What separates the winners from the losers at the highest level of industry comes down to one word
Innovation, but how do you actually innovate?
To find out we brought on two experts who spent almost a decade researching exactly that
Linda Hill and Jason Wilde co-authors of the new book genius at scale
Linda is a Harvard Business School professor and one of the world's leading scholars on leadership and innovation
Jason spent his career leading innovation at IBM
Microsoft and Salesforce working with organizations from NATO to Disney together
They studied the leaders behind some of the most successful innovations in the world and what they found really moved the needle
Wasn't research and development. It was relationships and
coalitions the ability to build what it actually takes to get an idea across the finish line in this episode
They break down the keys to innovation and what it takes to lead a big swing from inside
Any organization. This is the story of what it really takes to innovate. Welcome to big swings only
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Playing it safe is easy playing it's safe is comfortable
But here's the problem playing it safe and playing by rules that were never meant for you
We'll never take you to the next level if you've got what it takes to hit the ball out of the park
The only thing holding you back is whether you're brave enough to take a big swing
I'm Kwame Christian and this is big swings only every week
We're telling you the stories of people who fought their fear chased the life they actually wanted and became who they had to
Become to get it this show is built for people who are meant for more because if you really want to get to the next level
You've got to do something big so the question isn't whether or not you've got what it takes the question is whether or not
You're going to swing you were built for more and this show was built for you subscribe now
I'm thinking about with leadership. We have leadership of others
But we also have to start internally with the appropriate leadership of yourself because a lot of times people
They they have these dreams about being the boss being on top and everything and they don't think about what it takes to be there or
Or some of what is required as far as character to it to sustain it I
Think for me. I think that there's a lot of opinions and misconceptions around leadership
including
You know age and level of experience and I think part of the reason that I wanted to write the book as a father as a
Husband is to inspire many people that they can lead in many different ways even if you're not a CEO
It's uncanny Linda actually wrote a book literally titled being the boss
Did hit me in a hard way as I read that book it's really structured around three areas of management managing myself managing my team
And then managing my network and until I read that book, you know for me it was
This is intuitive, you know time management, you know self-awareness managing myself, etc
Obviously managing my team and the people who directly report to me
But I'd always seen that third part is kind of playing politics and
Part of the BS game, if you will early in my career and thanks to Linda and her writing
They really opened my eyes that no I wasn't doing my job
And it was important for me to go out there and be deliberate and thoughtful about building these relationships because the work that
Linda's literally wrote a book about it and changed my perspective personally on leadership
Yeah, and I thank you very much for that Jason. I must say and I
Was trying to think of a way to conceive of leadership that addressed two dilemmas
One is that often people who have a tremendous amount of potential don't realize that potential and that makes me very sad because boy do we need
Boy do we need leadership and
One of the things I was sort of saying in my research is that one of the reasons why one of the key reasons why they weren't fulfilling their
Potential is they didn't think about the network
Most people look down if you ask someone to define leadership
They think about the people who report to them and they think about their formal authority
We now have learned thanks to all the work on emotional intelligence and all of that sort of stuff
That really leadership involves managing yourself as well. How do you use yourself as an instrument to get something done?
But the third piece as as Jason says, and I actually I met a CEO just last week who said to me
I read being the boss and I think
One of the reasons I am now a CEO is because I finally begin to understand about that managing your network piece that when you're managing the network
You're creating the conditions necessary for your team to be successful
So if you're not working with the parties above you
Yeah, above you your peers and also people outside the organization that you need for your team to be have access to resources
The team needs to do what it wants to get done then you're not doing your job and your team's not going to be able to deliver
So the first reason why I had found myself writing that book was because again people left out the network piece
And people still do a lot and I often do receive
Calls or meet people who tell me oh, you helped me understand about the network key piece in a constructive way the second reason
I did it is because it turns out when you want to do breakthrough innovation and not just come up with an innovative idea
Take a big swing, but you want to make sure that that breakthrough innovation actually gets realized it gets launched or
commercialized or has the impact that you want to have
Rarely is it enough for you to simply work with your own team or even your own organization?
You often have to build partnerships out by the organization to get access to what you need or you might even have to
Figure out how to cultivate a whole new ecosystem to support the kind of breakthrough work. You hope to do
So it turns out I that piece of the puzzle was
showing up as being in
Innovation or those big swings and it was showing up for why people derailed and so hence I didn't intend to write being the boss
But I ended up writing it because of these two problems, and they kind of were related to each other
Well, rumor has it Linda that if you're going to write a book called being the boss you have to be a boss
So that means that you have been officially validated and you're inspiring people all over the world including Jason here to be better leaders too
Well, I wrote it with an executive because I I always try to write with an executive hence Jason was kind enough to
agree to be a co-author of full partner in writing genius at scale our latest book and I always write with a young person
They start with me normally when they're early 20s when they're in their early 20s and then you know depending on how long it takes us to write the book
They might have just turned 30 or whatever it might be but I don't I dare not write alone because again you need
To have other people who are as committed and you can bounce ideas off of and learn from all along the way brilliant brilliant
And I love how you are living your methodology as you teach the methodology it shows and it's really powerful and let's talk about this
Managing the network versus playing politics because this is something that people struggle with a lot
Because you think about people saying well, I mean the work should speak from itself and things like that if though if the approach
is good enough. It should just magically, you know, finalize itself. Right? We recognize
that the network is going to be either something that complements us, that helps us, or it could
be a liability. And it sounds like it starts with the mind set around it. So I'd love to hear both
of your perspectives on this too. You know, the first thing that I thought of Kwame is, you know,
as I traveled the world and spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley, there's an extreme point of view
around networking that I've heard. The first time I heard it, I thought that, you know,
people were joking, but they're very serious. And that is, hey, focus on something that's so
impactful and important that the network will come to you. And, you know, to me, maybe there's a
small slice less than one percent of new things, innovative solutions or new ideas that are launched,
that that's the case, but it just seemed to me so misplaced and arrogant, I think, representative of
of just some of the mindsets that exist. And luckily there are other mindsets. And as I was,
you know, sharing with you, I mean, it was very personal because early in my career, I was leading
innovation teams, extremely privileged to be working on, like, really complex, fun, you know,
potentially life-changing projects for, you know, the clients and the people that we were serving
and working with. And I kind of felt like I hit a plateau in my own career, even though, like
you said earlier, you know, the work was impactful, the work should speak for itself. And it was this
realization that I wasn't really proactively managing my network. You know, as you call the show
Big Swings Only, I love sports, I grew up playing baseball. And, you know, one of the ways that I
think about it is, you know, and I realized every job you could argue has some form of a BS ratio,
even the manager of the New York Yankees and I'm a Cubs fan, right? As much as that might be a dream
job to somebody, you still have to deal with the media, you got to deal with personalities. And
so I kind of had this negative view of, I'm going to minimize it, I'm going to try to manage it.
And it was just, it was, it was the wrong mindset. So, you know, being the boss, you know, engaging with
Linda, you know, it was part of this kind of awakening for me. And, but I think very quickly,
I realized that, you know, it can become busy work. And without, like, having clarity of a mission
or intentions, you could end up working really hard, long weeks, lot of sweat equity,
but not really building those relationships in those places that, you know, really, really matter
to, and every project is, you know, unique in the context that you're coming from, you know,
as a project team and the organization you're a part of, they're all really unique factors that
make each situation kind of different and dynamic, but that consistent thread was thinking, you
know, ahead of the partnerships that are going to be important. And if we want to be in whatever
project it is, world class and two or three things and execute flawlessly, who are those out there
that we're going to need to be a part of this and the ideation and the execution and the scaling
and start to map that out ahead of time so that we're not waiting until the last minute and scrambling,
you know, reactively to try to build these relationships and, you know, and usually those fail,
right? Because, you know, the other side starts to realize that you're not being strategic, you know,
maybe it's an emergency or trying to do some patchwork, whatever it is. So, the intentionality of
it and thinking more of a systems level and realizing that, yeah, some places that I invest my time,
you know, it's not going to yield what I need, but the more that we're clear about the intentions
and the success that we want to measure in the project, it'll be easier for us at the beginning to
say, who are those partnerships and bridges that we have to build? Yeah. So, I think in related to
that, you know, it's one of the, one of the things that I used to teach our power and influence
course here at Harvard Business School, and there are two kinds of students that take that course.
The ones who think they're powerful already and just want to hone their skills at becoming even
more powerful and more influential, and the ones who have always felt pretty powerless. And one of
the things that I say as a business professor to all of the MBAs and the executives I work with,
I want you all to feel powerful because powerlessness is corrupting. And if you want to be powerful,
then you need to understand about how networks work, really. And the first part is to understand
that there are three primary sources of political conflict in organizations. So be analytic about
it. The three sources are first diversity, and there's all kinds of diversity on diversity.
You very rarely get innovation without diversity of thoughts. So I'm not saying diversity is bad,
you need diversity, but we have diverse priorities, different constraints, whatever they might be,
and if you can't work with that diversity that's going to be a problem. But organizations have become
more diverse on any dimension you look at. So there's first, that is the primary source of political
conflict in organizations. The second is interdependence. So if we're diverse, but we don't have to interact,
we don't have to work together, then it doesn't matter that we're diverse. So as you know, many
organizations have been very siloed, so you don't actually have to interact so much with those other
people, so you don't just let them be those other people. But a lot of what we need to do nowadays
in organizations, we actually do need to interact. We are interdependent. If you want to build a
common brand, then you've got to be able to everybody across the organization has to work a certain
way so that your customers have a certain experience. If you want to really implement AI and
any of these solutions, it's horizontal work. We need to rethink how our workflows, so we've got to
be able to work with these other parties. So we have more diversity in organizations, and for a
range of reasons, or even shared services, because we're either trying to cut costs or we want to
work on a common platform. So there's a lot more interdependence in organizations, and then the third
source of political conflict is competition for scarce resources. And guess what? We have a lot of
competition for scarce resources. So those are the realities you need to work through as you're
trying to build reasonable work relationships with other people. And if you can't work through those,
you're not going to be aligned with what is most important to be working on to deliver for,
in this instance, maybe your customers. And the second thing is, again, you're not going to have
the resources you need, because when you go to ask for X so that your team can do it, you don't
have enough influence with the people who you have to impact to actually give you access to those
resources. So a part of what I try to do is help people understand, yeah, of course, organizations
are political, because of those three factors. It's not interpersonal. It's really systemic.
It can become interpersonal, particularly if you don't have the right mindset about it. And if you
don't bother to build the right relationships, I want to just add to it, because we're talking
about big swings and courage, you need to take a big swing. You need to know you're a part of a
group, and you can influence those parties that will actually support you in taking the big swing.
So I just had the absolute privilege of doing some research on Joe Missoula, the head coach of
the Celtics. And one of the things that Joe did beautifully was he understood I'm the head coach
of a basketball team, but that team resides within a larger basketball organization, a larger
business organization, a larger Boston community and media group, you know, that we need to deal with.
And he worked and spent time very deliberately thinking about the inner sections and the dynamics
from the media and the community down to the team. And so he understood that, you know,
it's not enough for me to just coach the team. I need to make sure that there's alignment as much
as possible across, you know, all of those circles of that are really going to have an impact on how
my team feels and how my team plays. So I think that what I see is, and as you know, maybe about Joe,
Joe is seen as a very contrarian, innovative kind of basketball coach and he really is. So I think
that he got that immediately, that it wasn't just about those people on the team, you know,
the team playing with him. It was really the broader Celtics organization. And then the Boston
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There is so much to explore here.
Let's try to synthesize this as simply as possible.
So for the person listening,
if you want to take a big swing,
you will need to engage in these types of behaviors
focused on your network.
And if you have a negative mindset about it,
you'd think about it as politics.
If you have a positive mindset,
if you're being more constructive,
it is network management.
And I love how simple you've made this,
especially with the parameters of the three sources
of political conflict,
diversity, interdependence, competition.
Once you can see it so clearly,
you've given us the layer so we can actually stratify this
and see the distinctions here.
We can understand and reverse-engineer a strategy
that helps us to get where it is that we want to go.
Because the reality is that with any type of thing of value
that you want to try to accomplish in this world,
it's probably going to affect other human beings.
Other humans are going to be part of it in some capacity.
So whether you want to or not play,
understanding how to play this game positively
is going to take what you want to the next level
because you can't succeed without it.
And as we think through this,
I want to have a more empowering vision
of what power actually means.
Because Linda, you said something really interesting
because you said with the people who take this class,
power and influence,
it's either they have it and they want to manage it better
or they feel like they don't and they probably want more of it.
You said that the lack of power or powerlessness corrupts,
and usually I hear the other side talked about more
where power corrupts, that's the focus.
Tell me about the latter side
because I think that's a very important thing to explore.
Well, one of the things that right now,
right before I began speaking with you,
we are working on a new course called Grand Challenges.
And I do encourage the MBAs to take on moonshots,
something they're passionate about.
And part of that is, well, I can't really do that,
Professor Hill, because you know,
I'm going to be so junior,
I don't have enough of all of these different reasons
that you wish you could, but you don't think you can.
And what I want them to understand
is that they do have agency, you do have power.
There is a way for you to influence those parties
you need to influence to take on that moonshot.
Or if you don't have it right now,
you need to think right now,
this is what you really care about,
how you're going to manage your career over time,
so you'll be ready to take on that moonshot when you can.
And by the moonshot, it may be within a company,
it may be some sort of startup
where it might be taking on some kind of social challenge
that you want to do.
So what we know and why powerlessness ends up
being corrupting, it is the other side of power
is corrupting because the only way you can fight
powerful people, from being corrupt,
is if you feel some sense of agency,
I actually can make a difference.
What you often hear when people say,
I had no choice, is they didn't know how to exercise influence.
I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
They didn't know how to think about
how do I gain power in this situation,
in which they don't have formal authority, maybe,
or not as much as whoever it is that's bullying them
or doing whatever is not appropriate
because they're behaving in corrupt ways.
But once you begin to feel that you have no way
of influencing, you have no power,
that's when we give up.
We don't have the courage or we don't understand.
There is a way to think our way through this situation.
And then when you have large groups of people
beginning to feel powerless or no agency,
well, we know what can happen to our companies
and our society.
So that's what I mean by it.
If you need to know, yeah, that's a really, really powerful
person, usually they have a lot of formal authority
or they have control over some important resources.
And they're powerful and you don't want to say,
wait a minute, don't you remember David and Goliath?
What did he, what resources do you have
that will actually allow you to take on
that powerful individual or that powerful group
or whatever it might be?
Can you build a coalition of people?
Don't go alone.
How can you build a coalition of people
who can help you take that individual on
or that other coalition on?
So that's what I mean by it is the other side.
The powerful can't be corrupting
unless we are powerless, allow it.
And so I see myself as helping people figure out
how do you have agency when it looks like
you have absolutely none, right?
And often it's because you do build coalitions,
which again goes back to our discussion of networks.
So one of the things that Jason and I have found
in our research on innovation is that a role
that is missing in many organizations
and the C suite tells us this,
is they don't have enough bridges.
They don't actually have enough people
who know how to work across difference,
who know how to work.
I'm gonna go back to forgive me, to AI for instance.
So these don't know how to work between tech and business.
So if you don't, then you and if you only know the tech side,
you don't really understand the business side
and what the customers might want.
And so you end up creating shiny objects.
If you only know the business side,
you don't know the tech enough.
You don't know what opportunities
that new technology might offer
or the real risks you have to manage.
So again, we need more people who can work across boundaries
and working across boundaries.
That's not just, you usually don't learn how to do that
unless you actually have some opportunity
to experience working across difference.
So don't just choose that career
that you know, more and more expertise in one area.
Make sure you're also becoming broader
and that means maybe being a little bit more zigzag
in your career.
Because you're gonna pick up something over here
and work with some people over here
that when you go to this other role,
you know, you're gonna need some of those kinds of people
or have some contextual, have enough contextual intelligence
about what they're like.
So you can begin to use that knowledge
to create a healthier relationship with them.
I'm not trying to imply that all, you know,
when there are political situations that we get into
that we also know when to leave, right?
And frankly, when you feel powerless, really,
you should leave.
People can take advantage of you in those circumstances.
But I think that if you know you're in a situation
that can be a television show, it's that politicized.
All of us, no matter what, become very,
you know, we become smaller.
We go inside ourselves to protect ourselves.
So once you begin to feel and I am, you know,
when former executives that I've worked with, the students
call me and they begin to tell me how powerless
they're feeling, that is when they're also in danger
of behaving unethically or in ways that they're not proud of
because they can't figure out how to maneuver.
And once you lose confidence in yourself,
going back to courage, you're not taking any big swings.
So I think sometimes we have to courage to walk away
from those circumstances in which we actually can't figure out
how to exercise any agency to have any influence.
- Oh, so good.
Yeah, building on what Linda said, you know,
brings back so many memories of some of the personal
experiences that I had and you know, looking back,
I've worked at very large organizations.
IBM, Microsoft, now sales force, although it was a startup
in 1999 and in the role of helping other clients,
you know, usually very large ones.
Everyone from NATO and Disney, you know,
got to, you know, many large organizations,
legacy organizations and I just saw that, you know,
too many leaders just over rely on formal structure.
And the worst ones create even more structure
as a way to give themselves more power and authority,
writing better contracts, appointing more project managers,
write more governance agreements
and as Linda was talking about in our research
and I lived this firsthand as well
beyond the research and doing the work.
These bridges and these more successful leaders
do the important work of building trust
and influence and commitment and ask themselves
like important questions like, do we really know what our
priorities, capabilities, constraints of our partners
and collaborators.
So for me, we talk about this in the book
and one of our HBR stories articles.
There's my potential leader whose team was prototyping
something that, you know, checked out
with everyone that they were talking to,
including, you know, and customers about a new product
and just tested really well.
And they made the decision to proudly
but handed off to their colleagues in IT marketing,
you know, and elsewhere and eventually it's stalled,
you know, for a variety of reasons, you know,
the product was built on legacy tech
and legacy systems.
It was a new customer segment that the business
wasn't really familiar with.
So others thought it was too incremental.
And this happens in industry, small and large, all the time.
And where innovation dies, not because the idea was bad.
had, but because the partnerships meant to deliver it just broke down.
So whether I'm meeting with CEOs, we're meeting with CEOs, or talking to my kids' local
public school, one of the things that I really have strong conviction on is, especially
in this world with the arrival of artificial intelligence, there are always going to be
problems in the world.
The world has always been a target rich environment.
So get graded problem solving. We may not see or know with a lot of confidence what
those problems are, three, five, especially 10 years from now, but there will be problems.
So get graded problem solving, and that comes from everything from design thinking to
succicum and rapid prototyping and experimentation, but simply says it's less talking and more
doing and more learning. And I think history has shown that the problems change, and it's
the people who are really good at adapting to solving those emergent problems are the
ones that stay relevant. And I think that's becomes kind of the canvas of where those big
swings also come from as well.
I agree. And what's fascinating here is that we're recognizing that again, just reiterating
this, whatever your big swing is, this will have to be a part of it when it comes to being
that bridge, who can bridge connections, who can handle these political dynamics exceptionally
well, it's necessary. And so it's not a question of whether or not you want to play the game.
You are playing the game. It's just a question of whether or not you're actually doing it well.
And going back to the conversation about power, it reminds me of topics like the locus
of control in psychology, self-efficacy, those topic terms, because it's not about whether
or not you have the capacity or capability, but if you don't believe you have the power,
then it kind of feeds into learned helplessness. You're not going to take any swings of any
sort. Right? And so we have to have that internal conversation to shift the way that we're
thinking about this. And so what I'm thinking though, is that there are people listening
to this podcast who are recognizing now that they had far more power than they realized.
They were just looking at the wrong things. And so this is now, now we're going to move
into like motivational guru up on stage, you have power. Okay? So I think you can be
much more analytic about it than that 100%. So let's get specific. Where are the places
where people have power that they often miss? Because I believe a big part of this when
it comes to reaching out and taking those shots and taking advantage of opportunities
is learning to look in the right places because we often look at places that confirm our
belief that we're powerless instead of the alternative.
Well, there's so many ways to answer this question and I'm just going to go down one path
and there's so many to be explored. But one is, you know, what we do have imagination.
Human imagination is unbelievably powerful. You have, you know, you have ideas. You can
think up what a different future might be. And you don't have to necessarily have the
whole vision. In fact, most of us don't have the whole vision of what it's going to
be. And if you say you do, given all that's going on in the world, how dynamic and complex
it is, I doubt it. But I really do think being curious and using your imagination to think
about possibilities to address something that really matters to you. So one of the things
that we wrote about in our in and the first book we wrote on innovation was we wrote about
what we learned at Pixar. And one of our business partners is a person who was sort of, I
guess, sort of the equivalent of the chief technology officer of Pixar. And one of the
things he said to me very early on is that everybody has a slice of genius. Everybody
has talents. Everybody has passions. So where does your power start? It starts with your
talents and your passions. One of those talents that we have, particularly when we're children,
if we haven't killed it out of you by school, is you have curiosity. You have your imagination
to think through to do that kind of problem solving. So look at your own talents. Analyze
them. What's what what what is unique about what you know or what you can do? And all
of us has something because we all have different backgrounds. Again, our passions are a source
of power because with passion can come tenacity, courage, all of those things, those qualities
that are more learned than we think. Actually, it goes back to, as you said, you mentioned
learned helplessness. I actually did my, you're making me feel, I don't know what you're
making me feel, but I did one of my first experiments in college on learned helplessness
that people learn to be helpless. So I think though that what you want to look at is
your own slice of genius. And if you can't figure out what it is, talk to someone who loves
you or knows you and let them, and, and let them be, you know, your sparring partner to
figure out what's, I guess what, what I hear young people these days say is what is your
superpower? Right? What is it? I mean, I want to, I must confess when people ask me that
I find that word a little bit tricky for me. I don't know if it's my age or whatever.
But this idea that we all have them, we all have slices of genius. Start there. Understand
what you have to work with. That doesn't mean that you don't want to also pay attention
to what you don't have, which is what so many of us do. But look at what you do have.
And these are the resources you have individually. And some of you may have, in fact, you're really
good at relationship building. That is a strength. That is a superpower you can use to pull
together who you need to try to get done, what you're going to, what you're going to want
to get done. But I think we, and again, I worry sometimes about how we're educated because
we kind of help you as professor sometimes understand what you don't know, right? When we're
rating as opposed to worshiping, and I'm using the word worship very seriously, what is
so special about you? And I met many, many individuals who have been viewed as high
potential, otherwise they would not have ended up at Harvard Business School who don't know
what their slices of genius are. And so this grand challenge is course. I was just talking
to the strategy professor that I'm going to be doing this course with. And he was like,
we need to end with something that really helps the students understand what they have
to offer to begin to tackle these kinds of dilemmas because they don't know Linda. And he's
a strategy professor. He's an economist. But we both ended up in the same place as if
we can help them be clearer about what their why is in their life by the time they leave.
You can't get everything done, but some insight, more insight into that as well as look
at these special talents you have. And related to that, even within the kinds of relationships
you have, can you use those in a constructive way, a reciprocal way? I want to be, I don't
want to use use in the sense of manipulate to get done something that you think is worth
doing. Now, I can't do one of the things I often tell the students or whoever I'm working
with the executives. I don't know what's in your heart. I never try to, you know, you
may be trying to pursue something that I would make me crazy if I knew I was being
helpful to you helping you get that done. But I'm going to assume I have faith in human
nature overall. And so you, again, that's where you start. Your power starts with what
do you have to offer. And if you're not self-aware enough to figure that out, then get to it.
That is work for you to learn. And then when you do figure out gaps, find out can you get
a partner who actually can be, who can compliment you? Or do you need to go on a development plan
that will allow you to take, you know, to kill, to close some of those gaps that are most,
critical to close? I mean, I was working with a man who is a top surgeon in the world. I
mean top, top surgeon. And he's a road scholar. He's, he's absolutely brilliant. But given
what he wanted to do, the moonshot, what he really deeply cared about, he needed a sparring
partner as he put it, who was very different from him to work with him and help him get better
at those things that are going to be required for him to get better at. If he was going
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And so I think, again, all of us need help.
So one of the networks you really need to build is what is called your developmental network.
Those people who actually can help you, you know, have those experiences learn from those
experiences that will make you your slice of genius kind of grow.
All slices are not equal, and perhaps even more importantly become aware of what they
are, because so many people are not aware of their passions or their talents.
Literally aren't aware.
Yes, and again, going to that concept of self-awareness, the thing is we have to be accurate
in our assessment. A lot of times we can be almost self-deprecating to our own disadvantage,
where we say, "Oh, I don't have very much to give."
And no, we have to be very real about what our passions are and what our skill set actually
is, and sometimes you need that friend to be that hype man or woman for you to help
you to recognize how good you can be or how good you are.
But then you also have to be real about the gaps, too.
Because if you want to take these big swings, then we're going to have to recognize that
there's probably a discrepancy between where you currently are and where you need to be
in terms of skills and competencies, and now you can fill those gaps with precision and
then make sure that you're making those moves.
Because one of the things that we have to recognize is along with the increased dynamism
that is required in the workplace with us having to deal with new changes more, so previous
generations, everything's constantly in flux.
So we have to be bridges, we have to be agile as well.
But then also, we have to recognize that the old command and control way of leadership
is slowly, is dying in many ways.
So in the many cases, we might want to take a big swing, do something impressive or create
a project.
But we ourselves don't have the capacity to get it across the finish line by ourselves.
We don't have enough political capital.
And so when it comes to influence without authority, where do people start?
When it comes to gathering up the political capital you need within an organization, especially
to actually get projects green, the green light, but then get it across the finish line
as well.
Yeah, I mean, I think influence without authority is arguably one of the most important things
that I think that we uncovered in almost 10 years of research of our book, and I think just
building on what we were just talking about before, I'm convinced personally that self-awareness
is the most underappreciated and undervalued skill for any leader.
And I think for me at the beginning of my own personal journey, I define that a bit narrowly
of almost how the external world perceives me.
And that's part of it, but it was also my own heart and mind being aligned.
And I think one of the things this conversation reminded me of was probably the best career
advice that I ever got, and it happened early in my career from a guy by the name of Joel,
who's now kind of a mentor, retired, but at the time he was the managing partner of
Aegon Zender, which is a Swiss-based executive search CEO, board placement kind of firm, dealing
with sensitive issues and, you know, CXO and above.
And I think, you know, I appreciate that Joel at the time saw something in me and he had
more confidence in me than I had in myself.
And the homework he gave me over a summer as I was interning with him was, Jason, take
out a blank sheet of paper, draw a vertical line down the middle.
On the left-hand side, write down 10 things that you think that you love to do.
On the right-hand side, write down 10 things that you think that you despise or hate doing.
And he said, "Here's the key.
Is don't share it with anyone, including, you know, your better half, hide it away at
some desk, go back to what you're doing in a month or two, go back to the list and edit
it and go through at least two or three iterations before you finalize that."
And that process, if I hadn't have done that, I would not have been here with all of you
right now, I would not have written a book with Linda.
Because what I realized was, as I grew up, you know, teenage or went to college, I started
to convince myself that these were the things that were important to me, and I cared about,
but it was really extrinsic.
And it was coming from the outside world, and this exercise really helped me get back
to the purity of, based on, like, lived experience and what I'm doing day-to-day with my
team and my work.
What do I really, if I'm honest with myself, enjoy and not enjoy, and the list that I started
with, became a almost completely different list by the end of it.
So I couldn't help but share that, because it was so transformational for me that maybe
it'll help many others out there, but when it comes to exercising influence without
formal authority, especially in the world of innovation, and with so much change going
on, innovation is going to become more and more important for every organization, no matter
what you're involved with, it's no longer optional, and that's why we wanted to write this
book.
And I think they're kind of two answers, and Linda touched on, you know, part of this.
One is emotional intelligence, and the other is contextual intelligence.
And the leaders that we studied, not just the bridges that we talked about, but the
other A in the C of the ABCs, the architects and catalysts, also exhibit this, you know,
really, really well, and emotional intelligence is, you know, about managing that ambiguity
without being in control, which can grate and create friction around sense of urgency,
but they stay motivated, they take a long view, they're really good at giving credit
generously and credit to everyone else, and they own their mistakes back to like the importance
of self-awareness and transparency.
So one of the chapters in the book, and one of my favorite ones, because I've traveled
so much, is Delta and Nicole Jones, and what she did to ensure that it was not just another
innovation lab that became, you know, an extension of the organization, but not really deeply
integrated into co-creating that future, and you know, obviously we'd love for people
to read the book in that chapter, but what she did was insisting her partners be the heroes,
and the space that they created that they called the hangar, and the team around that never
took credit for the innovations that they incubated, it just didn't feel right, and it was
just so key to the ongoing commitment.
So they did lots of things to make sure that they celebrated teamwork and outcomes, that
people who were maybe in the beginning skeptical about, you know, who would get the credit,
they just put that the rest, and then contextual intelligence, and I think again with the arrival
of artificial intelligence, understanding context is going to be important in work and
in life, and so I think, you know, what these leaders do really well is instead of making
assumptions, because think about it even like today, or beliefs and assumptions, how long
do they last, the world is literally shifting underneath our feet, you know, a yarder
to every week.
So they don't make, you know, these sorts of assumptions, instead they learn through
question and inquiry and observation, and how the partners' context shapes their own mindset
and behavior.
So instead of imposing the delta's way of working on these partners, they almost create kind
of a shared way of working through rules of engagement together.
And so, you know, no project, especially if you're kind of pushing the edges and truly
being innovative is easy, you know, there's lots of turbulence, right?
So these teams recognize that in any relationship, right, you're going to have bumps in the road,
and instead of hiding it and not being transparent, you know, they're very transparent, say, hey,
we own this problem, this was our issue, because they realized that the truth in any relationship
is going to come out.
So instead focus on, hey, let's learn from this together and figure out what do we do and
now and make sure this never happens again.
And by doing it that way, what a surprise, it builds trust.
So I think that there's a lot that can be learned around how do you put emotional intelligence
and contextual intelligence and practice, and it's one of those things that everyone can
learn by doing.
So people often think that either you're born a leader or you're not, either you're either
you are a leader or you're not, you were born that way or not.
The research is actually quite clear that leadership is mostly learned.
Now I will say that that doesn't mean that all of us can lead in all circumstances, but
there's a lot more leadership potential out there than we think.
That's what the research tells us, star leaders are more made than born.
They really are.
And the reason I think in part we sometimes have this myth in our heads that they're more
born is because when we think about leadership, we often think about that really big charismatic
leader.
And charisma is a sort of. of power. Some people have a lot of it and some people don't. And if you have it as a source of
power, it can help you influence people for sure. It also has a downside to it. But really, I have
one of my colleagues, Boris Groisberg, he begins to study in depth, stars in a whole range of
industries, not just leadership. He started with leadership and found that there's a lot more
that has, there's more making of them than born. Now, I will never be going back to basketball,
you know, I'm never going to be, I'm not tall enough, I'm not the right gender, even to do,
I am the right gender if I want to, not to play for the Celtics. But I think that what I would say
is that what we, we, we really often forget how important experiences are. The other thing we've
learned over time is that we used to think that our, you know, all of the important development
experiences were early in life. Well, no, adults continue to develop. I even saw something the other
day that talked about, you know, what it is about 80-year-olds that actually let them become 90-year
olds and not get Alzheimer's. And part of it is that they're, they're, they're really lifelong
learners. They're curious, they're engaged, they're interacting. So I think that what we're really
saying here is you need to take charge of your own development and think about, you know, again,
what matters to you. And I think Jason, it's hard to figure out what matters to you. When people ask
you, you know, again, it's hard enough to try to figure out what your superpowers might be. But
really when you ask people, what's your why? What, you know, what really matters to you? That,
that is a search sometimes. And it will also change over time. That's the other thing we need to say.
I mean, after you get to be a little, as you get older, you discover, oh, this, what really,
what I, what really matters to me has shifted. But one of the things we saw on all of the leaders
that we've studied who were exceptional leaders of innovation is that they actually all believed
that values drive value. And so again, clarity about what you value and being able to share that
clarity with others, what happens is one of the leaders said to us, when people hear what you value,
they, some people will move toward you because they share your values. Others are going to move away
from you. Okay, let them go because you're looking for those people where you actually have some
common ground. But so don't be afraid to clarify. Related to that is one of the leaders I studied who
was, who's actually a political leader. He was considered to be one of the most powerful sort of
people in Washington and driving innovative solutions. And I was asked by a group of high,
of tech people, I mean tech people who created things like the internet literally,
the basic work for the club is would you go study this person because this person really is what
we think one of the key catalysts for innovative movements in the United States. So I went to study him
and what I learned was he was really, really good at coaching people and how to actually build
coalitions. He spent a disproportionate amount of his time doing that. He coached them and taught
them things like you just heard with with from Jason let you know what if you really want it done
then let the other person take credit. If you really want it done make it easy for the other person.
When you go into a room too often we look around particularly in Washington and say who's the
most powerful person this room and how do I get closer to that powerful person. He's like now
that's not the way to go. What you need to do is try to find out in the room, look around the room
and find out who shares your interests. Who can you start to have common ground with?
It might be at the level of values. It might be at the level of the problem or the opportunity.
Once you find the people in the room with whom you share something to begin to build a relationship
that's how you get sort of those you start to see the coalition you might need. And if that person
also you're sharing and you have similar problems eventually they're going to help you figure out
how to meet the big boss. If they're if they're big bosses in that room. But he said that's not
what most people do. Most people move towards that person. They think you know this that that's the
big cheese. Let me go there. It doesn't work because everybody's trying to get to that person and
why should that person pay a whole lot of attention to you particularly going back to if you don't
have a lot of formal authority or if you're more junior. But his group and he had a hand he was very
careful at figuring out who could be open to the working in this way. And it wasn't easy to share
credit because these are top performers who were used to having a lot of credit. But he said
really think about just do a tour of duty with government. Most of the people on this team are
large percentage. I shouldn't say most. They would never have thought they would be in government.
They didn't want government. You know they were very they wanted to be an entrepreneurial ventures
or whatever. But he said just do a tour of duty here and figure out if you can figure out how to
scale that idea you have in this kind of context you can affect millions of people. Not you know if
you will hundreds of people or maybe thousands of people. And I can't tell you how many I we ended
up interviewing people who had been able to do their tour of duty in Washington with them with with
him and his team. And they sort of described me all that they learned from that. And also and
how frustrating the work was just be clear because there is a lot of bureaucracy. But how on the
other hand what what they got done there and they begin to see the ripple effects that can happen
when you're in a certain kind of context that creates those effects if you actually can move
certain coalitions. So I think that again when people are thinking about what do I how do I
want to make a difference and we all I want to really emphasize here that most of us need to make a living.
And many of the people I deal with you know are I was just our first the first person to graduate
for instance from college nonetheless a graduate school or even the executives we had an executive
here recently and I want to be careful about this is I don't want to I'm so can't identify him.
But he described to the class why there was a certain kind of fruit that he couldn't bear to see
or look at because he came from a family that basically were they were migrant workers.
And you when you turned six that's when you started working so you were happy until you were six
because you just ran around way everybody else you know wasn't working and you enjoyed this fruit.
But to imagine that there was someone in the class and when he shared the story who frankly grew up
intense they were migrant workers and he said here I find myself at Harvard Business School and I'm not
you know I'm not trying to I would have never in a million years are my family dream that I'd be
here and let me tell you what I'm trying to get done in my organization. So again I think that
what we need to understand is that when he described to people how he got where he was did do it
alone had a lot of support from his family his siblings who you know let but he also was supporting
his family so he went he was sending money home if you will so he had other obligations that you
know a lot of them didn't have but he still and he still was very focused on making a difference
to his organization and that organization was one that some of us might say was in the industry that
you know maybe isn't the best industry if you're trying to if you want to be pul I don't not
politically correct but it was a complicated industry but he had a way of thinking about why it's
it's an essential industry and how was he going to get work done there differently and for him it
actually didn't relate also to thinking about opportunities for the employees to have better work
work experiences. So again you see how someone takes what his own experience has been and turns it
into an incredible opportunity for himself for his family because he was making more money than
they could have ever imagined to help support his family although it was a pretty big family and
he was also you know trying to think about ways he could make this business create a better
work environment for the employees at least in the part that he had some influence over.
Yes oh there's there is so much to explore in this and the Simo let me give you a heads up I'll
bring you in on the next go around because there I want to go deeper on this one concept because
I've heard you both mentioned it in passing and I want to dig deeper on it too so the term is
coalition building especially when you think about a gathering political capital coalition building
is a method of building influence that people often overlook in a way that's surprising because
oftentimes they just don't have the word for what coalition building actually means so let's give
the audience something they can actually use tangibly when it comes to what it actually means to
build a coalition and then how to do it well so I think one thing or trying to think about a good
example we have a number of leaders who do a lot of coalition building I think that one one
example I'll just give you right now I'm trying to think of this is the best way to go out it the
reason why so thinking about who has common interests so it turns out one of the leaders we studied
in indeedi who is actually a businesswoman in agribusiness in Nigeria she decided that what she
needed to do was you know basically there was a lot of a lot of food is being imported in Nigeria
that frankly they should be able to not only have enough to feed themselves but to export it to
others so she began to think about we can only become better as an industry and agribusiness
industry if we actually build some coalitions across particularly the SMEs in the agribusiness space
she was an SME she's not a farmer she actually was doing some of the you know taking the wrong
Goods and working on them.
to turning them into spices and distributing them, et cetera.
So she said, you know, the way that, I guess, processing these foods.
So she began to realize, what's the lever?
How can I help Nigeria ended up being Africa broadly conceived?
But how can I help Nigeria be really have the food we need and actually export food as
well?
And so we can improve our livelihoods and our lives.
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So she realized that really the lever she had was to try to bring together some of the
SMEs and agribusiness, the small and medium-sized businesses, and help them become more efficient
and effective in doing their own work, which would then trickle back to the farmers and
also prepare them to work with these that they develop coalitions to work with the government
to develop better distribution channels and rules and subsidies etc to be able to export
what they were doing.
When she first tried to build this coalition of SMEs and she was doing some of this actually
virtually because she was using digital tools, she discovered that the SMEs suffered from
what she referred to as crab-walk, a crab mentality and what she meant by that is that resources
were so scarce in Nigeria that people didn't want to share resources, they didn't want
other people to know what they had, they were hoarding.
And so it took her a long time to convince them that actually you know what the pie can
get bigger if we in fact work together, because together we have more strength than we
do individually.
So it took her a little while to get through this crab mentality as she described it and
to show them that no, let's try to combine what we know and do, let's together we can
get access to some digital tools because the mobile phone was there and they could do
various things on the mobile phone that they couldn't do otherwise and we'll help together
we can afford to invest and develop some tools that will help us all get better.
So that whole process has been you know took her years in some way, she was quite committed
to it but she taught them that as a coalition they could go get, they had more resources,
this is shared resources and they could also give voice to their common concerns when
they were working even with foundations who were making you know grants to the area etc.
And that coalition building so it wasn't they didn't know about coalitions that they
could come together they were afraid to because they thought that we're each going to get
a smaller piece of the pie instead of being competitive we need to be able to collaborate.
So that's an instance where they hadn't really thought of coming together and working
that way and she's now this this organization is incredible again it's one of our chapters
about African food changers and all the changes they've been able to make in food and across
not just in Nigeria but it's now a global entity and they are using digital tools to both
keep the group working together as a coalition because how do you keep everybody connected
as well as using those tools to make each of their businesses more powerful.
Another one was I don't know if that's the kind of example you meant or that's that's
an example that's a big swing because she is simply a big swing.
She was now the head of the Bono's foundation and you know Bono does a lot of work in Africa
so she's she's now looking at you need capital for all of these things but this network
of of SMEs across Africa in agribusiness really very powerful and getting lots done that
they couldn't have done individually and they're learning together they're figuring out
what's tricky how to share what they earn in ways to put it back into the pool so that
they can continue to grow the pie.
So that's an example of understanding if we can get these coalitions together we can
do things differently a slightly different one and I guess I guess I would call it coalition
building is one of the executives we worked with was trying to change and this is he's a
businessman who's helped build a very successful tech tech outsourcing company.
He also has a foundation that does work in primary education and what he began to understand
is even though he personally and his foundation had wonderful relationships with government
in India and and wonderful relationships with the teachers in these villages where they
were working the only way that this these changes he was trying to make to primary education
could actually be sustainable is if he improved and built a strong relationship between government
officials and teachers and not just local government but also state government in particular.
So it wasn't so much I need we need to get our relationship right with government government
wants to work with us because guess what we're putting $100 million in to help in these
different villages teachers want to work with us because we have established a way to
help to show them that we can help them be more effective in their jobs but that's that's
not the key the key here really is the coalition across state and local government with these
local teachers and if we can facilitate and make that into a coalition there the parents
included then that is what will be sustainable because $100 million is a drop in the bucket
to improve education of of children you know in in the early grades in India.
So the coalition he changed his thinking from it's about me and my foundation working
with these different parties but rather I need to let I need to introduce these other
parties who need to work together and they need to be the coalition with the parents
and whatever and guess what then the parents are voting for the government officials they're
getting reelected the teachers are getting access and as a consequence of building this
coalition for education also the government decided to put electricity into some of these
these these villages because electricity would give them access again all being done on
the mobile phone mostly the mobile phone has changed the world in so many ways in a positive
way they he was able to deliver a lot of what he needed to deliver to both government
and so and the teachers but again it's the coalition that he built between the parents the
teachers and the government officials of two levels that actually have allowed that that
whole effort to be sustainable because the government then changed their metrics for
how they measure the teachers and the metrics were more in line with really educating the
children not just you know not counting beans if you will but really paying attention to
educational outcomes that will make a difference to these children so that that is about thinking
very constructively about what's the coalition that needs to be built to allow for this big
swing this instance improving primary education for children in India and it's not just a one-on-one
partnership it's really getting those those other parties to work or just like with Indeedy
getting the SMEs to work with each other differently not just with me right that is what we refer
to as catalyst leadership when you think that way about building those multi-party relationships
and we talked about the bridges but there this is the other piece when you move to the coalition
that is what we refer to which you're almost building what we would call almost a movement
of people to solve a problem that is really critical to that society again.
and this is a business leader who was doing this work.
He also, you know, he just felt it had to be done
and he needed to think differently.
So he, for us, would be a catalyst leader.
- Really?
- Yeah, that's amazing, Linda,
'cause that's exactly where it was gonna go
or around the catalyst, right?
We've talked about the ABCs of great leadership,
architects, bridges, the C for catalysts.
All of the ABCs are great at coalition building,
but the catalyst, it's so important to their mission.
And I think before I get into a little bit of catalysts
and I share my personal favorite chapter,
which Linda already knows, you know,
when I've been involved in kind of coalition building,
one of the tools that has been really effective
is kind of tearing a page from a book of economics 101,
which is abundance versus scarcity, right?
It's human nature that we value things that are scarce,
sometimes rationally, sometimes irrationally.
Water, oil, the latest iPhone,
people spending all night in a tent, right?
To be the first one in line,
so they can do their unboxing video
or for whatever the reason.
And we value things that are scarce, it's human nature.
But oil, water, those things tend to be kind of global
or regional resources.
But when you think about like coalition building,
scarcity and abundance is relative.
The data that, you know, on the back of trust
with customers that I've earned the right over decades
that I may have as an organization, someone else doesn't have.
But I may need something that would take me forever
or a ridiculous amount of money
to be able to acquire to get that.
So I think that there's an interesting kind of frame
that's been really helpful just in making innovation
and change practical around just the lens of abundance
and scarcity and it's relative.
Just think about who you partner with
and you probably find things that are abundant
in your own organization that others would value
if they had access to it.
And that could lead to an interesting conversation
around exchange and value.
So catalysts are really the world class coalition builders
that we studied in our book.
And as Linda said, they're really about igniting movements,
movements that hopefully drive innovation much farther
than their own team or their organizational boundaries.
So, you know, they're really good at mapping ecosystems
of stakeholders and seeding real tangible opportunities
that can be inviting for multi parties
to want to be involved and co-create.
And they don't stop there.
They cultivate those seeds with, you know,
the mindsets and relationships tools
that are important to sustain that movement.
So, probably personally, one of my favorite chapters
in the book is the chapter about Avatar Inn,
which is a spinoff of ANA Airlines,
which is the largest airline in Japan.
So, the United Airlines Delta Airlines of Japan.
And the story is about two young engineers,
two individual contributors, kind of nobody's buried
inside of the organization, Akira and Kevin.
And they launched a global movement
with at the beginning, no budget, no authority
around mobile robotics and Avatar.
And when they started the journey, you know,
it started with a question around,
can humans teleport?
And they were literally like laughed at and scoffed at.
And they realized that the research that,
like the technology behind teleportation
is several decades away.
But it led them to can you transport human senses?
And use cases from diffusing bombs to, you know,
an immobile grandmother in rural Japan
who dreams of going to Machu Picchu,
but will never go to an airport again.
Patients who want to be involved in work and society,
but, you know, maybe have some physical limitations.
So a whole range of use cases.
And so these two junior engineers
and a Japanese airline,
airlines are arguably the most risk-averse industry
in the world, no budget, no authority,
building this global movement,
where they eventually got over a billion dollars
of government investment, involve the equivalent
of NASA and Japan, Jaxa.
And as I said, it's a spinout, but it's now independent.
So if these two junior engineers
inside of a highly risk-averse airline
can ignite a global movement around robotics,
and in my opinion, the most human-centered avatar movement
in the world, anyone can.
And we hear a lot like founders mode
and how founders leverage themselves, especially startups
and tech startups.
But for me, there's a negative connotation
which is management and trying to be everywhere
and do everything.
And I think this is a great example
of a different sort of leveraging yourself
in founders mode to co-create and scale something
that eventually became bigger than them
and their idea at the beginning.
- And these avatar robots, I mean, I met these two,
I met one of them that won Akira first.
We were on a panel together in Japan
and he was describing teleportation.
And I love Star Trek, Star Wars, I love aliens.
So I'm thinking, I have to go talk to this person.
I thought of him as a young man,
I'm just gonna put it that way on, it's like,
when as soon as we get to the break,
I gotta find out what, I said teleportation.
And it was teleportation without the mass.
How can we send our five senses across,
if you will, the internet?
How can we send our consciousness?
And they literally have these avatar robots.
And this is the next big thing, technically,
when I understand this was probably eight years ago
or so that I met them.
They were already working on AI robotics.
They now, of course, incorporated an agent AI.
But these robots, they have one up
on the International Space Station,
helping scientists do the science they wanna do.
They have them in hospitals, they have them in stores,
they have them at airports.
And what you do is you're sitting whatever you're sitting
and you're sending your senses,
they're still working on a haptech hand.
I thought, how do you send smell?
Well, guess what, there's a lot of research on that.
But just think about the coalitions they've had to build
to create the platform and the capabilities
to do this kind of work.
And it's one of these times where they took advantage
of something that was obviously horrible
for all of us in many ways, COVID.
When they started, frankly, February of 2020,
they thought they were dead.
Quite the contrary, everybody wanted one
of these avatar robots.
It's people wanted them so they could say goodbye
to their family member who was dying in the hospital.
If the hospital had a robot, you could be in your home
and send at least, it's much more than it's,
I know it sounds like they did it very simplistic,
but they, you can send over time they wanted,
what if you could have touched, you couldn't yet,
but they've been working on a haptech hand
that I guess Jeff Bezos demonstrated.
But how did they create these technologies?
They worked with X Prize to find out who's best
in the world at sending touch across the internet.
Who's best in the world of sending smell across?
They found out by looking at who applied for X Prize,
then they would find and introduce these.
They found out three groups of three different startups
that were really good at the haptech hand.
So you can touch from wherever you are.
And then they introduced those three to each other.
And then they got a little seed money from A&A
to give it to those three.
And so if you cooperate because you're best at this
and you're best at that and you're best,
we'll get this hand done faster.
So they created that coalition of competitors, if you will,
who work together and then we're able to create
that capability, another coalition.
So these are people who are very creative of thinking about
how can we convince people to work together
or working with Jackson.
How did they get construction companies
to agree to come together to work on that?
Because well, now we have the space industry, right?
Some people are getting ready for building the satellites.
But what they said in Japan,
and we have all these radio active,
all these areas that are radioactive.
You don't want to cancel humans there to fix clean this up,
but we can send our avatar robots there.
So the construction companies.
So this is the imagination part of what I was saying.
Being curious, having imagination,
having a problem you want to solve that really speaks to you,
and they're at it.
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Yes.
Amazing.
This is great.
Simone, I know you've been sitting here waiting patiently.
My friend, I told you, I'll get you in.
What's on your mind?
I want to share with you an experience I had in Argentina, and I want to know your thoughts
about that.
Because when I was like 22 years old, I was working as a sales representative, and there
was a guy that would come every once in a while, like once a month to do keynotes and train
us in terms of how to sell, how to work as a team, and in some kind of politics.
But then, after one year, I was promoted as a sales leader, and then I was the leader
of my four friends.
And then this guy came again, but not for a group training, and he just talked to me.
He went to my office, and he said, do you remember what I told you when we were working
as a team?
Okay, forget everything, and I'll give you a new set of rules.
So one of the things that I was like shocked, but one of the things he said, for instance,
is an example, he said, transparency.
So we were asking, we asked the group to be transparent, but now you're a leader.
So you have to be transparent, but you have to be mindful about your transparency.
So there are some things that you should not share with them, but you have to keep asking
them to be transparent with you, because information is power.
So you might need to know everything that's going on with them, but they don't need to
know everything that is going on in the manager level.
So he started to change the rules that I learned, but now there was like a different set
of rules.
Was it a good practice, or a bad habit, or what happened there?
Is that something that you usually see, or I just had that experience?
Oh, gosh.
Well, I wrote a book called Becoming a Manager.
And yes, and one of the, and you described two of the dilemmas that, more than two maybe,
but at least two.
One is, oh my goodness, I'm having to manage people that used to be my friends.
And now they don't tell me stuff, and I don't get invited to go out for a drink or to
have coffee, because I'm the boss now, right?
And people can be very unsettled by that experience.
So your communication and your relationship does have to change, because you can't play
as if you don't have some extra influence over what might happen to them in their careers
and lives.
You might want to, but no.
So people are often shocked when they realize that, and then particularly if you have to
give negative feedback to one of those former friends, what a disaster.
What I really want to say to you first is I know that Argentina is playing because I have
a woman who works with me from Argentina, and she's driving me off the deep, and I hope
you know, I'm not going to say who I want to win the World Cup, but Lord knows you all
better do well or she's going to be horrible to work with.
What I would say, in terms of relationship building, but what I would say is that, really,
the thing that you do, transparency is something that we, it helps build trust.
And you need to be honest with people.
I think if you're not honest with people, problem, right?
You cannot share everything that you know, because they're actually our laws.
I don't know that I would say it's almost because you can't share information about another
person in your team because that's just not appropriate.
So what you do need to sort of face up to is there are rights and privileges I get as
a leader or as the manager, but there also duties and obligations.
And those duties and obligations, you're more aware that you should be when you're an individual
contributor, but when you're the manager, you represent the company.
So you do need to understand, you know, I represent the company and what are my obligations
and duties to the company.
And you're always trying to reconcile those with what really are my obligations to these
individuals, not as my former friends, but just as people have a right to know what's
going on around them that might impact them.
So that is one of this dilemma of what information you can share or not is something that new
managers really, really struggle with.
So you wasn't giving you bad advice, but except I think he was giving you advice, I don't
sort of like it from the point of view of power.
That worries me.
That information is your power, so don't share it with them.
No, I wouldn't argue with that way.
I would just argue that you need to think, you need to really have that bigger picture
of the organization's point of view or the enterprise perspective.
And what does that say in terms of your duties and obligations that you can share and you
can't share.
But I wouldn't say it's because hoarding power, hoarding information, usually your workers
are going to do better work if they have more information, frankly.
And you actually want to share with them as much as you can about the big picture, so
that they're going to be moving in the right direction when you empower them to do something.
It's less risky because they understand that big picture.
So I don't like the advice from the point of view, it's your power, so don't give it
away.
I think it's more about what are your obligations and you now have a set of stakeholders
that are bigger and that have conflicting priorities, the company or your boss and the
people working for you.
And you're the one who's caught in the middle trying to reconcile those things.
Yeah, I agree with Linda and also Laura Hantina.
They've been there many times, Simone, and one of the best parts is that there's no jet
lag when you fly north to south from New York, let alone the change of season.
So the one part that I did like about what your former boss did was sensing ahead of time
that it may just be a struggle and a challenge for you to maintain both the professional
and personal relationships.
I think whether that was something he observed or he related to himself, I think it would
have been more awkward if he discovered it later and based on some mistake or performance
myths or whatever it is, so I think that part of it, you know, I think he was trying to
get ahead of some of the interference and maybe seeing a younger version of himself when
he was channeling some of that feedback.
Listening to you, you know, it made me take a little bit of a trip down my own memory
lane where, you know, as I went from IBM to Salesforce leading innovation at IBM there
to innovation at Salesforce, I brought some people with me.
People that I considered both obviously incredible collaborators and innovators but also friends.
And you know, to this day I lost a couple of them as friends because I had some of my own
moments of truth as a leader where, you know, I was being paid to prioritize professional
priorities over personal relationships and preferences and I learned a lot from it and
those people listened to this, there's always two sides of the story but I've reflected on
it a lot and you know, if I could go back in the time machine, I think, you know, the
accountability I would have would have been being clearer with them about, look, we've
been friends and we've broken bread and we've had fun at Yankee Stadium but now I have
a job and I have a family and you know, being transparent and I think part of it is struggling
with the amount of transparency and like in COVID, right, you know, telling the team, we're
in the middle of a meteor field and we need to get to this planet and the ship could blow
up at any moment.
Some people appreciated that level of transparency, others have created so much anxiety that it
became almost toxic because they were unproductive.
So I don't know and I think that there's an art to the amount of transparency and it goes
back to what we were talking about before of contextual intelligence and I've always felt
that it's better to get it off your chest and talk about it nine times out of ten, right,
you know, you can at least talk it through but it's hard to be a mine reader and make assumptions
about what people are thinking and feeling.
Thank you.
I'm right now it's a big one because of AI, people are, am I going to have a job?
Yeah.
You're hearing, or even when they're layoffs, often you'll know before you're told and
the employees haven't been told because you might be a part of the conversation to discuss
if we're going to do layoffs, who should be laid off, when should they happen, etc.
So these are horrible moments.
Most people, if you have a little bit of a heart, even if they're not your friends, this
is being a manager is there is a burden, there's an emotional burden that comes with leading
other people.
And, you know, you've got to live up to, you've actually got to be prepared to take that
on.
So the warnings are good.
And thinking through how I'm going to solve this problem in the most humane way.
And if you lie to people, they're never going to forget that, right?
I think, you know, one of the leaders I know right now who has a very cohesive team, fairly
certain a lot is going to be automated and people are going to lose their jobs.
He just said to them, "I have to be honest with you.
I think some people will lose their jobs."
I don't know who now, but if this works the way the company wants it to work, part of
it is we're taking out, you know, we're cutting costs and we're automating things.
And, you know, it's going to happen.
I don't know.
I will try.
He didn't lie.
I will try to warn you as soon as I'm allowed to warn you or I can warn you so that you
can prepare.
But part of the reason he actually talked about it explicitly in the town hall was because
he knows it's on people's minds.
And he knows that he would probably know before they knew.
And he acknowledged it in a way that they, you know, they thought, "Okay, he's trying
to be as straight with us as he can be."
Yes, of all I mean, that's all I mean is you're in sales, right?
And you talk about being at SDR and becoming a sales manager.
And so I think it takes the stakes to another level because culture-shaping, culture-building
it takes time, but, you know, in sales, the old adage is, if we don't make our numbers
this year, there is no next year.
So let's focus on this year.
So it's ended here at Paradox, right?
But yeah, always, I always feel it's always better to be more transparent as long as you're
being sensible about it.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Great question and great insights.
As always, I could speak to you both forever on this.
I appreciate you coming in and sharing your wisdom.
Before you go, I want to make sure that you have time to give a proper send-off.
Just let the folks know where the best place is to reach you and learn more about the work
that you do.
We've really enjoyed the conversation.
And big swings only we had to be a part of this dialogue.
So so many different ways to engage with us.
We spent almost 10 years writing this book and hopefully that speaks for itself.
But it's a book that's meant to be a prompt, it's a book that's meant to be hope.
It's not saying, hey, do what Mastercard did or do what this Japanese startup did.
It's walking their shoes, learn from what they went through and apply it to your own context.
So of course, we can be found on amazon.com, a book is called Genius It's Scale, how great
leaders drive innovation, we also have a website available in multiple languages,
[email protected].
And we would love to hear from all of you.
When we wrote the book, like other authors, we wanted to write a timeless book.
Doing that in the middle of artificial intelligence is a bit of a challenge.
But by not focusing on AI, we kind of focused on what it really means to be a human leader.
And I think we'd all agree we need more of that these days.
And we both, we also have an company called Paradox Strategies.
The company that any one of those are, you know, we have LinkedIn.
So whatever would people want to be in touch with us, we'd love to hear from you.
And love to know both what your questions are and your challenges and opportunities you'd
like to take advantage of.
Because that will help us figure out the next project.
Jason and I are very driven about solving, doing research to solve real problems, take
and figure out how to address real problems or real opportunities that people like yourself
care about.
And I also want to say it's really fun to be with you all on your new program.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Likewise, this is perfect.
You all would have been perfect for and negotiate anything.
But I'm glad that we were able to get this in for big swings only.
Because this angle, it just resonates perfectly with the work that you both have been doing.
So thank you for your contributions and thanks for your time today.
We appreciate it.
Thank you.
Of course, our pleasure.
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