have access to a lotof outside paid consulting support, help
them learn by team exercises in the bookto fully engage their board of directors,
for example, their leadership team to bemore creative about the options they have
(04:06):
and then in the end, make better decisionsfor themselves and for their companies.
That's what the book's about.
I drew on my experience as amanagement consultant with Arthur D.
Little, my experience founding andrunning a company, and then a lot of my
board of director experience as to whatreally are the barriers that leaders and
(04:26):
board, particularly where you may havean executive committee or a board that
must make a very important decision,and what is the process that often they
stumble on and have difficulty that Imay have some help through the guidance
about how do you go from really whatis the opportunity through the real
(04:46):
options you have all the way throughto the process of finally in the end
choosing what you're actually going to do.
That's what this book is about.
The question you asked was, okay,what took so long, and, yes, I have
published internationally a lotof thought leadership articles.
I think I've written lots of books,but they're called reports that sit on
(05:07):
somebody's shelf, so Create The Futureis the first book that you'll be able to
buy on Amazon and like Barnes & Noble andplaces like that, and when I got to the
end of what I thought was a very terrificfirst draft of the book, what happened
after that is I was very fortunate toget introduced to a terrific editor who
helped me think about really how shouldthe book as a whole stand together.
(05:31):
This draft that we were talkingabout when we got together had been
reviewed by a committee of people likeyourselves and give me feedback on it.
I had gone over it to make surethe whole thing hung together.
But Meryl Meadows, who I worked withas an editor, really helped me hone
it down to very concise language.
(05:52):
I think it made thewhole book hang together.
I give an enormous amount of credit toMeryl for working with me and bringing
me the book that I have together today.
I then talked to a whole lot of peopleabout who was a publisher that would
be open to working with me on the book,and I had to learn about the publishing
industry, how much has changed in thelast 10 or 15 years, and anyway, I
(06:17):
got proposals for a lot of differentpublishers to publish the book and
ended up going with a publisher calledAmplify that's outside of Washington,
DC who I chose because they're kind ofa medium-sized hybrid publisher that I
felt was large enough to have the impactI wanted, but also small enough so that
(06:38):
this book would be really important tothem, and working all that out and getting
through to the point of countless reviewsand re-edits, and "Gee, is this sentence
exactly what you want to say for everysingle sentence in the book", has taken
this long to get to where we are today.
Look, if you're going to write afirst book, you want it to be good,
(07:00):
and I think we appreciate the amountof time and effort you put into it.
One thing I learned from your pressrelease is that you were named
after Rick Blaine, Humphrey Bogart'scharacter in Casablanca, and I love
the fact that it was in Casablancathat you came up with the name.
(07:20):
Just talk about that little moment whenyou were sitting at a cafe, looking at
the wheeling and dealing going on in themarketplace, how this title came to mind.
Well, it is an interesting story,and odd enough that I thought it
was worth mentioning in the book.
So, yes, my parents named me afterRick's character in the movie Casablanca.
(07:42):
Wait a minute, is your nameRichard or is it really just Rick?
My name is Richard Williams.
Williams is Welsh.
The Welsh seem to have a very limitedimagination on the names of their
sons so my father's Richard Williams,his grandfather's Richard Williams.
You can see this going back.
So, I'm Richard Williams, but my parents'nickname for me was Rick Williams.
(08:05):
Rather than call me Dick, whichwas my father's nickname, they
called me Rick, which was HumphreyBogart's character in Casablanca.
Right.
I had been thinking for many months,"Gee, do I really have a book in
me that would be interesting tothe kind of business leadership
(08:25):
audience that I've been writing for?"
I had taken almost three weeks to just getsome traveling in and went to Barcelona
and then over to Morocco and was thinkingabout this during the whole time that I
was riding the camel in the desert andgoing through the Kasbah and learning
about the wonderful history of NorthAfrica and how it contributed to the
(08:49):
development of science and mathematics andso this was sort of a background context
for my thinking about, " if I'm goingto write a book, what will it be about?"
One day I was sitting in a cafe inCasablanca up on a terrace on the roof
of this cafe, and as I thought aboutit, I took the placemat on the table
(09:10):
and turned it over and I wrote out thetitle of the book, Create The Future,
and then I wrote under that some keyideas that I was having at that moment
about what the book would be about,and that's the start of this book.
Wow.
Fantastic.
Rick, Create The Future is a bookabout the process of organizational
(09:32):
decision making as you put it.
What does that mean?
The book is really a guidebook.
It's a guidebook about whatare the process steps for
making important decisions.
It's not a "Oh, gee, if you'redoing this, you should do that."
That's not what this book is about.
This book outlines the five stepsthat we all either instinctively
(09:55):
do or should be using when we havean important decision to make.
What really is the opportunity?
What would success look like?
What are the options?
Be creative about the options we have.
What are the execution barriers?
And then finally making thedecisions to choose the path forward.
It's not about what you should do.
It's a leadership guidebook that youyourself or you with your leadership
(10:19):
team can use, including whiteboardteam exercises that you would use to
go through each one of the five steps.
Now, it's not intended that somebody isgoing to go through each one of these
steps for everything they're trying to do.
It's one of these things inwhich you have to decide.
You may use one or two of them, orthree of them, whatever, but the ones
(10:43):
that are critical to the decisionsyou're facing, the opportunity
or the threat you're facing.
We could talk about success, whichsounds like it's a simple idea, but
the notion of what are we reallytrying to achieve here is one that
often we don't spend enough time on.
I spent quite a bit of time on howdo you as a leadership team, and it
(11:04):
might be a board of directors, forexample, how do you actually go about
deciding what you're really going to do.
Often we as board members, for example,either don't have time or haven't
fully thought through what are thevalues that we bring to the decisions
we make, what is our risk preferences,and also what are the values and
(11:25):
goals of other people on our boardand how do they factor into this?
If all we do is we say, "Okay,we got a decision on the table.
We're really rushed to make a decision,"they're really not learning from each
other and I place a lot of emphasison the value of learning from each
other, particularly when we're ina board or committee situation.
So Rick, you're saying, first ofall, it's not a book of answers
(11:48):
that gives you answers already.
It is a book about how to get to thoseanswers and the process to do that, and
you define that process in five steps.
Would you mind going throughthat five steps again?
And which ones are kind of maybenot optional, but are less done?
Is this an iterative process or ithas to be done in that sequence?
(12:12):
Very curious to kind of gothrough the five steps with you.
Okay.
Well, the steps again are, first, definewhat the real opportunity or threat is.
Often, we're dealing with thesymptoms rather than the real
challenge that we're facing.
Make sure you're answeringthe right question.
The first one is define theopportunity or the threat.
(12:34):
The second one is success, whatare we really trying to achieve
when we take advantage of thisopportunity or counter this threat.
For instance, are we trying to save thecompany, or are we trying to get the
company ready to sell, or is it just forthe owners and the family of the company
to continue revenues at some stable levelrather than trying to achieve some great
(12:58):
step forward in terms of revenue thatmight be more risky, so that's success.
Then the third step is being creativeabout the options you really have.
Take the barriers down to thinkingabout what you might really
do in response to this threat.
Four is evaluate the executionbarriers, because in truth, value is not
(13:21):
created by the ideas we come up with.
Value is created through execution.
Can we really execute?
Yes, we can imagine things,but could we really execute on?
Do we really understand the risks,and are we trying to do something that
we have to be certain is successful,or are we taking a moon shot?
Are we trying to do somethingthat if it works, it's great.
(13:43):
It's a big step forward.
But if it doesn't, we're willing toaccept failure for the value we get
out of learning from that experience.
And then finally, making a decision.
Now, making a decision sounds simple,"Okay, well, we'll do this or we'll
do that," but it's really not.
It's a very complicated process.
I don't think decisionmaking is simple at all.
(14:04):
I think you're right.
I think making a decision is one ofthe most difficult things that anyone
does, especially in the context of acompany or organization where there are
a lot of stakeholders who are involved,so I wholeheartedly agree with that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I use three variables asfactors to be considered.
First of all, among the optionsyou're considering, that I call
(14:27):
the choices, how close do they comewith achieving the goals you set?
Secondly, where are they in the riskprofile in terms of acceptable risk
to you or unacceptable risk to you.
And third, these options you'reconsidering, how do they express
the values that you may have as acompany owner or your board may have
(14:48):
for, A, what the company is doingand, B, the values of its operations.
So, those goals, risks, and values are theway I categorize the important variables
to be developed in the team exercise thatbrings out what the board members' views
are about the options under consideration,how well they achieve the goals, what
(15:12):
their risk profile is, and what are thevalues that their decisions would express.
I love how you describe this, thatat each of these steps, there is a
lot of value based from one-to-oneinteractions, one-to-many interactions,
and learning from each other.
Step number three where you'rebrainstorming creative options is an
(15:33):
example of where you would need thecrowdsourcing of choices, options,
and things that you could possibly do.
Nothing's off the table, and thendo you recommend that this process
be followed like step one first andthen step two, or is it kind of not
fuzzy, but kind of interchangeable?
(15:53):
Well, yes, I do think of it as a sequence.
What I say in the book is thatsome of these exercises will be
more important than others givenyour particular circumstances.
It may be that, as I mentioned, thinkingabout defining the problem might be the
most important thing you need people'shelp with, and then once you define the
problem, may be pretty straightforwardis to what you actually do about it.
(16:16):
Remember Einstein, whether he actuallysaid this or not, if he had one hour to
save the world from destruction, he'dspend 55 minutes defining the problem
and five minutes solving the problem.
Well, that's Einstein, heonly needs five minutes.
That's not helpful to the rest of us.
Okay.
We need a little more than fiveminutes, but yes, defining the problem
(16:39):
is really the right place to start.
One other analogy that rings true forme is that, you must have heard this
saying, a camel is a horse designed bya committee, and I think that applies to
the decision making process of a group,and I think really figuring out that
we need to design a horse is what arewe going after, what does success look
(17:01):
like, is a pretty important exercise.
I got to say though, you may beunderestimating how important camels are.
I speak because I know people that relyon camels all the time, and I think
they're really built well for wherethey're used, but I'm kidding, of course,
but getting a group together and takingadvantage of what they all have to offer
(17:25):
is obviously enormously valuable, andI'll just say when we talked recently, I
asked you what the CTF, Create The Futureprocess was, and one of the things you
said was, a number of individuals withdifferent perspectives are together.
How do you make sure everyone in agroup with diverse perspective listens
(17:50):
to one another and collectivelymakes the best possible decision?
I thought that was a great thought abouthow to get the best out of the talent
in the room, and what we had asked wasmaybe you could give us a couple of
examples of how it might work becauseI think if people could hear that, they
might get a really good sense of howthis might apply to their organization,
(18:16):
their company, their situation.
Yeah, really good question.
First of all, there's never a guaranteethat anybody's going to listen to each
other, and often we don't do enoughlistening, but I think the contribution
this book makes is to encourage leaders,and it could be the CEO, it could be
(18:37):
a board chair, it could be the boardas a whole, to recognize that, yes,
the value of this board is that it hasdifferent points of view in the board,
it has different experiences, and eachof those is a valuable contribution
to the conversation, whatever it is.
(18:57):
If you don't mind, I'll tell aquick story which has nothing
to do with boards of directors.
As you know, I do a lot of sailboatracing and I bought a new sailboat
a few years ago and called all myfriends together to help me come up
with a name for the new boat, andI had said, "I wanted to experience
new adventures on the new boat."
I'll make this really quick.
(19:18):
A woman came up to me at this partywe were having who knew nothing about
sailing, and she listened to my storyand she said, "You know, I think you
should name the boat Voyager which wasthe name of the spacecraft that had
been launched into space to explorethe outer rims of our solar system."
As soon as I heard that name from theperson who knew nothing about sailing, I
(19:41):
knew that that was the right name for mysailboat, and that is not from an expert,
it's from somebody who was just beingcreative about their own experiences,
and that's exactly what applies in aboardroom, that what I'm encouraging
people through this book is to say,"You know, we want to get on the table
(20:02):
what people are really thinking about.
We want to understand.
We want people to talk about what dothey ideally want to accomplish by
the decision they're going to make.
What assumptions are they makingabout what other people are going
to do and how this is going to workout," et cetera, all the way through
the steps that are in the book.
I won't get into all the details here.
But I use an example of a company based inAtlanta that's primarily selling products
(20:27):
to the African-American community in theSoutheast US, and the CEO of that company
believes that the company has developedvery, very strong marketing and sales
operations and build on those productsand customers, but there's no reason
why that can't be expanded to selling,for example, to the Hispanic community
(20:49):
or to the markets in the Southwest US.
The problem is that on the boardare representatives of the original
founders' family, representatives ofinvestors who want to keep the company
focused on the markets and customerswhere it is, but others who say,
"Gee, we have an opportunity here.
We have an investment in this company.
(21:10):
We want to see it grow."
So, what you have on the board arepeople with different points of view
about where the company should go,values that they want to see expressed
through what the company is doing,and taking that board through the
process of, A, what are we reallytrying to achieve with this company, B
(21:31):
and therefore what would success looklike, what are the options we really
have, and then I will put in executionbarriers, absolutely, but then how do
we decide what we're really going to do.
So, this process makes sure thateverybody on the board participates
in the conversation, theirpoint of view is heard, and they
hear each other talk about it.
(21:52):
They hear each other say what theyreally are trying to accomplish, and
then, yes, they'll do test votes, andthey may do some ranking of the options
that they're considering, but in theend, the board will make a decision,
and the people who participate in thiswill say, "You know, I may not fully
agree with where we're going to go, butat least my voice was heard, and I now
(22:14):
understand what other people are tryingto do and where they're coming from."
That is enormously valuable to a boardor any organization that as a group is
trying to make really important decisions.
I think if you have the people in theroom, whoever they may be, board or
otherwise, at the end of the process,feeling like their voice has been heard,
(22:36):
their ideas have been heard, and atleast considered, that alone is success.
Because otherwise, what doyou have them there for?
I mean, whether it's a board oranything else, no one wants to sit on
a board and think a couple of peopleare making all the decisions, and
there's no point in having a boardif you're not going to get the best
out of everyone, so that's fantastic.
How does an effective boardmake decisions generally?
(22:59):
What is it that makes ahigh-performing board high performing?
Is that how you thought about theprocess that you laid out in the
book, for Creating The Future?
Yes, absolutely.
I've also thought about this from thepoint of view of the board itself,
from the point of view of the chairmanof the board in trying to bring value
(23:21):
forward that's in the board amongthe board members, and also from
the point of view of the companyleadership, like the CEO, for example.
There's always a tensionbetween the CEO and that board.
Because I completely agree with what Ithink Raza said earlier that the board
can be a value accelerator, but it'sonly if its value is brought forth
(23:44):
into the important decision making.
The book actually deals with this byconsidering both the board itself as an
entity that's managing itself, but alsoif you are the CEO who may be controlled
by the board, but also relying on theboard for ultimate decision making,
and how does that relationship work.
(24:04):
Rick, as part of the book, Ibelieve you're planning to also
release a workbook, that is aset of exercises for those steps.
Is that right?
Yes.
Is it a companion to the book?
Is it separate?
If you don't buy the workbook,is the book still work on its own
(24:25):
or how would you describe it?
First of all, thank you for asking.
So, the workbook will notbe out for a while yet.
It's from my point of view.
Again, one of these things that'swritten, but I know there's going to
be a process of actually getting out.
So, the workbook is more ofan elaboration of the team
exercises that are in the book.
The book has 25 or soleadership team exercise.
(24:46):
It could be board or director exercises,and there are enough details so that
at least in a rough way, you couldjust use them by themselves, but
I thought there was a need to havea more detailed workbook that more
systematically presents team exercises.
The team exercises take you throughthe goal of the exercise, the specific
(25:09):
steps and then the work productsthat come out of the exercises.
One example would be the team exercisewhere you're being creative about what
are the options you really have forresponding to the opportunity or threat
that you see before you, and I talk aboutwear a Hawaiian shirts or do something
(25:29):
unusual to be in a creative moment.
But what I also do is in theteam exercise, I say don't start
by saying give me a solution towhat we should be doing here.
What I say is start the exerciseby imagining different paths
that you could take thatpotentially could reach the goal.
So, for example, if you were saying,what we want to do is raise revenues
(25:52):
over the next three to four years.
What are different categories ofpossible solutions for raising revenues?
increased
raise prices.
Exactly, raise prices.
You could get morecustomers, more market share.
You could go buy another companythat's doing the same thing.
I mean, come up with categoriesof possible solutions rather
than think about solutions.
Once you've come up with a categoriesof possible solutions, then go through
(26:17):
the process with each category.
What are different things wecould do within each category?
It's giving you a structure abouthow to be creative in that moment.
I make a big point that usually you don'tneed more creative people in the room.
What you need in the room ispermission to be creative.
That's more important than getting anotherso-called creative person in the room.
(26:39):
Also, don't say to people, "I onlywant really good ideas here so
we can put them on the whiteboardand get this settled fast."
Don't say that.
Say, "I want ideas on the whiteboard thatconceivably could contribute to this.
All ideas are good ideas."
That's the mantra, all ideas are good.
Get lots of ideas up.
(26:59):
Once you have lots of creativeideas on the whiteboard, then
you can go back through them.
You'll see connections andsuggestions for other ideas
you never thought about before.
Once you get lots of ideas on thewhiteboard, then you can wean them down
to either categories of good ideas, anidea that inspires a line of thinking
(27:20):
you never would have thought about,stuff that's completely impractical and
you're not going to do, and maybe somethings that are good ideas that you
could work on separately, they reallyaren't going to solve this problem.
All of that whittled down into ahalf a dozen or so ideas that are
worth pursuing in more detail.
It sounds to me like whoever'sleading this exercise, whoever that
(27:43):
is, that role is quite important,whether it's the owner, the CEO,
the board chair, whoever it may be.
They need to have read the book.
I make a big deal of saying youreally shouldn't be the facilitator,
and I give examples of that.
Whoever's the CEO or board chairshould not be the facilitator.
You'd have somebody else, maybe anoutside person who come in and be a
(28:06):
facilitator for the day, or maybe somebodyon the staff who's good at doing that.
If I'm the CEO or board chair, Idon't want to be at the board trying
to make sure I understand whateverybody's saying and write it down.
I want to be experiencing this processand drawing my own thoughts from
it and understanding the creativityand the value that's coming out.
(28:29):
I don't want to be at a whiteboardtrying to be the facilitator, and
I recommend that you not do that.
Okay, that makes sense.
Rick, when is the book actually gettingreleased and where can folks find it?
Actually, let me ask a different question.
When can you get it on Amazon?
(28:49):
Okay.
Well, technically, you can go on Amazontoday and order it, but Amazon will
not be sending them out and deliveringthem until like mid-September.
We'll include a link for our audience.
Yeah, we'll include a link to yourwebsite and to Amazon's site for this,
so that they can buy it early and often,as James Michael Curley used to say.
(29:17):
Rick, it's been greatspeaking with you again.
I'm so glad you're back.
I'm so glad the book is almost out, but Iwould say it's about to be in everyone's
hands, and I'm really looking forward tohearing the reaction from folks that we
know when they get a chance to read it.
So, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
It's great to have you back.
(29:39):
Well, thank you.
It's a pleasure, and I always enjoy theseconversation with you and your audience.
Thanks so much.
And thank you all for listeningto On Boards with our very
special guest, Rick Williams.
Please visit our websiteat OnBoardsPodcast.com.
That's OnBoardsPodcast.com.
(30:00):
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(30:22):
the next episode of On Boards.
Thanks.
Hello and welcome to On Boards, a deepdive at what drives business success.
I'm Joe Ayoub and I'm herewith my co-host Raza Shaikh.
Twice a month, On Boards is the place tolearn about one of the most critically
important aspects of any company ororganization - its board of directors
or advisors, with a focus on theimportant issues that are facing boards,
(00:28):
company leadership, and stakeholders.
Joe and I speak with a wide range ofguests and talk about what makes a board
successful or unsuccessful, what it meansto be an effective board member and,
how to make your board one of the mostvaluable assets of your organization.
Before we introduce our guests today,we want to thank the terrific law firm
(00:49):
of Nutter McClennen & Fish who areagain sponsoring our On Board Summit
this year, taking place on October22nd in their beautiful conference
center in the Boston Seaport.
They've been incrediblepartners with us in every way.
We appreciate all they havedone to support this podcast.
(01:09):
Our guest today is Rick Williams.
Rick has a breadth of experienceas an executive and board
director for technology companies,including medical technology,
software and financial services.
He is a nationally publishedthought leader who provides CEO
and board advisory services formiddle market technology companies.
(01:32):
He has been a board member, boardchair, mentor, and coach to CEOs.
He is also the author of aneagerly anticipated new book
entitled Create the Future.
It is about how to make great decisionsfor your company and yourself, and
will be published in September.
(01:53):
And last, but not least, he is one of therare guests back for a second episode.
Rick was our second guest onthis podcast back in February of
2020, and we promised to have himback when his book was published.
We thought it would be in the fallof 2020, but all the better, four
(02:13):
years later to have Rick back with us.
The book is excellent.
Raza and I have reviewed it and we'relooking forward to discussing the book
and the book adventure with Rick today.
Welcome back, Rick.
Thank you for joiningus again on On Boards.
Well, thank you, Joe, and thank you, Raza.
It's a pleasure to be here.
(02:34):
I never imagined it would take this longto be on the program again, but things
always take longer than they seem.
And writing a book is an adventure, solet's start, talk a little about the
journey from February 1st, 2020, which waswhen you appeared on our show, to today.
As I said, you expected it atthe time that it would might
(02:57):
be published in the fall.
I know you're a prolific writer,but I also know this is your
first book, so a lot to learn whenyou're publishing a first book.
Talk a little bit about what you learnedand how you picked your publisher
and the amount of work that you'redoing and what you're doing actually
to bring it to people's attention.
(03:18):
Well, Joe, I'm happy to do that.
This has been such a convolutedand truly wonderful process.
Yes, it took longer, but Idon't regret having taken the
time to really get this right.
If you don't mind, I'm going to take 20seconds and fill your audience in a little
bit more about what the book is about.
You said it's a leadership book to helpyou make better decisions for your company
(03:41):
or yourself, and it's really intended tohelp the middle market and smaller company
leaders who don't have access to a lotof outside paid consulting support, help
them learn by team exercises in the bookto fully engage their board of directors,
for example, their leadership team to bemore creative about the options they have
(04:06):
and then in the end, make better decisionsfor themselves and for their companies.
That's what the book's about.
I drew on my experience as amanagement consultant with Arthur D.
Little, my experience founding andrunning a company, and then a lot of my
board of director experience as to whatreally are the barriers that leaders and
(04:26):
board, particularly where you may havean executive committee or a board that
must make a very important decision,and what is the process that often they
stumble on and have difficulty that Imay have some help through the guidance
about how do you go from really whatis the opportunity through the real
(04:46):
options you have all the way throughto the process of finally in the end
choosing what you're actually going to do.
That's what this book is about.
The question you asked was, okay,what took so long, and, yes, I have
published internationally a lotof thought leadership articles.
I think I've written lots of books,but they're called reports that sit on
(05:07):
somebody's shelf, so Create The Futureis the first book that you'll be able to
buy on Amazon and like Barnes & Noble andplaces like that, and when I got to the
end of what I thought was a very terrificfirst draft of the book, what happened
after that is I was very fortunate toget introduced to a terrific editor who
helped me think about really how shouldthe book as a whole stand together.
(05:31):
This draft that we were talkingabout when we got together had been
reviewed by a committee of people likeyourselves and give me feedback on it.
I had gone over it to make surethe whole thing hung together.
But Meryl Meadows, who I worked withas an editor, really helped me hone
it down to very concise language.
(05:52):
I think it made thewhole book hang together.
I give an enormous amount of credit toMeryl for working with me and bringing
me the book that I have together today.
I then talked to a whole lot of peopleabout who was a publisher that would
be open to working with me on the book,and I had to learn about the publishing
industry, how much has changed in thelast 10 or 15 years, and anyway, I
(06:17):
got proposals for a lot of differentpublishers to publish the book and
ended up going with a publisher calledAmplify that's outside of Washington,
DC who I chose because they're kind ofa medium-sized hybrid publisher that I
felt was large enough to have the impactI wanted, but also small enough so that
(06:38):
this book would be really important tothem, and working all that out and getting
through to the point of countless reviewsand re-edits, and "Gee, is this sentence
exactly what you want to say for everysingle sentence in the book", has taken
this long to get to where we are today.
Look, if you're going to write afirst book, you want it to be good,
(07:00):
and I think we appreciate the amountof time and effort you put into it.
One thing I learned from your pressrelease is that you were named
after Rick Blaine, Humphrey Bogart'scharacter in Casablanca, and I love
the fact that it was in Casablancathat you came up with the name.
(07:20):
Just talk about that little moment whenyou were sitting at a cafe, looking at
the wheeling and dealing going on in themarketplace, how this title came to mind.
Well, it is an interesting story,and odd enough that I thought it
was worth mentioning in the book.
So, yes, my parents named me afterRick's character in the movie Casablanca.
(07:42):
Wait a minute, is your nameRichard or is it really just Rick?
My name is Richard Williams.
Williams is Welsh.
The Welsh seem to have a very limitedimagination on the names of their
sons so my father's Richard Williams,his grandfather's Richard Williams.
You can see this going back.
So, I'm Richard Williams, but my parents'nickname for me was Rick Williams.
(08:05):
Rather than call me Dick, whichwas my father's nickname, they
called me Rick, which was HumphreyBogart's character in Casablanca.
Right.
I had been thinking for many months,"Gee, do I really have a book in
me that would be interesting tothe kind of business leadership
(08:25):
audience that I've been writing for?"
I had taken almost three weeks to just getsome traveling in and went to Barcelona
and then over to Morocco and was thinkingabout this during the whole time that I
was riding the camel in the desert andgoing through the Kasbah and learning
about the wonderful history of NorthAfrica and how it contributed to the
(08:49):
development of science and mathematics andso this was sort of a background context
for my thinking about, " if I'm goingto write a book, what will it be about?"
One day I was sitting in a cafe inCasablanca up on a terrace on the roof
of this cafe, and as I thought aboutit, I took the placemat on the table
(09:10):
and turned it over and I wrote out thetitle of the book, Create The Future,
and then I wrote under that some keyideas that I was having at that moment
about what the book would be about,and that's the start of this book.
Wow.
Fantastic.
Rick, Create The Future is a bookabout the process of organizational
(09:32):
decision making as you put it.
What does that mean?
The book is really a guidebook.
It's a guidebook about whatare the process steps for
making important decisions.
It's not a "Oh, gee, if you'redoing this, you should do that."
That's not what this book is about.
This book outlines the five stepsthat we all either instinctively
(09:55):
do or should be using when we havean important decision to make.
What really is the opportunity?
What would success look like?
What are the options?
Be creative about the options we have.
What are the execution barriers?
And then finally making thedecisions to choose the path forward.
It's not about what you should do.
It's a leadership guidebook that youyourself or you with your leadership
(10:19):
team can use, including whiteboardteam exercises that you would use to
go through each one of the five steps.
Now, it's not intended that somebody isgoing to go through each one of these
steps for everything they're trying to do.
It's one of these things inwhich you have to decide.
You may use one or two of them, orthree of them, whatever, but the ones
(10:43):
that are critical to the decisionsyou're facing, the opportunity
or the threat you're facing.
We could talk about success, whichsounds like it's a simple idea, but
the notion of what are we reallytrying to achieve here is one that
often we don't spend enough time on.
I spent quite a bit of time on howdo you as a leadership team, and it
(11:04):
might be a board of directors, forexample, how do you actually go about
deciding what you're really going to do.
Often we as board members, for example,either don't have time or haven't
fully thought through what are thevalues that we bring to the decisions
we make, what is our risk preferences,and also what are the values and
(11:25):
goals of other people on our boardand how do they factor into this?
If all we do is we say, "Okay,we got a decision on the table.
We're really rushed to make a decision,"they're really not learning from each
other and I place a lot of emphasison the value of learning from each
other, particularly when we're ina board or committee situation.
So Rick, you're saying, first ofall, it's not a book of answers
(11:48):
that gives you answers already.
It is a book about how to get to thoseanswers and the process to do that, and
you define that process in five steps.
Would you mind going throughthat five steps again?
And which ones are kind of maybenot optional, but are less done?
Is this an iterative process or ithas to be done in that sequence?
(12:12):
Very curious to kind of gothrough the five steps with you.
Okay.
Well, the steps again are, first, definewhat the real opportunity or threat is.
Often, we're dealing with thesymptoms rather than the real
challenge that we're facing.
Make sure you're answeringthe right question.
The first one is define theopportunity or the threat.
(12:34):
The second one is success, whatare we really trying to achieve
when we take advantage of thisopportunity or counter this threat.
For instance, are we trying to save thecompany, or are we trying to get the
company ready to sell, or is it just forthe owners and the family of the company
to continue revenues at some stable levelrather than trying to achieve some great
(12:58):
step forward in terms of revenue thatmight be more risky, so that's success.
Then the third step is being creativeabout the options you really have.
Take the barriers down to thinkingabout what you might really
do in response to this threat.
Four is evaluate the executionbarriers, because in truth, value is not
(13:21):
created by the ideas we come up with.
Value is created through execution.
Can we really execute?
Yes, we can imagine things,but could we really execute on?
Do we really understand the risks,and are we trying to do something that
we have to be certain is successful,or are we taking a moon shot?
Are we trying to do somethingthat if it works, it's great.
(13:43):
It's a big step forward.
But if it doesn't, we're willing toaccept failure for the value we get
out of learning from that experience.
And then finally, making a decision.
Now, making a decision sounds simple,"Okay, well, we'll do this or we'll
do that," but it's really not.
It's a very complicated process.
I don't think decisionmaking is simple at all.
(14:04):
I think you're right.
I think making a decision is one ofthe most difficult things that anyone
does, especially in the context of acompany or organization where there are
a lot of stakeholders who are involved,so I wholeheartedly agree with that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I use three variables asfactors to be considered.
First of all, among the optionsyou're considering, that I call
(14:27):
the choices, how close do they comewith achieving the goals you set?
Secondly, where are they in the riskprofile in terms of acceptable risk
to you or unacceptable risk to you.
And third, these options you'reconsidering, how do they express
the values that you may have as acompany owner or your board may have
(14:48):
for, A, what the company is doingand, B, the values of its operations.
So, those goals, risks, and values are theway I categorize the important variables
to be developed in the team exercise thatbrings out what the board members' views
are about the options under consideration,how well they achieve the goals, what
(15:12):
their risk profile is, and what are thevalues that their decisions would express.
I love how you describe this, thatat each of these steps, there is a
lot of value based from one-to-oneinteractions, one-to-many interactions,
and learning from each other.
Step number three where you'rebrainstorming creative options is an
(15:33):
example of where you would need thecrowdsourcing of choices, options,
and things that you could possibly do.
Nothing's off the table, and thendo you recommend that this process
be followed like step one first andthen step two, or is it kind of not
fuzzy, but kind of interchangeable?
(15:53):
Well, yes, I do think of it as a sequence.
What I say in the book is thatsome of these exercises will be
more important than others givenyour particular circumstances.
It may be that, as I mentioned, thinkingabout defining the problem might be the
most important thing you need people'shelp with, and then once you define the
problem, may be pretty straightforwardis to what you actually do about it.
(16:16):
Remember Einstein, whether he actuallysaid this or not, if he had one hour to
save the world from destruction, he'dspend 55 minutes defining the problem
and five minutes solving the problem.
Well, that's Einstein, heonly needs five minutes.
That's not helpful to the rest of us.
Okay.
We need a little more than fiveminutes, but yes, defining the problem
(16:39):
is really the right place to start.
One other analogy that rings true forme is that, you must have heard this
saying, a camel is a horse designed bya committee, and I think that applies to
the decision making process of a group,and I think really figuring out that
we need to design a horse is what arewe going after, what does success look
(17:01):
like, is a pretty important exercise.
I got to say though, you may beunderestimating how important camels are.
I speak because I know people that relyon camels all the time, and I think
they're really built well for wherethey're used, but I'm kidding, of course,
but getting a group together and takingadvantage of what they all have to offer
(17:25):
is obviously enormously valuable, andI'll just say when we talked recently, I
asked you what the CTF, Create The Futureprocess was, and one of the things you
said was, a number of individuals withdifferent perspectives are together.
How do you make sure everyone in agroup with diverse perspective listens
(17:50):
to one another and collectivelymakes the best possible decision?
I thought that was a great thought abouthow to get the best out of the talent
in the room, and what we had asked wasmaybe you could give us a couple of
examples of how it might work becauseI think if people could hear that, they
might get a really good sense of howthis might apply to their organization,
(18:16):
their company, their situation.
Yeah, really good question.
First of all, there's never a guaranteethat anybody's going to listen to each
other, and often we don't do enoughlistening, but I think the contribution
this book makes is to encourage leaders,and it could be the CEO, it could be
(18:37):
a board chair, it could be the boardas a whole, to recognize that, yes,
the value of this board is that it hasdifferent points of view in the board,
it has different experiences, and eachof those is a valuable contribution
to the conversation, whatever it is.
(18:57):
If you don't mind, I'll tell aquick story which has nothing
to do with boards of directors.
As you know, I do a lot of sailboatracing and I bought a new sailboat
a few years ago and called all myfriends together to help me come up
with a name for the new boat, andI had said, "I wanted to experience
new adventures on the new boat."
I'll make this really quick.
(19:18):
A woman came up to me at this partywe were having who knew nothing about
sailing, and she listened to my storyand she said, "You know, I think you
should name the boat Voyager which wasthe name of the spacecraft that had
been launched into space to explorethe outer rims of our solar system."
As soon as I heard that name from theperson who knew nothing about sailing, I
(19:41):
knew that that was the right name for mysailboat, and that is not from an expert,
it's from somebody who was just beingcreative about their own experiences,
and that's exactly what applies in aboardroom, that what I'm encouraging
people through this book is to say,"You know, we want to get on the table
(20:02):
what people are really thinking about.
We want to understand.
We want people to talk about what dothey ideally want to accomplish by
the decision they're going to make.
What assumptions are they makingabout what other people are going
to do and how this is going to workout," et cetera, all the way through
the steps that are in the book.
I won't get into all the details here.
But I use an example of a company based inAtlanta that's primarily selling products
(20:27):
to the African-American community in theSoutheast US, and the CEO of that company
believes that the company has developedvery, very strong marketing and sales
operations and build on those productsand customers, but there's no reason
why that can't be expanded to selling,for example, to the Hispanic community
(20:49):
or to the markets in the Southwest US.
The problem is that on the boardare representatives of the original
founders' family, representatives ofinvestors who want to keep the company
focused on the markets and customerswhere it is, but others who say,
"Gee, we have an opportunity here.
We have an investment in this company.
(21:10):
We want to see it grow."
So, what you have on the board arepeople with different points of view
about where the company should go,values that they want to see expressed
through what the company is doing,and taking that board through the
process of, A, what are we reallytrying to achieve with this company, B
(21:31):
and therefore what would success looklike, what are the options we really
have, and then I will put in executionbarriers, absolutely, but then how do
we decide what we're really going to do.
So, this process makes sure thateverybody on the board participates
in the conversation, theirpoint of view is heard, and they
hear each other talk about it.
(21:52):
They hear each other say what theyreally are trying to accomplish, and
then, yes, they'll do test votes, andthey may do some ranking of the options
that they're considering, but in theend, the board will make a decision,
and the people who participate in thiswill say, "You know, I may not fully
agree with where we're going to go, butat least my voice was heard, and I now
(22:14):
understand what other people are tryingto do and where they're coming from."
That is enormously valuable to a boardor any organization that as a group is
trying to make really important decisions.
I think if you have the people in theroom, whoever they may be, board or
otherwise, at the end of the process,feeling like their voice has been heard,
(22:36):
their ideas have been heard, and atleast considered, that alone is success.
Because otherwise, what doyou have them there for?
I mean, whether it's a board oranything else, no one wants to sit on
a board and think a couple of peopleare making all the decisions, and
there's no point in having a boardif you're not going to get the best
out of everyone, so that's fantastic.
How does an effective boardmake decisions generally?
(22:59):
What is it that makes ahigh-performing board high performing?
Is that how you thought about theprocess that you laid out in the
book, for Creating The Future?
Yes, absolutely.
I've also thought about this from thepoint of view of the board itself,
from the point of view of the chairmanof the board in trying to bring value
(23:21):
forward that's in the board amongthe board members, and also from
the point of view of the companyleadership, like the CEO, for example.
There's always a tensionbetween the CEO and that board.
Because I completely agree with what Ithink Raza said earlier that the board
can be a value accelerator, but it'sonly if its value is brought forth
(23:44):
into the important decision making.
The book actually deals with this byconsidering both the board itself as an
entity that's managing itself, but alsoif you are the CEO who may be controlled
by the board, but also relying on theboard for ultimate decision making,
and how does that relationship work.
(24:04):
Rick, as part of the book, Ibelieve you're planning to also
release a workbook, that is aset of exercises for those steps.
Is that right?
Yes.
Is it a companion to the book?
Is it separate?
If you don't buy the workbook,is the book still work on its own
(24:25):
or how would you describe it?
First of all, thank you for asking.
So, the workbook will notbe out for a while yet.
It's from my point of view.
Again, one of these things that'swritten, but I know there's going to
be a process of actually getting out.
So, the workbook is more ofan elaboration of the team
exercises that are in the book.
The book has 25 or soleadership team exercise.
(24:46):
It could be board or director exercises,and there are enough details so that
at least in a rough way, you couldjust use them by themselves, but
I thought there was a need to havea more detailed workbook that more
systematically presents team exercises.
The team exercises take you throughthe goal of the exercise, the specific
(25:09):
steps and then the work productsthat come out of the exercises.
One example would be the team exercisewhere you're being creative about what
are the options you really have forresponding to the opportunity or threat
that you see before you, and I talk aboutwear a Hawaiian shirts or do something
(25:29):
unusual to be in a creative moment.
But what I also do is in theteam exercise, I say don't start
by saying give me a solution towhat we should be doing here.
What I say is start the exerciseby imagining different paths
that you could take thatpotentially could reach the goal.
So, for example, if you were saying,what we want to do is raise revenues
(25:52):
over the next three to four years.
What are different categories ofpossible solutions for raising revenues?
increased
raise prices.
Exactly, raise prices.
You could get morecustomers, more market share.
You could go buy another companythat's doing the same thing.
I mean, come up with categoriesof possible solutions rather
than think about solutions.
Once you've come up with a categoriesof possible solutions, then go through
(26:17):
the process with each category.
What are different things wecould do within each category?
It's giving you a structure abouthow to be creative in that moment.
I make a big point that usually you don'tneed more creative people in the room.
What you need in the room ispermission to be creative.
That's more important than getting anotherso-called creative person in the room.
(26:39):
Also, don't say to people, "I onlywant really good ideas here so
we can put them on the whiteboardand get this settled fast."
Don't say that.
Say, "I want ideas on the whiteboard thatconceivably could contribute to this.
All ideas are good ideas."
That's the mantra, all ideas are good.
Get lots of ideas up.
(26:59):
Once you have lots of creativeideas on the whiteboard, then
you can go back through them.
You'll see connections andsuggestions for other ideas
you never thought about before.
Once you get lots of ideas on thewhiteboard, then you can wean them down
to either categories of good ideas, anidea that inspires a line of thinking
(27:20):
you never would have thought about,stuff that's completely impractical and
you're not going to do, and maybe somethings that are good ideas that you
could work on separately, they reallyaren't going to solve this problem.
All of that whittled down into ahalf a dozen or so ideas that are
worth pursuing in more detail.
It sounds to me like whoever'sleading this exercise, whoever that
(27:43):
is, that role is quite important,whether it's the owner, the CEO,
the board chair, whoever it may be.
They need to have read the book.
I make a big deal of saying youreally shouldn't be the facilitator,
and I give examples of that.
Whoever's the CEO or board chairshould not be the facilitator.
You'd have somebody else, maybe anoutside person who come in and be a
(28:06):
facilitator for the day, or maybe somebodyon the staff who's good at doing that.
If I'm the CEO or board chair, Idon't want to be at the board trying
to make sure I understand whateverybody's saying and write it down.
I want to be experiencing this processand drawing my own thoughts from
it and understanding the creativityand the value that's coming out.
(28:29):
I don't want to be at a whiteboardtrying to be the facilitator, and
I recommend that you not do that.
Okay, that makes sense.
Rick, when is the book actually gettingreleased and where can folks find it?
Actually, let me ask a different question.
When can you get it on Amazon?
(28:49):
Okay.
Well, technically, you can go on Amazontoday and order it, but Amazon will
not be sending them out and deliveringthem until like mid-September.
We'll include a link for our audience.
Yeah, we'll include a link to yourwebsite and to Amazon's site for this,
so that they can buy it early and often,as James Michael Curley used to say.
(29:17):
Rick, it's been greatspeaking with you again.
I'm so glad you're back.
I'm so glad the book is almost out, but Iwould say it's about to be in everyone's
hands, and I'm really looking forward tohearing the reaction from folks that we
know when they get a chance to read it.
So, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
It's great to have you back.
(29:39):
Well, thank you.
It's a pleasure, and I always enjoy theseconversation with you and your audience.
Thanks so much.
And thank you all for listeningto On Boards with our very
special guest, Rick Williams.
Please visit our websiteat OnBoardsPodcast.com.
That's OnBoardsPodcast.com.
(30:00):
We'd love to hear your comments,suggestions, and feedback.
And if you're not already a subscriber,please be sure to subscribe at
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whereveryou get your podcasts and remember
to leave us a five-star review.
Please stay safe and take careof yourselves, your families, and
your communities as best you can,and we hope you'll tune in for
(30:22):
the next episode of On Boards.
Thanks.
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