In this episode, host B.D. Dalton is joined once again by Robert Siegel, lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, investor, operator, and now author of “The Systems Leader.”
Together, they dive into the crucial role that systems—and the leaders who master them—play in guiding both billion-dollar companies and small businesses through today’s constant change and crisis.Robert shares insights from eight years of research, unpacking the five key “cross pressures” that challenge modern leaders, from balancing innovation with execution to navigating global turbulence.
Drawing from stories of CEOs at companies like Accenture and Waste Management, Robert and B.D. explore real-world examples of how the best leaders operate at the intersection of competing priorities, make tough choices with humility, and find purpose amid chaos.Whether you’re managing a massive team or just starting out, this conversation offers practical tools, reflective questions, and actionable advice to help you become a systems leader—one who doesn’t just survive the new normal but thrives in it. So sit back, get ready to learn, and discover how to grow, sell, and retire on your own terms.
Together, they dive into the crucial role that systems—and the leaders who master them—play in guiding both billion-dollar companies and small businesses through today’s constant change and crisis.Robert shares insights from eight years of research, unpacking the five key “cross pressures” that challenge modern leaders, from balancing innovation with execution to navigating global turbulence.
Drawing from stories of CEOs at companies like Accenture and Waste Management, Robert and B.D. explore real-world examples of how the best leaders operate at the intersection of competing priorities, make tough choices with humility, and find purpose amid chaos.Whether you’re managing a massive team or just starting out, this conversation offers practical tools, reflective questions, and actionable advice to help you become a systems leader—one who doesn’t just survive the new normal but thrives in it. So sit back, get ready to learn, and discover how to grow, sell, and retire on your own terms.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Grow Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bad Dalton, author of the assistant Purchase, True Gravity and
Grow Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty
five years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your
business to the next level. This podcast is for anyone
who wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host, Bed with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey everybody, Beady Dalton here, Grow Sell and Retire podcast. Today.
I have back in on the podcast my friend Robert Siegel,
and today we're going to be talking about The Systems Leader,
your new book, so kind of tell us a little
bit recap history if they hadn't listened to the previous podcast,
tell us a little bit about why we should listen
to you today. Who are you? What'd you do well?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm not sure anybody should listen to me v D.
I think you know no, be well enough now to
know that's the case. I am the short, bald guy
who people can see because we're just doing audio. But
I'm a lecture management at the Graduate School of Business
at Stanford, have a career as an investor operator and
a variety of large and small companies, And I've been
teaching a course effort called the Systems Leader and system Leadership,
(01:14):
which looks at in a world of constant crisis and
increasingly rapid technological change, how do leaders today guide their
teams when it feels like no matter what we do,
we're going to get wrong. We wake up every day
and turn on our computer. It's like, oh, my goodness,
what now? And we as I've been studying companies all
over the world, we realize that people in large and
(01:36):
small firms and on every continent have been really struggling
with what seeing this constant brage of stimuli and challenges,
and how do they guide their teams through it. The
idea behind being a systems leader is both on Peter
Sangi's work on systems thinking and my former boss, Jeff Imilton.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I had been teaching this course.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
That looks at how leaders need to exhibit certain behaviors,
internalize certain dualities that maybe in a company might have
existed separately but now need to exist inside of us.
And also to see systems understand action and reaction between
parts of a company as well as a company and
its ecosystem. And that's what gave the rise to the
book The Systems Leader, which covers eight years of research
(02:16):
and over one hundred different companies and executives that we
had the blessing of studying.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That's amazing. And in growth, sell and retire. When my
middle lever, which is the foundation leaver's people and systems
and so you don't get the systems right, and you
don't got the right people, you don't have anything. So
and systems is the first thing we always hit on.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
And it's hard, you know, that's the thing you know
with leaders when they read the book, you know want
to see leaders. I'm talking about managers, directors, vice presidents,
level executives.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Maybe you're just managing a team.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
But it's it's really difficult today to figure out how
to do the right things and make good choices, especially
in a world where things are moving so quickly, issues
are nuanced, and were dealing with a world that has
very little time for nuance, And how do we make
sure that we can do some of the things and
deal with what I call these these five key cross
pressures that leaders are feeling and struggling with today.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
This deals with.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Things like, you know, priorities, how do we deal with
balancing innovation and execution, How do we deal with geography,
local and global obviously a huge issue right now with
what's happening between governments, people projecting strength and empathy, holding
people accountable, but also seeing the whole person sphere of influence,
thinking about internal and external inside of a company. And
(03:33):
then finally, what called purpose? How do we balance our
personal ambition with being a statesman or a stateswoman or
a steward of our organization and trying to hold those
two truths at the same time.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
And how so in those five things are you know
key in paramount? So when you were writing this and
you have the foundation of brains and broad company, you
know kind of when you're doing that, where what stories
kind of said, you know what, I can expand upon
that and kind of go into this because I felt
(04:05):
like I really came into a good story with this
and it actually led into the system's leader from something
that happened back in the past in the in the
previous book.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
That's funny. It's like you're asking me about my childhood.
Tell me about what it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Was like when I was five years old, right, you know,
when I went to the circus or whatever, but there's
are there's a lot of true in that question. From
our last conversation, you know, I used to teach a
course called the Industrialist Dilemma, which led to the book
Brains and Brawn about how company digital and physical and
we looked at both incumbents and disruptors and how they
had the ability if they really did both digital and physical,
(04:40):
those were the winners. And we looked at one are
the attributes of digital and physical that mattered.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
And the last chapter in the book talked.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
About systems leadership, and this was the course that jefim
Old and I started.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
It was like a sister, a.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Companion course to Industrialist Dilemma, which looked at the leadership.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Side of this.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Well we saw going into COVID was the notion of
systems leadership really encompass not only digital and physical, but
it was much broader. It involved crisis leadership, and during
the pandemic we were interviewing leaders and bringing them to
the class and the issues they were struggling with were
digital and physical and so much more.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
And then as we came out.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Of COVID, we realized that everybody we talked to, no
matter their level of seniority or their success was really
struggling trying to figure out how they bring people with
them along on their ways, and we started to ask
them more, well, what are the issues you're wrestling with?
And those cross pressures that I highlighted were, you know, really.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
What stood out to us.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
And they're not the old cross pressures, but they were
the five that were the most consistent. And so then
we started talking about how the actions and behaviors of
systems leaders helped them deal with those cross pressures. How
do they operate at intersections, how do they internalize those dualities,
how do they manage context in times of increasing untility
and confusion? How do you help your team and your
(05:59):
customer really understand what's happening around them so they make
sense of the craziness. How do they have the product
manager's mindset?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
You know?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
And maybe this is conscious bias BD. My career and operations,
I came up through product and I like to joke
that product managers are responsible for everything. They own nothing,
and so like, you have to figure out what do
customers need? How does the product get built on what
your go to market strategy?
Speaker 4 (06:23):
And great systems.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Leaders understand amos and interactions and then finally running into
the disruption you know, in this crazy world that we
had are in. I argue, this is the new normal.
And really this has been the new normal for the
last twenty five years. And if we look back, you know,
we can deal with you know, the dot com meltdown
nine to eleven, the global financial crisis, global populism one
(06:48):
dot zero, you know, from Brexit to yellow vest to
Bolsonaro to the first Trump administration to the pandemic, and
now we're here dealing with the global dynamic.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Now I think this is the normal, but leader have to.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Run into that disruption because I don't know what the
world's going to be like in the future, but I
know it won't be like what it was in the past,
and leaders need to embrace that. And so system leaders
exhibit the attribute. And then we look at some great leaders.
In the book, we studied some great leaders who really
showed us the way about how those types of behaviors
them deal with the cross pressures.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
So I gave you a big twist. I gave you
a little bit of a leeway and a little bit
of a head head start on this one. So you've
got you got five cross pressures, and I'm not going
to make you do all of them, but give me,
give me two. If you had to turn them into
super villains that were attacking your business and you were
the superhero that was battling them, who are your your
(07:42):
two likennesses to a super villain attacking your business as
one of the cross pressures?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
You know, I'm old, so I'm probably gonna deal with
probably some of the villains that I grew up with.
And I go back to the old Batman series, and
so I think of, you know, like the Choker or
the you know, if I think about people and how
you manage people, you know, the Joker was always kind
of like you never knew exactly who he was and
(08:09):
what he was coming after, and so that says like,
are you supposed to be, you know, holding people accountable
and being really strict or are you supposed to be
talking about your feelings all the time?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
And the end, you can't be either of those things.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
You can't be a task master only and you can't
be you know, somebody who's you know, a hamster talking
about and contemplating his navel, and so like the Joker
is kind of like, you know, how do you figure
out who A or are you B.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I think that's kind of a one that I would
talk about.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And then you know, you know, the perhaps a sphere
of influence of internal and external. Maybe I'll go to
the Riddler, you know from the old Batman series as well,
you know the Riddler.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Is it this or is it that? Is it internal
or external?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
And I think, you know, thinking about those villains, and
then how do you know conquer those villains? You have
to understand in the case of people that you actually
have to be with both. And sometimes there's in fact,
it's funny about a gravitas of character of being something
that's very important for leaders today.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
We see a lot of.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Unseious behaviors in a very serious world between business and
political leaders.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
You know, BD. We know those great leaders.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Who when they walk into a room, we all sit
up a little bit straighter because they carry themselves with
a purpose. You know, they bring a what I'll call
it moral guidance without hectory or condescendance towards others who
might disagree. They bring a strong intellect to understanding what's
going on in the world and.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
The seriousness of the times.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
They show up for others and so like, I think
that the ability for you know, people, I don't the
nature of superheroes makes it sound too romantic, but that
idea that I believe in free will, that leaders can
be exactly the leaders they want to be, and they
can wrestle with those demons, on those villains and help
their teams and you know, accomplish their goals.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So in the book, if we go to the five
the five cross cross winds, and do you help us
with ways to combat that or ways that other people
from Harley Davidson to X have combatd that? And if so, like,
if you give us like one question or one one
(10:13):
little weapon, one little superpower that we could have for
each of those crosswinds, that if we're sitting in the
business today and we had this crosswind, just ask yourself
this question. So if you give us one or two
of those, or if you have one for all five,
that'd be amazing.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
So, you know, the way I wrote the book is
I kind of unpacked leaders that we studied, Yes, and
then I asked the reader to think about how that
leader dealt with a situation and to apply it to
their own situation. So, for example, let me talk about
Julie Tweet, who's the CEO of Accenture. You know, she
went at execution and innovation over the last dec Eccenture.
(10:49):
And this is a company with you know, almost eight
hundred thousand employees and sixty four billion dollars in revenues.
You know how, like Julie, they were a back office
IT system. Then they moved up stack stack and the
cloud and cybersecurity, and then they became you know, leaders
in AI today. They have to constantly be making sure
they're delivering for the clients that they serve, but they
(11:11):
also have to be innovative and know what new technologies
are coming. And so Julie was an example of the
about how do you with how do you set priorities?
You can't let people get comfortable and what they're doing
today and say just do that and it will be okay.
And so then I ask, for example, the reader to say, well,
are the things that you're doing in your business?
Speaker 4 (11:29):
We've gotten comfortable with what.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Things were, and you're kind of ignoring trends that are
coming out that you need to be paying attention to.
Are you really integrating AI into your everyday workflow?
Speaker 4 (11:40):
And it's funny Today is the last class.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Ever of Systems Leadership. Jeff and I will be teaching
the course with the students.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
In a few hours. Nice, I'm going to be making
a joke.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
They all have to turn in papers, and the joco is, oh,
they're all using chat, GPT and perplexity to write the papers,
and so I'm going to make a joke of no, no,
I'm going to let chat, GPT and perplexity grade papers
and owners.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
But that idea that I'm showing the students, like, I
kind of know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I'm familiar with the tools, and I've got some joke
slides up there of this. But I actually sometimes, you know,
I use AI in some of the things that I
do and trying to design that workflow. I think, you
know a great other example of you know, dealing with
some cross pressures. One of my favorites is a gentleman
named Jim Fish. He runs a company called Waste Management.
And with Jim I spent a lot of time talking
(12:26):
in purpose and you know, ambition and statesmanship. Jim came
up into waste Management. He was the CFO before he
became the CEO. Very numbers driven, very you know, operationally
excellent of what he does.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
He's also an incredibly.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Broad and kind man, and he spends a lot of
time with his employees, you know, they've got they've literally
got I think twenty seven thousand employees, and spends a
lot of time communicating with him about who.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
He is and what he stands for.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And he's got this notion of he has this scra
RaSE whose brand is anyways, So while he's ambitious and
doesn't deny his ambition, he also sees himself as a
steward of the organization. And so you know, he's but
one example of some of these leaders that I study.
And then I asked the reader, who are the stewards
in your organization?
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Who are the statesmen in your organization? What makes them
great statesmen? Or seeing women?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
And simply what are you doing or not doing where
you're balancing your ambition with seeing the bigger picture? Because
I want people to be ambitious, I want them to
accomplish great things, but I also, at the same token
want people to be realistic about Okay, maybe something's just
bigger than us.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
So in that overall thing, when if you're looking at
somebody that's running not a huge company, but they still
need this, they're still dealing with all of these things,
or maybe they're dealing with it through the people that
they're selling to or that they're buying from or doing
that stuff. So so a lot of these these cross
pressures aren't internal or they're they're all external, but you
(14:00):
might not even know how to deal with it because
you're just a little cog in the overall machine.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
It's a great point.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
It's not that a systems leader has to be the
person who controls all the resources. But let's say you're
in finance, or you're in marketing, or you're in product
or in engineering, you're going to be dealing with issues
for local and global. You source a supply part from
one part of the world versus another, all you selling
to customers in one part of the world versus another.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
And you have to understand what's going on.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Because even if we see a world where we've got riffs,
we've got a world where it feels like we're seeing
the decoupling of the US and China. You know, what
will Europe do, what will Africa do? What will Central
and South America do, What will Australia do.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Et cetera. Et cetera.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
You as a leader, are going to be crossing borders,
even if you're just engineering and you're sourcing a part
or you've got a customer in another part of the world,
and so.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
One needs to be kind of aware of what's going on.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
If you're in finance, you can't make sense of the numbers,
if something's changed if you don't know what's happening in
that part of the world. By the same token, the
displacement of labor and ca capital we saw through globalization
global what I call globalization one dotto, had a huge
impact on cities and communities, and that's what led to
the rise of global populism. So the individuals also need
(15:11):
to understand that what's happening in their cities, what's happening
in their states, what's happening in their countries, when in
their regions, and how does that impact things. And that
really is almost independent of what your specific responsibilities. It
doesn't matter if you're the CEO or you're a mid
level manager. And so the whole point for me of
the book is to allow people to just kind of
see these patterns and see what's going on and give
(15:33):
them tools to think It's not like I'm going to
say that everything's going to be okay, and everything's going
to be calm, and the sun's going to come out,
birds are going to see them, We're gonna have rainbows.
I actually think this craziness is the new normal, and
our job is to leave. Even if we're just managing
a small team of three or four people, how do
we make sure that they can do their jobs effectively?
Speaker 4 (15:53):
And some of the things that you.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Know the people can do is, you know, making sure
that they actually do some of the hard jobs themselves
so they don't get out of touch with what's happening.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
In their organization and their people.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Making sure that they're brave enough to say I don't know,
but I'm going to go find out the answer and
we'll figure it out together.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
You know, a little bit of humbleness that comes with
being a leader.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Making sure that we've got trusted parties both inside the
company and outside the company to give perspectives on how
we're seeing or what's happening in the world. You know,
paying attention to where we spend our time, because even
if managing a team of six or seven people, our
teams are watching where we spend our time. That's a
message of what we think is important, you know, and
being mindful of the times in our career when we
(16:36):
were successful. Sometimes we were the right person and had
the right skills and we were in the right place
at the right time, and sometimes we were just lucky.
And being kind of mindful and understanding of that.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
And by the way, given a choice, I choose luck
over skill every time.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
But you know, you want to know was I lucky
or skillful when I'm successful, because if I was just lucky,
anything I did at that moment in time, really there's
no core. I have no idea if that's the right
thing to be doing. And so trying to be self
aware enough of like when was I good and when
was I just key and humble enough to be able
to tell the difference.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
And I think in that in that overall thing, and
I this the world as it is now with with
Teriff world, and I'm trying to date this Teriff world.
And then the changes in the UK right now with
the governments and the taxation and inheritance tax and everything else.
It's made it's made my life more relevant, you know,
before people when when economies are going well, anybody can
(17:31):
be a manager of a company. You just get in
the driver's seat and just drive right. You're an autopilot,
you're in awei mo, you're just going for it. But
when turbulence is there, and when you've got challenges and
major challenges, the good leaders stand out.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
And it's a great point being, you know, and you
know we talked about this, you know, in the front
of my book. I start with the old Warren Buffer
quote it's when those tide goes out that we see
who's swimming naked. Which I love that quote, and that's
exactly the point that you were making. Now I come
at this from a slightly different perspective. The tide is
out and it's staying out, yes, and you know when
(18:12):
I don't know what it's like, you know, on the
other side of the pond over there, but we're here.
You know, there's a lot of my colleagues and friends it's, oh,
well it was me. Things are crazy, blah blah blah.
I have to give the polite version of it, which is, well,
our job is to stand up and lead, you know,
not to lose our minds, not to lose control, and say, yeah,
we don't have to like everything that's going on in
the world. But this is what's going on in the world.
(18:33):
And by the way, it's been like this for twenty
five pleasures and it's getting faster. Our job as leaders
is to really kind of you know, kind of do
the right things. And my hope when people reading the book,
it's you know, we see a lot of unserious behaviors.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
And I think we might have talked about this before.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
You know, we think about what you remember when Elon
Musk and Mark Zuckerberg we're going to get into the
cage match and fight. Yeah, everybody in the world had
number one, I'm going to watch this and number two,
this is wrong, okay, And so like everybody has these
two you know, simultaneous thoughts go through their heads, and
we see a lot of these unseerious behaviors, replacing decorum
(19:13):
with being bombastic.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Virtue signaling is something we see all the time, indulging
in self righteousness, failure shows spy, ignoring changes we don't like.
The leaders that we studied in the book are hugely
successful by any figure of merit. They might be in startups,
they might be in large companies. How their companies are
doing the number of people who report to them. But
these aren't the people that we read about all the
(19:39):
time in the mainstream press or who we see on
social media. And my message to the reader is I've
given you fifteen twenty great leaders model behavior. And by
the way, none of them are perfect. None of these
humans are perfect, and they'll acknowledge where they get things wrong.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
And I'm a big believer in free will.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I'm a big believer that we as leaders can choose
how we lead and how we want to lead it.
We can be exactly the person we want to be.
And that's something I want people to take aways. Yeah,
the ties out to your point, you know, but times
to stay out, and that's an opportunity.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
For us to help those you know.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
On our teams and in our company and in our communities,
you know, get to the other side.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And that's I think. So in the systems leader, it's
looking at those traits and figuring out which ones that
I can build upon, enhance, magnify that I already have
correct exactly exactly. If your son, if you're if one
of your kids is reading the book right now, and
you had to say, read read this chapter right now
(20:45):
before you walk into a room, because you'll impress the
hell out of everybody, which which trait, which crosswind battler?
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Would it?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Would it be?
Speaker 4 (20:54):
It would be? That's like asking me which of my
children I love the most.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
I won't tell them. I won't tell them.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
You can just say, but of course we're recording this.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I won't tell them, But everybody else will?
Speaker 4 (21:06):
You know? I guess I would say to my children.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
If I go back to the Jesuit model of education,
I can teach my students, as you know at Stanford
or executive education. I can teach them product management, or
strategy or finance. I can teach them all those tools.
But I also need to teach them holistically, like Jesuits
want to teach the whole student. And I think that
that's kind of what systems leadership is about, and being
(21:31):
a systems leader seeing kind of the holistic sense of things.
For me personally, the people that I find the most inspirational.
And maybe it's the age I am, you know, as
I hit almost as I approach sixty.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
When I talk about PRIs the purpose is the one
that I think speaks to me the strongest. You know,
Bill Damon, who is the.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
One of the foremost academics on purpose came up with
this great definition, which I love. Purpose is an active
commitment to accomplish aims that are both meaningful to the
self and of consequence to the world beyond the self.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
And I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Because it's like it's got to mean something to us,
Like we can be ambitious, but we can also see
your picture. And as I go through that you know
the book, right, I you know, in that chapter, look
at people who have to lead on nuanced issues in
a world that has very little time for nuance, and
most business leaders were not trained to think deeply about
(22:30):
these nuanced.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Issues like they're hard, because they're hard. If the world is.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Split fifty to fifty on it, it's probably a hard issue.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
It's probably not black and white.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah, And how do we have business leaders who have
that wisdom to know what they don't know but still
lead everybody? And you know, there were just some of
the people that we studied in the book. You know,
I talked to Aaron Levy, the CEO of Box and
a very young man but one of the great thoughtful leaders.
And he's got a very distinct world perspective, but he's
got a holistic view things. Another leader most people haven't
(23:02):
heard of is a woman by the name of Kathy Mazzarella.
She is the CEO of a company called Gray Bar
and they are the old Western Electric. So it's about
twelve million dollars revenues. I think they have eleven thousand employees.
The entire companies entire is employee owned. It's amazing, profitable,
good business. Kathy, you know when she took over the class,
(23:24):
when she came to Stanford, we were talking about it
and she looks at the students and she says, leadership's
about everybody but you. And she said that you could
hear a pin drop in the room, And so, you know,
for me, I think that kind of notion of purpose.
How do you be ambishops and try to accomplish great
things but also be a steward. There are a lot
(23:45):
of great leaders out there. We may not see them
all the time, be deep, We may not like they
may not get all the clicks on social media, they
may not be talked about all the time.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
By the mainstream media, but they're there.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And I think that's part of the point that I
want people to take away from the book.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
Book.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
That's really good. So what's as you interviewed all these
people and talked to them and met them personally, what
was what was an interesting trait that a large proportion
of them had with like taking care of themselves. Did
they all play tennis? Did they run?
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Was there?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
What was there? Were they all into yoga? Where did
they all eat yogurt?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
What? You know?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
What was what was a trait that you might have thought, well,
that's weird they all listened to the Moody Blues or yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Now that if they were listening to the Moody Blues,
but they weren't singing Knights in White Satin.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
And I just dated myself. But I think that it's
funny that. Let me juxtapose the question.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
They were all very, very different, and I think that
was one thing I noticed that you saw. I meant
a blend of men and women, people from different religions
and different parts of the world. That they were all different,
and yet the things I think that they had in common.
They were not afraid to bring strong intellectual rigor to
(25:10):
hard problems, They were not afraid to confront them. They
were not afraid to listen to people who disagreed with them.
They had a point of view, they processed it, but
they were always I think they were constantly learning, like
(25:31):
they they had thought about things, but they also knew
that new data impact how they might come out on something.
We had c In Bailock, the president of Burnmouth, last
week in class, which was just staggering. You know, look,
you look at what higher education is going through in
the United States and the challenges with the federal government,
and here's a woman, i mean, crazy smart, did not
(25:55):
hide from my student and you know, had a very
distinct point of view. What's her role as a resident
was the role of the university. And there's a lot
of people in the university Stanford, Harvard, etc.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Who are very defensive right now.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
And she was like, look, I believe in freedom of
thought and freedom of inquiry.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
I'm a big believer in that.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
We have to ask ourselves how did higher level education
get so out of touch with society? And why is
no one coming to defend us, and what sort of
self reflection do we need to do that we need
to figure out how we got here. And actually John
Levin of Stamford, who used to be the dean of
the Business School, giving a very similar message neither one
(26:34):
of them signed. There was this open letter of college
presidents and college you know, executives against the federal government.
Neither one of them signed it, and they both took
key for it, and they said, look, I didn't disagree
with what's in the letter, but signing my name and
adding my name to a list of five hundred that
doesn't make a difference. I've already spoken up publicly on this.
I'm not hiding from anybody, but just to kind of
(26:55):
add my name into virtue signal that's not the issue.
The issue is what are we going to do about it?
And you know that's a very distinct point of view,
and to take the heat from others, just you know,
to be able to look at people say I actually
agree with what's in the letter, let's talk about what's
not in the letter. And if you're only going to
(27:15):
show one side, that's not going to be helpful. And
I think all the great leaders we studied had that
ability to look at complex issues from multiple angles and
to take a stand, but an informed stand that looked
at these challenges from different points of view.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So if you were walking into my business today or
something like this, and you you were going to sit
down in you had we kind of met, You've done
a little bit of background, a little bit of LinkedIn
trolling of me and all that type of stuff. What's
one question that you think you would ask me to
get me to start thinking about being a systems leader
or just being a better leader? Even Yeah, I think
(27:56):
I'd start with four Okay, wow?
Speaker 3 (28:00):
And you know in the book every chapter I've got
like six or seven questions, but let me boil it
down to four.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Good.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
The first thing is, I'd ask you to start outside
of your company b D.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
I'd say, what are the top forces that are impacting
your company today?
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Outside of the company?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
The second thing I would ask is who are the
most important players in your ecosystem? And the third thing
I would then say is what's the best way for
you to allocate your time? And by the way, does
your calendar match to that?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah? Never does?
Speaker 4 (28:30):
And then the last by the way, and then I'd
ask why not? But we'll come back to that.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
And then the last thing I would say, if you
were hiring for your job today, would you hire yourself?
That was a question that was taught to me by
Katrina Lake, the founder of stitch fits of the here
in the US. And I love that question because there
are you know, we as humans.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
We you've achieved everything you did bed by being good
at what you did, and you got rewarded and promoted
and you got pay raises, and at some point in
time that becomes yesterday's way to do things.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
And then we say, Okay, I've got to stay current,
I've got to stay relevant. How am I going to
continue to grow and evolve?
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Right? What a great name for a podcast? And anyway,
how am I going to like you to continue to
do those things?
Speaker 3 (29:13):
And by the way, change is hard and changed hard
for human and so like the first thing for us
as leader is to say, am I changed right?
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Way?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
There's my company and are my team changing? And if not,
how can I help them?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Awesome? So, last time I asked you, so, what's what's
next for you? Obviously we're promoting the book, we're doing
all this stuff and that's you know, you're your road
shows and all the other fun stuff that comes in there.
So what's what's the next five years look like for you?
Speaker 4 (29:43):
A friend of mine.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Said to my wife that at this phase in her life,
she's trying to focus on being versus doing.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Now what I love about that is I'm still working
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. But
I really I want to focus on being present in
the moments where I am, like right now, I want
to do my best to be present talking to you
in this podcast. When I get in front of the classroom,
I want to be the best possible teacher at that moment.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
I'm spending. You know, Systems.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Leadership as a course is going to end, you know,
the book will have a long tail, I hope, and
hopefully be able to take the ideas and teach them
to others.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Yes, I'm trying to think about new things to learn.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
I mean, one of the great places about being things
about being at a place like Stanford is it's an
amazing platform to be able to learn new things and
then teach them. And so I think I'll have a
couple of new classes that I'll be able to announce soon,
which will be fun. I see a lot of really
great things happening all over the world. You know, I'm
so grateful to be at the heart of Silicon Valley,
(30:47):
but in an interconnected world, I see so many amazing
things all over that are happening that really I find
compelling and I learn from. You know, I'm at an
age where I want to make sure that I travel
with my wife and you know that we do those
things for us, and you know, our kids are getting older,
and you know, I want to be a good husband
(31:07):
and a good father. And that's very much about how
I think about, you know, this chapter in my life.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
I hope to continue to be learning.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I hope to be continuing to evolve, but also I
hope to continue to be, you know, even more so
than I was when I was younger, when the kids
were little.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
I just want to make sure that I'm.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Present, amazing, amazing. So Robert Siegel, So when does When
does the book? When's the big launch of the book?
And I know I'm not trying to date the podcast
at all, but when's the big because then third three years.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
The June of twenty five of the book will be
officially released. You can pre order it now on Amazon
or any of your other favorite online stores. The hopefully,
you know, I'm doing all of the work of talking
about it and trying to kind of make people aware
of it, but June third is when people can actually
have delivered to you. But if people want a pre
(32:02):
order now, go to your favorite online bookstore or go
to your physical store on June third and ask for it.
It's called The Systems Leader, Mastering the cross Pressures that
challenge Today's Companies and you can. It's published by Crown
Currency and the team Penguin Random How who have been
just so amazing in this whole process, and it's going
to be available globally, and I hope that your listeners
(32:25):
will find help and I hope to be able to
talk to them about what they're dealing with with their
cross pressures and how they're trying to.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
Deal with it and lead their teams amazing.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Robert Siegel, thank you so much for being on the
Gross Seller Retire podcast. Been awesome having you back on.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
Thanks Red, great to see you.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Thanks for joining us on grow Sell and Retire. For
more information tools or to book one of our team
members to work with your team business, or to speak
at your event or conference, visit Rockfine dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of BD's books,
The Assistant Purchase True Gravity and the book the podcast
(33:04):
is based on, Grow Sell and Retire. If you want
to work for the rest of your life. That is
your business. If you don't, that is ours.
Grow Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bad Dalton, author of the assistant Purchase, True Gravity and
Grow Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty
five years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your
business to the next level. This podcast is for anyone
who wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host, Bed with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey everybody, Beady Dalton here, Grow Sell and Retire podcast. Today.
I have back in on the podcast my friend Robert Siegel,
and today we're going to be talking about The Systems Leader,
your new book, so kind of tell us a little
bit recap history if they hadn't listened to the previous podcast,
tell us a little bit about why we should listen
to you today. Who are you? What'd you do well?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm not sure anybody should listen to me v D.
I think you know no, be well enough now to
know that's the case. I am the short, bald guy
who people can see because we're just doing audio. But
I'm a lecture management at the Graduate School of Business
at Stanford, have a career as an investor operator and
a variety of large and small companies, And I've been
teaching a course effort called the Systems Leader and system Leadership,
(01:14):
which looks at in a world of constant crisis and
increasingly rapid technological change, how do leaders today guide their
teams when it feels like no matter what we do,
we're going to get wrong. We wake up every day
and turn on our computer. It's like, oh, my goodness,
what now? And we as I've been studying companies all
over the world, we realize that people in large and
(01:36):
small firms and on every continent have been really struggling
with what seeing this constant brage of stimuli and challenges,
and how do they guide their teams through it. The
idea behind being a systems leader is both on Peter
Sangi's work on systems thinking and my former boss, Jeff Imilton.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I had been teaching this course.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
That looks at how leaders need to exhibit certain behaviors,
internalize certain dualities that maybe in a company might have
existed separately but now need to exist inside of us.
And also to see systems understand action and reaction between
parts of a company as well as a company and
its ecosystem. And that's what gave the rise to the
book The Systems Leader, which covers eight years of research
(02:16):
and over one hundred different companies and executives that we
had the blessing of studying.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That's amazing. And in growth, sell and retire. When my
middle lever, which is the foundation leaver's people and systems
and so you don't get the systems right, and you
don't got the right people, you don't have anything. So
and systems is the first thing we always hit on.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
And it's hard, you know, that's the thing you know
with leaders when they read the book, you know want
to see leaders. I'm talking about managers, directors, vice presidents,
level executives.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Maybe you're just managing a team.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
But it's it's really difficult today to figure out how
to do the right things and make good choices, especially
in a world where things are moving so quickly, issues
are nuanced, and were dealing with a world that has
very little time for nuance, And how do we make
sure that we can do some of the things and
deal with what I call these these five key cross
pressures that leaders are feeling and struggling with today.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
This deals with.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Things like, you know, priorities, how do we deal with
balancing innovation and execution, How do we deal with geography,
local and global obviously a huge issue right now with
what's happening between governments, people projecting strength and empathy, holding
people accountable, but also seeing the whole person sphere of influence,
thinking about internal and external inside of a company. And
(03:33):
then finally, what called purpose? How do we balance our
personal ambition with being a statesman or a stateswoman or
a steward of our organization and trying to hold those
two truths at the same time.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
And how so in those five things are you know
key in paramount? So when you were writing this and
you have the foundation of brains and broad company, you
know kind of when you're doing that, where what stories
kind of said, you know what, I can expand upon
that and kind of go into this because I felt
(04:05):
like I really came into a good story with this
and it actually led into the system's leader from something
that happened back in the past in the in the
previous book.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
That's funny. It's like you're asking me about my childhood.
Tell me about what it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Was like when I was five years old, right, you know,
when I went to the circus or whatever, but there's
are there's a lot of true in that question. From
our last conversation, you know, I used to teach a
course called the Industrialist Dilemma, which led to the book
Brains and Brawn about how company digital and physical and
we looked at both incumbents and disruptors and how they
had the ability if they really did both digital and physical,
(04:40):
those were the winners. And we looked at one are
the attributes of digital and physical that mattered.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
And the last chapter in the book talked.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
About systems leadership, and this was the course that jefim
Old and I started.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
It was like a sister, a.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Companion course to Industrialist Dilemma, which looked at the leadership.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Side of this.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Well we saw going into COVID was the notion of
systems leadership really encompass not only digital and physical, but
it was much broader. It involved crisis leadership, and during
the pandemic we were interviewing leaders and bringing them to
the class and the issues they were struggling with were
digital and physical and so much more.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
And then as we came out.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Of COVID, we realized that everybody we talked to, no
matter their level of seniority or their success was really
struggling trying to figure out how they bring people with
them along on their ways, and we started to ask
them more, well, what are the issues you're wrestling with?
And those cross pressures that I highlighted were, you know, really.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
What stood out to us.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
And they're not the old cross pressures, but they were
the five that were the most consistent. And so then
we started talking about how the actions and behaviors of
systems leaders helped them deal with those cross pressures. How
do they operate at intersections, how do they internalize those dualities,
how do they manage context in times of increasing untility
and confusion? How do you help your team and your
(05:59):
customer really understand what's happening around them so they make
sense of the craziness. How do they have the product
manager's mindset?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
You know?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
And maybe this is conscious bias BD. My career and operations,
I came up through product and I like to joke
that product managers are responsible for everything. They own nothing,
and so like, you have to figure out what do
customers need? How does the product get built on what
your go to market strategy?
Speaker 4 (06:23):
And great systems.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Leaders understand amos and interactions and then finally running into
the disruption you know, in this crazy world that we
had are in. I argue, this is the new normal.
And really this has been the new normal for the
last twenty five years. And if we look back, you know,
we can deal with you know, the dot com meltdown
nine to eleven, the global financial crisis, global populism one
(06:48):
dot zero, you know, from Brexit to yellow vest to
Bolsonaro to the first Trump administration to the pandemic, and
now we're here dealing with the global dynamic.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Now I think this is the normal, but leader have to.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Run into that disruption because I don't know what the
world's going to be like in the future, but I
know it won't be like what it was in the past,
and leaders need to embrace that. And so system leaders
exhibit the attribute. And then we look at some great leaders.
In the book, we studied some great leaders who really
showed us the way about how those types of behaviors
them deal with the cross pressures.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
So I gave you a big twist. I gave you
a little bit of a leeway and a little bit
of a head head start on this one. So you've
got you got five cross pressures, and I'm not going
to make you do all of them, but give me,
give me two. If you had to turn them into
super villains that were attacking your business and you were
the superhero that was battling them, who are your your
(07:42):
two likennesses to a super villain attacking your business as
one of the cross pressures?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
You know, I'm old, so I'm probably gonna deal with
probably some of the villains that I grew up with.
And I go back to the old Batman series, and
so I think of, you know, like the Choker or
the you know, if I think about people and how
you manage people, you know, the Joker was always kind
of like you never knew exactly who he was and
(08:09):
what he was coming after, and so that says like,
are you supposed to be, you know, holding people accountable
and being really strict or are you supposed to be
talking about your feelings all the time?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
And the end, you can't be either of those things.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
You can't be a task master only and you can't
be you know, somebody who's you know, a hamster talking
about and contemplating his navel, and so like the Joker
is kind of like, you know, how do you figure
out who A or are you B.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I think that's kind of a one that I would
talk about.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And then you know, you know, the perhaps a sphere
of influence of internal and external. Maybe I'll go to
the Riddler, you know from the old Batman series as well,
you know the Riddler.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Is it this or is it that? Is it internal
or external?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
And I think, you know, thinking about those villains, and
then how do you know conquer those villains? You have
to understand in the case of people that you actually
have to be with both. And sometimes there's in fact,
it's funny about a gravitas of character of being something
that's very important for leaders today.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
We see a lot of.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Unseious behaviors in a very serious world between business and
political leaders.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
You know, BD. We know those great leaders.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Who when they walk into a room, we all sit
up a little bit straighter because they carry themselves with
a purpose. You know, they bring a what I'll call
it moral guidance without hectory or condescendance towards others who
might disagree. They bring a strong intellect to understanding what's
going on in the world and.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
The seriousness of the times.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
They show up for others and so like, I think
that the ability for you know, people, I don't the
nature of superheroes makes it sound too romantic, but that
idea that I believe in free will, that leaders can
be exactly the leaders they want to be, and they
can wrestle with those demons, on those villains and help
their teams and you know, accomplish their goals.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So in the book, if we go to the five
the five cross cross winds, and do you help us
with ways to combat that or ways that other people
from Harley Davidson to X have combatd that? And if so, like,
if you give us like one question or one one
(10:13):
little weapon, one little superpower that we could have for
each of those crosswinds, that if we're sitting in the
business today and we had this crosswind, just ask yourself
this question. So if you give us one or two
of those, or if you have one for all five,
that'd be amazing.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
So, you know, the way I wrote the book is
I kind of unpacked leaders that we studied, Yes, and
then I asked the reader to think about how that
leader dealt with a situation and to apply it to
their own situation. So, for example, let me talk about
Julie Tweet, who's the CEO of Accenture. You know, she
went at execution and innovation over the last dec Eccenture.
(10:49):
And this is a company with you know, almost eight
hundred thousand employees and sixty four billion dollars in revenues.
You know how, like Julie, they were a back office
IT system. Then they moved up stack stack and the
cloud and cybersecurity, and then they became you know, leaders
in AI today. They have to constantly be making sure
they're delivering for the clients that they serve, but they
(11:11):
also have to be innovative and know what new technologies
are coming. And so Julie was an example of the
about how do you with how do you set priorities?
You can't let people get comfortable and what they're doing
today and say just do that and it will be okay.
And so then I ask, for example, the reader to say, well,
are the things that you're doing in your business?
Speaker 4 (11:29):
We've gotten comfortable with what.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Things were, and you're kind of ignoring trends that are
coming out that you need to be paying attention to.
Are you really integrating AI into your everyday workflow?
Speaker 4 (11:40):
And it's funny Today is the last class.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Ever of Systems Leadership. Jeff and I will be teaching
the course with the students.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
In a few hours. Nice, I'm going to be making
a joke.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
They all have to turn in papers, and the joco is, oh,
they're all using chat, GPT and perplexity to write the papers,
and so I'm going to make a joke of no, no,
I'm going to let chat, GPT and perplexity grade papers
and owners.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
But that idea that I'm showing the students, like, I
kind of know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I'm familiar with the tools, and I've got some joke
slides up there of this. But I actually sometimes, you know,
I use AI in some of the things that I
do and trying to design that workflow. I think, you
know a great other example of you know, dealing with
some cross pressures. One of my favorites is a gentleman
named Jim Fish. He runs a company called Waste Management.
And with Jim I spent a lot of time talking
(12:26):
in purpose and you know, ambition and statesmanship. Jim came
up into waste Management. He was the CFO before he
became the CEO. Very numbers driven, very you know, operationally
excellent of what he does.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
He's also an incredibly.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Broad and kind man, and he spends a lot of
time with his employees, you know, they've got they've literally
got I think twenty seven thousand employees, and spends a
lot of time communicating with him about who.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
He is and what he stands for.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And he's got this notion of he has this scra
RaSE whose brand is anyways, So while he's ambitious and
doesn't deny his ambition, he also sees himself as a
steward of the organization. And so you know, he's but
one example of some of these leaders that I study.
And then I asked the reader, who are the stewards
in your organization?
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Who are the statesmen in your organization? What makes them
great statesmen? Or seeing women?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
And simply what are you doing or not doing where
you're balancing your ambition with seeing the bigger picture? Because
I want people to be ambitious, I want them to
accomplish great things, but I also, at the same token
want people to be realistic about Okay, maybe something's just
bigger than us.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
So in that overall thing, when if you're looking at
somebody that's running not a huge company, but they still
need this, they're still dealing with all of these things,
or maybe they're dealing with it through the people that
they're selling to or that they're buying from or doing
that stuff. So so a lot of these these cross
pressures aren't internal or they're they're all external, but you
(14:00):
might not even know how to deal with it because
you're just a little cog in the overall machine.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
It's a great point.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
It's not that a systems leader has to be the
person who controls all the resources. But let's say you're
in finance, or you're in marketing, or you're in product
or in engineering, you're going to be dealing with issues
for local and global. You source a supply part from
one part of the world versus another, all you selling
to customers in one part of the world versus another.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
And you have to understand what's going on.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Because even if we see a world where we've got riffs,
we've got a world where it feels like we're seeing
the decoupling of the US and China. You know, what
will Europe do, what will Africa do? What will Central
and South America do, What will Australia do.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Et cetera. Et cetera.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
You as a leader, are going to be crossing borders,
even if you're just engineering and you're sourcing a part
or you've got a customer in another part of the world,
and so.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
One needs to be kind of aware of what's going on.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
If you're in finance, you can't make sense of the numbers,
if something's changed if you don't know what's happening in
that part of the world. By the same token, the
displacement of labor and ca capital we saw through globalization
global what I call globalization one dotto, had a huge
impact on cities and communities, and that's what led to
the rise of global populism. So the individuals also need
(15:11):
to understand that what's happening in their cities, what's happening
in their states, what's happening in their countries, when in
their regions, and how does that impact things. And that
really is almost independent of what your specific responsibilities. It
doesn't matter if you're the CEO or you're a mid
level manager. And so the whole point for me of
the book is to allow people to just kind of
see these patterns and see what's going on and give
(15:33):
them tools to think It's not like I'm going to
say that everything's going to be okay, and everything's going
to be calm, and the sun's going to come out,
birds are going to see them, We're gonna have rainbows.
I actually think this craziness is the new normal, and
our job is to leave. Even if we're just managing
a small team of three or four people, how do
we make sure that they can do their jobs effectively?
Speaker 4 (15:53):
And some of the things that you.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Know the people can do is, you know, making sure
that they actually do some of the hard jobs themselves
so they don't get out of touch with what's happening.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
In their organization and their people.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Making sure that they're brave enough to say I don't know,
but I'm going to go find out the answer and
we'll figure it out together.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
You know, a little bit of humbleness that comes with
being a leader.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Making sure that we've got trusted parties both inside the
company and outside the company to give perspectives on how
we're seeing or what's happening in the world. You know,
paying attention to where we spend our time, because even
if managing a team of six or seven people, our
teams are watching where we spend our time. That's a
message of what we think is important, you know, and
being mindful of the times in our career when we
(16:36):
were successful. Sometimes we were the right person and had
the right skills and we were in the right place
at the right time, and sometimes we were just lucky.
And being kind of mindful and understanding of that.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
And by the way, given a choice, I choose luck
over skill every time.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
But you know, you want to know was I lucky
or skillful when I'm successful, because if I was just lucky,
anything I did at that moment in time, really there's
no core. I have no idea if that's the right
thing to be doing. And so trying to be self
aware enough of like when was I good and when
was I just key and humble enough to be able
to tell the difference.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
And I think in that in that overall thing, and
I this the world as it is now with with
Teriff world, and I'm trying to date this Teriff world.
And then the changes in the UK right now with
the governments and the taxation and inheritance tax and everything else.
It's made it's made my life more relevant, you know,
before people when when economies are going well, anybody can
(17:31):
be a manager of a company. You just get in
the driver's seat and just drive right. You're an autopilot,
you're in awei mo, you're just going for it. But
when turbulence is there, and when you've got challenges and
major challenges, the good leaders stand out.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
And it's a great point being, you know, and you
know we talked about this, you know, in the front
of my book. I start with the old Warren Buffer
quote it's when those tide goes out that we see
who's swimming naked. Which I love that quote, and that's
exactly the point that you were making. Now I come
at this from a slightly different perspective. The tide is
out and it's staying out, yes, and you know when
(18:12):
I don't know what it's like, you know, on the
other side of the pond over there, but we're here.
You know, there's a lot of my colleagues and friends it's, oh,
well it was me. Things are crazy, blah blah blah.
I have to give the polite version of it, which is, well,
our job is to stand up and lead, you know,
not to lose our minds, not to lose control, and say, yeah,
we don't have to like everything that's going on in
the world. But this is what's going on in the world.
(18:33):
And by the way, it's been like this for twenty
five pleasures and it's getting faster. Our job as leaders
is to really kind of you know, kind of do
the right things. And my hope when people reading the book,
it's you know, we see a lot of unserious behaviors.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
And I think we might have talked about this before.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
You know, we think about what you remember when Elon
Musk and Mark Zuckerberg we're going to get into the
cage match and fight. Yeah, everybody in the world had
number one, I'm going to watch this and number two,
this is wrong, okay, And so like everybody has these
two you know, simultaneous thoughts go through their heads, and
we see a lot of these unseerious behaviors, replacing decorum
(19:13):
with being bombastic.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Virtue signaling is something we see all the time, indulging
in self righteousness, failure shows spy, ignoring changes we don't like.
The leaders that we studied in the book are hugely
successful by any figure of merit. They might be in startups,
they might be in large companies. How their companies are
doing the number of people who report to them. But
these aren't the people that we read about all the
(19:39):
time in the mainstream press or who we see on
social media. And my message to the reader is I've
given you fifteen twenty great leaders model behavior. And by
the way, none of them are perfect. None of these
humans are perfect, and they'll acknowledge where they get things wrong.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
And I'm a big believer in free will.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I'm a big believer that we as leaders can choose
how we lead and how we want to lead it.
We can be exactly the person we want to be.
And that's something I want people to take aways. Yeah,
the ties out to your point, you know, but times
to stay out, and that's an opportunity.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
For us to help those you know.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
On our teams and in our company and in our communities,
you know, get to the other side.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And that's I think. So in the systems leader, it's
looking at those traits and figuring out which ones that
I can build upon, enhance, magnify that I already have
correct exactly exactly. If your son, if you're if one
of your kids is reading the book right now, and
you had to say, read read this chapter right now
(20:45):
before you walk into a room, because you'll impress the
hell out of everybody, which which trait, which crosswind battler?
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Would it?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Would it be?
Speaker 4 (20:54):
It would be? That's like asking me which of my
children I love the most.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
I won't tell them. I won't tell them.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
You can just say, but of course we're recording this.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I won't tell them, But everybody else will?
Speaker 4 (21:06):
You know? I guess I would say to my children.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
If I go back to the Jesuit model of education,
I can teach my students, as you know at Stanford
or executive education. I can teach them product management, or
strategy or finance. I can teach them all those tools.
But I also need to teach them holistically, like Jesuits
want to teach the whole student. And I think that
that's kind of what systems leadership is about, and being
(21:31):
a systems leader seeing kind of the holistic sense of things.
For me personally, the people that I find the most inspirational.
And maybe it's the age I am, you know, as
I hit almost as I approach sixty.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
When I talk about PRIs the purpose is the one
that I think speaks to me the strongest. You know,
Bill Damon, who is the.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
One of the foremost academics on purpose came up with
this great definition, which I love. Purpose is an active
commitment to accomplish aims that are both meaningful to the
self and of consequence to the world beyond the self.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
And I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Because it's like it's got to mean something to us,
Like we can be ambitious, but we can also see
your picture. And as I go through that you know
the book, right, I you know, in that chapter, look
at people who have to lead on nuanced issues in
a world that has very little time for nuance, and
most business leaders were not trained to think deeply about
(22:30):
these nuanced.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Issues like they're hard, because they're hard. If the world is.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Split fifty to fifty on it, it's probably a hard issue.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
It's probably not black and white.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah, And how do we have business leaders who have
that wisdom to know what they don't know but still
lead everybody? And you know, there were just some of
the people that we studied in the book. You know,
I talked to Aaron Levy, the CEO of Box and
a very young man but one of the great thoughtful leaders.
And he's got a very distinct world perspective, but he's
got a holistic view things. Another leader most people haven't
(23:02):
heard of is a woman by the name of Kathy Mazzarella.
She is the CEO of a company called Gray Bar
and they are the old Western Electric. So it's about
twelve million dollars revenues. I think they have eleven thousand employees.
The entire companies entire is employee owned. It's amazing, profitable,
good business. Kathy, you know when she took over the class,
(23:24):
when she came to Stanford, we were talking about it
and she looks at the students and she says, leadership's
about everybody but you. And she said that you could
hear a pin drop in the room, And so, you know,
for me, I think that kind of notion of purpose.
How do you be ambishops and try to accomplish great
things but also be a steward. There are a lot
(23:45):
of great leaders out there. We may not see them
all the time, be deep, We may not like they
may not get all the clicks on social media, they
may not be talked about all the time.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
By the mainstream media, but they're there.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And I think that's part of the point that I
want people to take away from the book.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
Book.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
That's really good. So what's as you interviewed all these
people and talked to them and met them personally, what
was what was an interesting trait that a large proportion
of them had with like taking care of themselves. Did
they all play tennis? Did they run?
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Was there?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
What was there? Were they all into yoga? Where did
they all eat yogurt?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
What? You know?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
What was what was a trait that you might have thought, well,
that's weird they all listened to the Moody Blues or yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Now that if they were listening to the Moody Blues,
but they weren't singing Knights in White Satin.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
And I just dated myself. But I think that it's
funny that. Let me juxtapose the question.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
They were all very, very different, and I think that
was one thing I noticed that you saw. I meant
a blend of men and women, people from different religions
and different parts of the world. That they were all different,
and yet the things I think that they had in common.
They were not afraid to bring strong intellectual rigor to
(25:10):
hard problems, They were not afraid to confront them. They
were not afraid to listen to people who disagreed with them.
They had a point of view, they processed it, but
they were always I think they were constantly learning, like
(25:31):
they they had thought about things, but they also knew
that new data impact how they might come out on something.
We had c In Bailock, the president of Burnmouth, last
week in class, which was just staggering. You know, look,
you look at what higher education is going through in
the United States and the challenges with the federal government,
and here's a woman, i mean, crazy smart, did not
(25:55):
hide from my student and you know, had a very
distinct point of view. What's her role as a resident
was the role of the university. And there's a lot
of people in the university Stanford, Harvard, etc.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Who are very defensive right now.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
And she was like, look, I believe in freedom of
thought and freedom of inquiry.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
I'm a big believer in that.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
We have to ask ourselves how did higher level education
get so out of touch with society? And why is
no one coming to defend us, and what sort of
self reflection do we need to do that we need
to figure out how we got here. And actually John
Levin of Stamford, who used to be the dean of
the Business School, giving a very similar message neither one
(26:34):
of them signed. There was this open letter of college
presidents and college you know, executives against the federal government.
Neither one of them signed it, and they both took
key for it, and they said, look, I didn't disagree
with what's in the letter, but signing my name and
adding my name to a list of five hundred that
doesn't make a difference. I've already spoken up publicly on this.
I'm not hiding from anybody, but just to kind of
(26:55):
add my name into virtue signal that's not the issue.
The issue is what are we going to do about it?
And you know that's a very distinct point of view,
and to take the heat from others, just you know,
to be able to look at people say I actually
agree with what's in the letter, let's talk about what's
not in the letter. And if you're only going to
(27:15):
show one side, that's not going to be helpful. And
I think all the great leaders we studied had that
ability to look at complex issues from multiple angles and
to take a stand, but an informed stand that looked
at these challenges from different points of view.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So if you were walking into my business today or
something like this, and you you were going to sit
down in you had we kind of met, You've done
a little bit of background, a little bit of LinkedIn
trolling of me and all that type of stuff. What's
one question that you think you would ask me to
get me to start thinking about being a systems leader
or just being a better leader? Even Yeah, I think
(27:56):
I'd start with four Okay, wow?
Speaker 3 (28:00):
And you know in the book every chapter I've got
like six or seven questions, but let me boil it
down to four.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Good.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
The first thing is, I'd ask you to start outside
of your company b D.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
I'd say, what are the top forces that are impacting
your company today?
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Outside of the company?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
The second thing I would ask is who are the
most important players in your ecosystem? And the third thing
I would then say is what's the best way for
you to allocate your time? And by the way, does
your calendar match to that?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah? Never does?
Speaker 4 (28:30):
And then the last by the way, and then I'd
ask why not? But we'll come back to that.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
And then the last thing I would say, if you
were hiring for your job today, would you hire yourself?
That was a question that was taught to me by
Katrina Lake, the founder of stitch fits of the here
in the US. And I love that question because there
are you know, we as humans.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
We you've achieved everything you did bed by being good
at what you did, and you got rewarded and promoted
and you got pay raises, and at some point in
time that becomes yesterday's way to do things.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
And then we say, Okay, I've got to stay current,
I've got to stay relevant. How am I going to
continue to grow and evolve?
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Right? What a great name for a podcast? And anyway,
how am I going to like you to continue to
do those things?
Speaker 3 (29:13):
And by the way, change is hard and changed hard
for human and so like the first thing for us
as leader is to say, am I changed right?
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Way?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
There's my company and are my team changing? And if not,
how can I help them?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Awesome? So, last time I asked you, so, what's what's
next for you? Obviously we're promoting the book, we're doing
all this stuff and that's you know, you're your road
shows and all the other fun stuff that comes in there.
So what's what's the next five years look like for you?
Speaker 4 (29:43):
A friend of mine.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Said to my wife that at this phase in her life,
she's trying to focus on being versus doing.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Now what I love about that is I'm still working
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. But
I really I want to focus on being present in
the moments where I am, like right now, I want
to do my best to be present talking to you
in this podcast. When I get in front of the classroom,
I want to be the best possible teacher at that moment.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
I'm spending. You know, Systems.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Leadership as a course is going to end, you know,
the book will have a long tail, I hope, and
hopefully be able to take the ideas and teach them
to others.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Yes, I'm trying to think about new things to learn.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
I mean, one of the great places about being things
about being at a place like Stanford is it's an
amazing platform to be able to learn new things and
then teach them. And so I think I'll have a
couple of new classes that I'll be able to announce soon,
which will be fun. I see a lot of really
great things happening all over the world. You know, I'm
so grateful to be at the heart of Silicon Valley,
(30:47):
but in an interconnected world, I see so many amazing
things all over that are happening that really I find
compelling and I learn from. You know, I'm at an
age where I want to make sure that I travel
with my wife and you know that we do those
things for us, and you know, our kids are getting older,
and you know, I want to be a good husband
(31:07):
and a good father. And that's very much about how
I think about, you know, this chapter in my life.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
I hope to continue to be learning.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I hope to be continuing to evolve, but also I
hope to continue to be, you know, even more so
than I was when I was younger, when the kids
were little.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
I just want to make sure that I'm.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Present, amazing, amazing. So Robert Siegel, So when does When
does the book? When's the big launch of the book?
And I know I'm not trying to date the podcast
at all, but when's the big because then third three years.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
The June of twenty five of the book will be
officially released. You can pre order it now on Amazon
or any of your other favorite online stores. The hopefully,
you know, I'm doing all of the work of talking
about it and trying to kind of make people aware
of it, but June third is when people can actually
have delivered to you. But if people want a pre
(32:02):
order now, go to your favorite online bookstore or go
to your physical store on June third and ask for it.
It's called The Systems Leader, Mastering the cross Pressures that
challenge Today's Companies and you can. It's published by Crown
Currency and the team Penguin Random How who have been
just so amazing in this whole process, and it's going
to be available globally, and I hope that your listeners
(32:25):
will find help and I hope to be able to
talk to them about what they're dealing with with their
cross pressures and how they're trying to.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
Deal with it and lead their teams amazing.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Robert Siegel, thank you so much for being on the
Gross Seller Retire podcast. Been awesome having you back on.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
Thanks Red, great to see you.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Thanks for joining us on grow Sell and Retire. For
more information tools or to book one of our team
members to work with your team business, or to speak
at your event or conference, visit Rockfine dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of BD's books,
The Assistant Purchase True Gravity and the book the podcast
(33:04):
is based on, Grow Sell and Retire. If you want
to work for the rest of your life. That is
your business. If you don't, that is ours.
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