Speaker 1within about 30 days of having been appointed to the CEO role in an organization that was pretty new to me. At my first board meeting, one of the board members asked me, so Bob, what are your thoughts on the future direction of the company? And my answer was, I don't know yet. I'm still listening and learning. And fortunately, the chairman of the board at the time immediately said, Bob, that's a good answer. Let's move on.
Speaker 2Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and force management co-founder John Kaplan, the show takes guests in the barrel behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that, and seen the results. Revenue Builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid.
Speaker 3Welcome to another episode of the Revenue Builders podcast. I'm John Kaplan, and I'm here with my co-host, John McMahon. Today's guest started as a law student driving a road service truck in Quebec. He took the part-time job to help pay the bills, and he kept working his way up the ladder. He became CEO of the local charter and then CEO globally of AAA, one of the most trusted brands in America. He's now the CEO of the local charter and then CEO globally of AAA, one of the most trusted brands in America. When new CEOs started calling Bob Darbonet and asking what he wished he'd known before taking the job, he jotted down a few notes. The list grew to 92 topics, and it became his book, The CEO's Playbook, leading from the boardroom to the break room. He's now giving the book away one chapter a week on LinkedIn because every lesson in it came from someone who helped him along the way. Really, really incredible story. If you lead a team, answer to a board, or want to someday, this conversation is for you. We get into what makes a great board member, how to bring bad news up the chain without getting burned, and why you should leave your old playbook behind when you step into a new role. We also talk about the 90-day trap, building a culture where people tell you the truth and how AAA protected a brand built on showing up when people need help. Let's take a listen. So, Bob, really happy to have you here. Love your origin story. And, you know, we're going to talk about the book, CEO Playbook, leading from the boardroom to the break room. And one of the cool things in the book is it talks about the origin story of, you know, a law student driving a road service truck to Quebec, ending up running AAA as the CEO. Could you kind of share with us a little bit of just the background a little bit on how that all manifested it? And then we'll talk more. We'll get into the topics of the book.
Speaker 1Sure. Well, so growing up as a teenager in the U.S., my father took a job in Quebec and we ended up moving as a family to Quebec. So I grew up in Quebec City when I was in my mid-teens. And eventually I went to school there, went to law school. And during law school, I needed a job to help pay some of the expenses. And so I got a part-time job driving a road service vehicle for the club in Quebec. And that club was affiliated with AAA. And over the course of the winter, I did that. But then during the summer, they offered me full-time work. And I took that. And at the end of the year, I got a job. And at the end of the summer, they said, well, we don't want to get in the way of your going to law school. But if you'd like to stay, we'll have you work four days a week and give you a day off a week to continue your law degree. So I did that, stayed with the club, had a variety of different roles over the course of the first dozen years or so, and eventually got promoted to the role of CEO at that club. And I was in that role for about 10 years. And then AAA now. The National was looking for a CEO to replace one who was retiring. And I got offered the job as CEO of AAA and moved from Quebec City to Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 3So you literally stayed in the role. Did you get the law degree?
Speaker 1I did. Yeah.
Speaker 3And so you stayed in the role from like working your way up from road service, road service truck for AAA to the CEO of the entire organization. What are just maybe some of the obvious or not obvious benefits of having that purview? There's very few CEOs that like we talk about starting in the mailroom or what have you. What are some of the advantages and if there are any disadvantages of having that 10 year with an organization?
Speaker 1Yeah, well, one of the definite advantages is you really know the business from the ground up and road services. The core proposition that AAA offers its members. So I really had the opportunity to start in what was probably one of the most important areas in terms of the organization's relevance and working my way up and having a variety of different jobs gave me a broad understanding of how the business worked. And I think it helped prepare me for the CEO role at the club and eventually for the CEO role at National. If there's a downside, I think it's that. You don't gain the perspective that comes from working for different organizations that have different cultures and operate in a completely different space. But on balance, I think there is great benefit to having started at the bottom of the ladder. It gives you a real appreciation for what people on the front line are dealing with.
Speaker 3So we're going to dig into the principles that you outline in this book. Again, the book is called CEO Playbook. It's a book leading from the boardroom to the break room. But I want to talk a little bit about why did you write the book? Yeah, I mean, you have an incredible, I love the book. You have incredible stories in there. I don't think the book is finished. So it keeps, it sounds like it's getting bigger and bigger. Tell us a little bit about why you wrote the book and what you're doing with it. Because I think it's a cool story.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, I wrote the book almost by accident. A couple of years ago. An ex-colleague who had just been appointed to a CEO role reached out to me and said, Hey, Bob, could you share with me what you wish you'd known about the CEO job before you stepped into it? And so I said, well, that's a good question. Let me think about it. I'll jot some ideas down and we can get together by phone and walk through them. And I probably jotted down 10 or 12 things that I thought we ought to talk about. And we got on the phone. And most of these things. Had to do with living with the board. Because I sense that was what this fellow was most interested in. And we had that conversation. And then we turned the page and I moved on to something else. And I guess three or four months later, another ex-colleague reached out with a very similar question. And so I said, well, let me think about it. I'll get back to you. And I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. So I dragged out that original list. 10 or 12 things and thought about it a bit more. And that list turned into, say, probably 20 items. And we have this conversation with the second guy. And he was very kind and said it had been useful. And that was the end of that. Except it got me thinking about what did I forget to put on the list? And so I decided to just make a list of the things I'd forgotten. And the list grew and eventually got to something like 92 topics that I thought were relevant to someone in the room. And I decided to just make a list of the things I'd forgotten. And that prompted me to see if I could sketch it out a little bit in more detail. And that led to the book. And while it originally was intended to be the new CEO's playbook, once I jotted down those 90 or plus items, I realized it wasn't all just about what a new CEO needs to know. It's actually what anybody who aspires to the role of CEO probably would benefit. And so I dropped the new out of the title and just called it the CEO's playbook, leading from the boardroom to the break room.
Speaker 3I've got a couple of authors here. Johnny did something. Johnny, your origin is pretty similar. Like people calling you and saying, hey, have you thought they ask you for advice? So share a little bit and ask some good author type questions here on how that process of getting it into something that you can actually publish.
Speaker 4Well, you actually, I'm sure that Bob went through this. When you start to write a book and you think I'm really going to write a book, you know, I think that the status that 99% of people that start out to write a book don't finish the book. So it's an endeavor that's really, really difficult. And I think it was Ben Franklin that had a saying like, at first it seems like a pleasure. And then it becomes like a. A master. And then you become. Servant to it. Actually. When you just fed up, you know, being a servant to it, you take it and throw it out to the public. So something along those lines. And because writing a book is really. difficult and even when you think you're done if you show it to other people they have all these other comments and stuff and things that you didn't think about and you got to go back and start again and i remember thinking man i think i'm like 90 done i showed it to a couple people and they were like you're like 50 i was like wow i got so much more work to do sure bob faced some of the same same issues yeah but
Speaker 1actually i did share it with a close friend when i thought i was done and he said here's some ideas for how you ought to reorganize the uh the way it it uh is constructed and uh and actually since i finished the book i've been thinking about things i forgot to put in and i've got another dozen or so chapters that don't have a place to go right
Speaker 4so now when you think about those 92 topics that you have and you think about that the second guy that came to you not with more specific advice on the board but more just general you said he wanted the top things that a new ceo should think about how did those top 10 things you gave that person rank compared to what you would give them now uh well
Speaker 1i guess obviously my list was incomplete because you know it went from you know i guess at that point i was maybe at 20 or 25 topics and and i ended up at 92 and i found another dozen that i should have put in that i omitted so it just it just grows as you uh as you create and i think one of the things that made my task a little easier is that by design i wanted to make these chapters uh short to the point and basically standalone topics that you could go and read one chapter and then skip five six chapters and land on something else that you were interested in yeah so i didn't need to have that continuous theme throughout the book that takes you from one chapter obviously to the next it was uh it was easier i think to write it because of the manner in which i constructed it
Speaker 4and what do you think is the toughest thing if you had to say the top two things three things are the top thing that's the toughest thing about being a ceo
Speaker 1well one of the toughest things i think is that if you haven't been a ceo and you've been in some other role which is almost inevitable for you know most seals at some point they're moving from a past role to a ceo role is that you don't fully appreciate that the work is never done uh the the requirements of the job are continual uh there's really you're never done uh you could always spend another hour on one of the topics that's on your to-do list and so you really have to have the discipline uh to separate your work life from the rest of your life and then that latter role that that other life that you need to have is mission critical in terms of maintaining your balance and your perspective so i think one of the difficult things is appreciating in advance that this new role is going to be all consuming and you'll have to be very disciplined in terms of separating uh your work life from your family life or your other endeavors yeah because
Speaker 4if you lose yourself you lose your leadership capabilities and then you're no good to yourself or whether the company or your shareholders right
Speaker 1exactly i mean there's a true risk of burnout yeah and becoming much less efficient because you don't have perspective and
Speaker 4what about feeling like a man on an island because every as a ceo everybody wants a piece of you all your executives want a piece of you your employees want a piece of you your customers want a piece of you board members the outside world wants a piece of you the media wants a piece of you do you sometimes or have you ever had the feeling like i feel sometimes like i'm a man on an island
Speaker 1yeah well i remember early on someone told me before i was a ceo said it's very lonely at the top and initially i couldn't comprehend that because i thought well if you're the ceo you're surrounded by people who want to interact with you and so you're never lonely but the reality is when you're the ceo you're in a different role and you need either a coach or a truth teller but they may not be right in your workplace they may be remote from that so it is lonely and you can feel like you're on an island and that you're going to have to figure it out without a lot of help and how about
Speaker 4chirping in your ear like everyone that's around the ceo or almost any c-level executive everybody wants you to see the world the way that they want you to see the world and a lot of times it's also because they have a self-interest in the advice that they're giving you and the difficulty must be to try to separate what are they telling me versus what their self-interest is in what they're telling me
Speaker 1yeah that's absolutely right you need to be able to distinguish between what you may be hearing and what makes sense i had the good fortune to be surrounded by a lot of people who had the best interest of the organization at heart and didn't have a political agenda or an axe to grind there are always a few that you know don't live up to that standard so part of the reason why i'm here is because i'm a c-level executive and i'm a c-level executive so the uh i guess challenge is distinguishing between the people who work with you and whose views you can trust whose input is objective whose intentions are honest and good from the ones that may be more political and much of that is a function of the culture that you create within the organization yes because if you succeed at setting the proper culture for the organization or at least influencing it you will probably eradicate some of the lesser contributors and find yourself increasingly surrounded by people you can trust and how about
Speaker 4your board did you get a chance to make up some of the board yourself or all of the board or did you inherit a board and then you tried to change board members
Speaker 1well i inherit in both cases and i think almost inevitably when you get appointed as ceo you're inheriting the board that just appointed you right over time depending on the culture of the organization you will have a role with significance of which may vary in terms of determining who's going to be on the board one of the mistakes i saw a few friends make was trying to populate their board with their friends that never works or seldom works and it also violates some of the basic fundamentals around proper governance i have the good fortune to be involved with our nominating committee when i'm in the board and i'm in the board and i'm in the board and i'm in the board when we were considering board members they would ask me for suggestions but i never had the sole authority to determine who was going to be on the board and frankly i didn't want it
Speaker 4that's why you have a nominating and governance committee right but did sometimes you try when you did have some input sometimes you need some sort of expertise on the board right of all the disciplines in your company and you may lack that on the board and you may not have a third party consulting company you can turn to so sometimes you need some sort of expertise on the board sometimes it's good to get somebody on the board that has that expertise and can be a partner with you in the company have you had that experience bob yeah and
Speaker 1actually we have a very disciplined nominating process for board members that started that occurred each year and included assessing what were the skills that we had on the board and what were the skills that we might be lacking we also would look at upcoming turnover so maybe we have we have a lot of skills that we might be lacking but we also would look at upcoming turnover so skill skill x but that person is termed out so as we go through the nominating process for this cycle we need to be looking for someone who's going to be able to replace bill or jack or jane or whoever who's going to be leaving and who's going to create a vacuum in terms of skill and then we were quite disciplined in in trying to make sure that we considered more than one possibility for incoming board members and you get a lot of suggestions you get a lot of suggestions you know other board members are going to suggest people often people that they know sometimes people
Speaker 3misery loves company
Speaker 1yes people people who they may be their friends uh and there too you need to be able to say well thank you very much we really appreciate that suggestion but what we're looking for this year in terms of skill set is x so uh the person you suggested isn't quite you know in the target that we're looking for
Speaker 3we have a we have a lot of uh listeners bob that could benefit from a deep dive into this board conversation so i hope you you can indulge us on this let's just talk about kind of board member profile you and john have been talking about that advice to people your ideal board member attributes what does it take to be a good board member because not everybody is a good board member and there are some people that know that about themselves and there are some people that don't know that about themselves there are some people that do not know that about themselves so in your opinion what have you seen you've been in the role you were in the role a long long time with a number of different board members what are some of the attributes of an ideal board member
Speaker 1well you first of all you want them to be smart yes you want them to be knowledgeable particularly in the field that you're seeking to fill with their presence at the board table you want them to be honest you ideally want them to not have too big an ego uh the best board members uh i worked with were the the ones that didn't have an overwhelming ego. You want a board member who is as adept at listening as they are at talking. You want a board member who knows how to establish a cordial yet candid working relationship, not only with the key senior staff, but also with the other board members. So that as a group, you have cohesiveness without having unanimity in all instances. And I think that's one of the other key attributes of a good board member. It's someone who isn't overly compelled by the view that they should go along to get along. You want a board member who is willing to stand apart from the group and offer an alternate viewpoint when an alternate viewpoint needs to be made.
Speaker 4And these people won't bring it up because they're basically professional board members.
Speaker 1Yeah. In fact, I've served on other boards where there are people who show up at every meeting, never say a word. And I guess they're just, you know, collecting their fees and going home. So maybe to add to the list of what do you want in terms of a board member, you want someone who comes prepared, not only in terms of having reviewed in advance the material that you provided, but comes prepared to contribute.
Speaker 4And also see the world just like one degree off center sometimes sorry johnny because if you're presenting material or if someone at your one of your employees is presenting the material and the board's just going along with it like hey yeah that's great you know that's the way you guys do it but no one's bringing up like have you ever thought about it this way or that way um then you almost wonder like why are we having this board
Speaker 1meeting yeah yeah uh and actually i think that points to another requirement not on the part of the board, but on the part of management, and that is to be receptive and open-minded to the alternate viewpoint when it gets expressed. If you dismiss it or discard it or indicate through body language or otherwise that, you know, you didn't really want to hear this, you're not going to be fostering that open conversation that you really need in the boardroom. Otherwise, the board isn't adding value.
Speaker 4What I've seen in some, you know, I've I've been in a lot of boards, Bob, but not the size of the boards that you have, but a lot of startup tech companies that have gone, you know, to do pretty well and have gone public and get, you know, pretty giant market caps. And what I found in the early days of a lot of these startups is the venture capitalists are involved. So you have a first-time CEO, and some of them have a tendency to not listen to all the board members. They listen to the board member that put the most amount of money in a deal. That person, all by themselves, are the end-all, no-all. I've actually seen, because the CEO pays too much attention to them, that person takes them down the wrong road. And you even bring it up with the CEO, but they just don't listen to you because, hey, why should I listen to you? You're an independent board member. You didn't put any money in this deal, but this other guy put $50 million in, so I'm listening to him only.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're absolutely right. Actually, I had a conversation a couple of months ago with the CEO who called me for some input, and that person was reporting to a board very similar to the one that you just described and made the point that not only the, well, not only that CEO, but also most members of the board deferred to the one who put the most money in.
Speaker 3There's two perspectives that we're talking about here. One is the board member's perspective. And I want to pull on that thread for a little bit. And then I want to come back to actually how to sit with the board is what you call it, Bob. And there's a number of different chapters, 5, 6, 12, 13, 24. I want to talk about how you have this actually set up and you're doing a chapter on LinkedIn. We're going to come back to that because I think it's just really, really amazing. You're making this free for everybody. There's one point that I think board members need to consider is they need to be the same before they try to establish their difference. And what I mean by that is somebody has a playbook and they come in, they listen, and they say, hey, this is how you should do it. When I was over here at Cisco or when I was over here at Verizon or whatever, and they tell you, that's like the kiss of death for me to the operators. Because what it says is, I don't know your business, but I don't need to understand your business. You need to be looking at things this way. And I think good board members are the ones who really try to learn the what and the how and the problems associated with what's already being done. because there's a number of different ways to skin a cat. And I always find that those are the most successful board members are the ones that can say, okay, and then they ask great discovery questions. Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? And if the door is open and there's no thought about that and they can establish their difference or their expertise, they're not conflicting with anything, but it's not human nature. I think people get on boards and like, oh, you guys are talking about the quiet board members. I've had experience with that and I've had experience with the opposite. People are just, you know, every meeting they got to let people know what they're thinking and they, you know, it's important for them to have the best idea in the room. What advice do you have there, Bob?
Speaker 1Well, and those people suck all the oxygen out of the room and nobody else. Well, obviously, when you're looking for board members, I think you want to look at the nature of the individual and see if there are signs that they would be like that person that you just described. But I also think that there's a role for management to play in that regard, and it relates to onboarding and orientation and how you bring someone onto the board and how much information you give them about the organization before you throw them into their first conversation with the rest of the board. And one of the things that we didn't do initially but eventually found our way to doing was making sure that when we had a new board member, not only did we arrange for orientation provided by staff, but we would invite to that orientation session, which might last a day or two, we'd invite another board member who basically had been on the board for a while. And we would endeavor to pair the existing board member with the new board member and give them time to have conversations outside of the briefing sessions so that the briefing that the new director got wasn't just from the executive staff, but also from another board member. And I think that helps if you're dealing with the right person, that helps avoid this, well, here's how you ought to do it from the get-go from somebody who hasn't invested the time and effort to listen.
Speaker 4Yeah. And I look at it from the other side. I actually say that person's ignorant because what they're essentially saying is every business is cookie cutter. And certainly there's commonalities across businesses. But in my mind, it's like a Venn diagram. There's going to be some commonalities and there's going to be a whole bunch of other things that are completely unique to your business. And as a board member, I have to figure those types of things out before I start to give you any input. I can't just believe that the whole world's cookie cutter. If I did, the world would be pretty freaking boring, right?
Speaker 1Yeah. Well, and that might be something that occurs when the individual in question hasn't served on a number of boards and they haven't experienced as a board member completely different environments. where things are different such that they would understand that it's not
Speaker 3one size fits all yes yes you have a point of view in your book which is really kind of working with the board the operators experience on creating the right environment you talk about things like when you bring a problem to the board what else should come with it can you just give your advice because we have a lot of people listening to this that interact with boards and i see companies that i think do this really really well and i see companies that don't they set like you know a cro or the leader of sales they set them up for failure but they're like they you know i don't think it should be choreographed i don't think it should be i mean i think it should be open i think it should be honest uh but you can tell when there's not a lot of trust or confidence when the operators come in because it's only like only so much information how do you foster how do you foster a different point of view well there are
Speaker 1a number of things first of all i think you need to if you're bringing a problem to the board you ought to have they ought to be provided with background information on this at least a week or 10 days in advance of it being thrown in their lap it ought to be clearly articulated there ought to be ideally uh and there's an exception to this i'll come to it but there ought to be a range of solutions you shouldn't just say well here's the problem and here's what we recommend ideally you have to say here's the problem and here are between three and five ways we could tackle this and the outliers may be you know extreme and unappealing but at least two or three of those potential solutions in the middle of the board ought to be viable ones and they ought to be accompanied by your assessment of the pros and cons of each of those solutions and then ideally a recommendation that says so here's the problem here are the options here are the pros and cons and here's what we're recommending and here's why we're recommending it and the exception that i think in some cases is useful is what i refer to in the book is two bites at the apple yeah not every problem has to be a problem every problem has to be solved the first time it's presented to the board you need to be clear if you're presenting it for discussion not for decision so that people understand that you're not expecting to go home with a solution but there are cases where it makes a lot of sense to lay out the issue invite a very open free-flowing discussion take a lot of notes and then when you come back with a recommendation you've had the benefit of hearing what the board's concerns are around the issue and then when you come back with a recommendation you've had the benefit of hearing what the board's concerns are around the issue in advance of you formulating a recommendation it's not unlike a legislature that doesn't adopt the bill the first time it's put in front of them there may be a first second and third reading before it's finalized i
Speaker 3like that you know it's just like in sales they say present the buyer with multiple options with a with a understanding of the scenarios that would make you lead to one recommendation or another and the other thing i loved is like i said i've been in the business for a long time i've been in the business for a long time i've been in the business for a long time i've been in some board discussions where it's not clear whether they are looking for an answer you want me to make the answer or do you want are we discussing how for you to make the answer and i think do you have advice there for operators on how to be very clear on that because you said are we discussing this or are we deciding this yeah well and
Speaker 1i think the agenda part of you're absolutely right you need to be very clear about what you're looking for and one of the ways of making that abundantly clear is how you structure the agenda and you have a section of the agenda where there are items that are presented for discussion and decision and then there may be a section of the agenda where items show up that are presented for discussion we don't intend to make a decision on this today but we want to brief you on it get your input we'll bring it back later and then there are items on the agenda that can be under a different agenda and then there are items on the agenda that can be under a different heading that might be these are just fyi's there's no decision required today no decision required tomorrow we want you to be aware of of this information so the manner in which you structure the layout of the agenda i think makes a big difference and then being very very clear as you go through each of those items is this here for a decision is it here for discussion is it just fyi and we used to include on our agendas and i have done a lot of work on this but i think it's a lot of work but i think it's a lot of work because we've done this in other organizations more recently items that are on the agenda we don't intend to discuss them there will be no presentation but there's advanced material here so don't come to the meeting thinking you didn't need to read this because we're going to explain it it's on the agenda as an fyi but no presentation planned so if you want to know what that's about don't skip reading the advanced material
Speaker 4good one hey bob what about you know being a ceo and the saying is that bad news travels uphill slowly how do you as a ceo try to make sure that it doesn't travel so slowly uphill yeah well
Speaker 1and actually there's a chapter in the book about that which is report bad news uh in a timely manner but verify it first so if there is bad news of consequence that you're aware of i think you owe it to the board members to make them aware of it before they hear it from someone else it's in your best interest that they hear it from you first and i wouldn't wait for the board meeting that may be two or three weeks out or a month or more out to do that i would do it in between board meetings and i think the important thing is to distinguish between what we're absolutely sure about and what we're still investigating um you know that old saying it sounds too good to be true well it probably isn't uh i was guided by the thought that if it sounds too bad to be true it may not be accurate either it may not be quite as bad as it first looks so i think the obligation that you have is to make sure that the board is made aware of what you know in a timely manner uh it might not be the same day you hear it but it certainly ought to be within a day or two and if you need to parse between here are the things that we are relatively certain about and here are aspects of this issue that we're still investigating or evaluating i would make that distinction so that the board members aren't jumping to a conclusion that you haven't yet reached uh but again do it in a timely manner and then follow through promptly with more information as you gain it
Speaker 4what about bad news not that has to go up to the board level the bad news that just takes the time to get to you as the ceo internally
Speaker 1yeah well there's always that risk and i think it has a lot to do with the culture that you have you made your people comfortable with the idea that they can come to you with bad news i had a boss at one point i if i went in to see him and i said hey i've got good news and bad news he would invariably say start with the bad news and he was signaling to me that he wasn't afraid of bad news so i think if you want your people to be sharing you know bad news with you promptly uh you need to make sure that they understand that they can do that and you're not going to shoot the messenger uh that you're going to be interested in how you can solve the problem more so than how you can lay blame on somebody's
Speaker 4doorstep yeah now as being the ceo let's look i want to switch it and onto this other side where there's a lot of sales people that want to get to the c level and maybe even the ceo and what we typically talk about in sales is we have to find someone that's a a champion for us that can get us to the ceo or the c level and that champion typically needs to have authority meaning they might be on the orc chart but most important they have to have political influence either you know deep domain experience in the subject matter or they have to have political power and that political power a deep domain experience can give them access to the ceo because the ceo has to make decisions and a lot of times they might go right to their executive team but a lot of times they may go three four or five levels down because somebody might have the right expertise in that area so did you as a ceo have different let's say influencers or champions throughout your organization that you would depend upon for certain circumstances specific decisions where you get their their opinions yeah so
Speaker 1are you really are we focusing here on how in my role i would be informed and make decisions about who we were going to promote
Speaker 4who you were going to promote or maybe you're gonna uh make a big decision on maybe buying a 10 million dollar something or a 20 million dollar piece of software and you need and the decision at that level because the dollars are so high you know it's gonna that stuff's gonna hit your desk and now you're gonna say well wait a second first of all I got to make sure we're making the right decision right two if I'm going to implement this I got to make sure I take the risk out of it and who am I going to hold accountable to making sure that they de-risk this type of decision so yeah well
Speaker 1so to take the latter first if we're going to make an important decision as CEO you want to be as well informed as possible and you're going to reach out or you should reach out to the people or the person in your organization who can guide you on that and it would be unfortunate if you had someone reporting to you that you didn't trust for at least their specific area of responsibility so depending on what the nature of the issue is you should have a direct report that you have sufficient confidence in to be guided by that person on the specific issue that falls within their area of responsibility but in addition to that if you're lucky and I was lucky you probably have other direct reports whose area of responsibility this is not but whose judgment you trust and so rather than rely on just one VP telling you this is the right way to go you might have that conversation both with a VP who is responsible for the area in question and with one or two of your other executives whose judgment you trust beyond their area of responsibility so yes you want to be able to rely on the people in your organization to give you guidance and sometimes you don't just want one viewpoint you want more than one as it relates to the issue of people who want to move up through the organization we had a pretty disciplined annual process of reviewing the top two tiers of the org chart with the officer group as a whole so we had in total about eight officers including myself and once a year we would spend at least a day and sometimes we spent more than a day going through the in the entire top two levels of the org chart and discussing as a group each of the individuals who were at on that or in those tiers of the org chart or succession planning right for succession planning and as part of the performance review okay right and the person to whom Joe or Jill or Jane or Mary reported took the lead on presenting what they thought were the strengths and weaknesses if any of the individual but the entire group participated in the conversation and it really mattered when we were doing performance reviews and handing out performance rewards or or salary compensation issues because we would have that group of officers bless all of the increases for those top two tiers and their performance reviews so that it was done as a group with the understanding that if I came if I was one of the VPs and I came in and said I think we ought to give Billy you know this raise and this performance rating and the rest of the officers thought that was crazy because of what they had seen I didn't have the authority to do that without mind the whole group
Speaker 3but you also made him work it out because the jungle self-corrects so somebody's got yeah somebody's going to be what I love about that strategy is if some there's only so much to go around right so if somebody's going to come and feel strongly about something they have to have a point of view that works well with a group of people and I don't think I don't think leaders do that very well they're like well they do it one-on-one and then they'll say well I don't think you know we're going to have a problem because that's going to set a precedent in XYZ person's group and I've always respected leader more to say let's get everybody together and talk about what you want to do because there's only so much we can do and then collectively we'll make some decisions and you really see people's character not in the one -on-one conversation but in the conversations with the group and how you get things done it's it's more difficult I'd say it's almost 100 more difficult but it's so much more powerful to let I call it the jungle
Speaker 1self-correcting well and I think each of the members of the officer group in that type of annual process learns a lot they become much better at assessing their people because they know they're going to have to share their assessment and they become much better at coming prepared to explain why they think that Jill needs you know larger than average increase
Speaker 3and the reason for giving Jill that increase better be more than just your department it should be a benefact it should be a the company should be a huge beneficiary at that and I because I have a lot of conversations with people on telling me hey we gotta up Jill's pay because we're gonna lose her okay well all right that's one conversation yeah but what impact is that going to have on the company and I think that leaders that try to have those as one-on-one everything is one-on-one conversations okay I'll give you a little bit here I don't want you to be upset with me Bob because you have somebody that you need to keep and I'll keep score in my head I gave you one there and I I think that's just exhausting for the leader do you have advice on how you can push that back without without creating consensus
Speaker 1rule yeah well I think you can do it by having it you know a structured process that you repeat and it gets probably better each time you repeat it and folks know that this is the way it's going to work and one of the goals that you're seeking through that process I think is a reasonable degree of internal Equity where you know all the people who were you know report over to Jack aren't you know living a high life and the people who report over to Bill or you know getting thrown under the bus and you know uh so uh internal Equity is important it'll never be perfect uh but that's one of the ways of getting at it
Speaker 3Johnny I want to have a conversation about stepping into the the role and being prepared to making sure you're prepared but I I don't want to change gear before um uh I cleared the topic with you are you good to change gear
Speaker 4yeah I have a couple more different topics I'd like to talk to Bob about also so
Speaker 3one of the ones that I loved about the book was this concept of thinking about how you step into the role and I think in the appendix especially in the presence before plans there's some really cool topics that you you brought to mind here like when I think about stepping into a new role this is for everybody listening no matter who you are no matter what your role is when you step into a new role I thought these were really really relevant presence before plans you had like the 90-day trap and you had something called like prepare to shift gears and so like we're in October now a lot of people are getting ready or thinking about what they're going to do in the next they're looking for promotions they're looking for growth can you tell me the best advice that you share in the book you know making sure that you're not bringing old playbooks in some of these principles that you are how to best think about entering into a new role okay
Speaker 1well let's start with presence before before plans meeting people before you start managing and this is a function of if you're coming into the organization from outside it assumes that you've been promoted to a role in a new organization and the people there don't really know you uh yeah and if that's the case then my belief is and my experience is that you really need to hold off on making decisions and place your emphasis on getting to know the people who are there and allowing them to get to know you cause them to become familiar with what's important to you and so that they they learn about you before they hear what you plan to do if you've been in the organization and you just got promoted this may be less important because people probably already know you at least to some degree because you've been around for a while the 90-day trap issue is about thinking that within the first 90 days you have to have a new strategy and be prepared to roll it out and I think that's a terrible mistake again unless you've been with the organization for a long time if there was a long transition from you know being the chief operating officer to stepping into the CEO role and you've been schooled on all this for uh six months or a year then you might come prepared with a plan that you've been working on for some time but if your promotion is more recent than that uh you really don't want to fall into that 90-day trap of thinking you need to show up with a brand new strategy or a significantly different strategy people aren't going to believe that that's built on knowledge of the organization they're going to think you're flying by the seat of your pants and the trap is you may think you need to come prepared and I've almost fallen into that trap in fact one of the parts of the book is about in within about 30 days of having been appointed to the CEO role in an organization that was pretty new to me. Let's move on. I know there was a lot of interest in where I thought we ought to take things, but I guess I was still in my honeymoon and they gave me a break and let me spend a bit more time learning and listening before feeling that I had to roll out a new strategy.
Speaker 3One of the things in the book that was really relevant for me was this, and I struggled with this. Yeah. Yeah. I think John actually gave me feedback saying like how many people he thought I could manage because I was focusing on doing their job. And I wasn't doing that. I was doing it because my comfort level and my trust level. And you cover this in the book when you talk about when a new leader steps in and rescues things and doesn't allow the, you know, doesn't allow natural courses of action provided they're not catastrophic to take place. I myself had suffered from this, not rescuing things, but going to my natural default mode, which is in front of a customer, solve a problem, great selling. But I also had to lead. I had to let, I had to let the organization grow. You talk about it a little bit in the book. The advice shared us a little bit, stepping into the new role on how to let some things go and how hard it is to let some of those things go that we either like or that we're really good at.
Speaker 1Well, and I think we're all tempted, to go to our comfort zone. And if I've been the VP of sales and I get appointed to the CEO role, you know, my old playbook is sales and how to rescue, you know, sales that we might otherwise lose. But I'm not the VP of sales in the new organization. I'm the CEO, or I have some other role. I need to make sure that I don't bring my old playbook into my new role. And I also need to make sure that I don't step in, in a manner that causes the people that report to me to think I don't trust them to solve the problem. I should probably under those circumstances, bring in the VP for sales and maybe another key player and say, help me understand what we're dealing with. Tell me how you plan to address this. Is there anything that I can do to make it easier for you? But don't step in and try and solve the problem. You're sending the wrong signal to your crew. And ultimately you're sending the wrong signal to the client or the clients, because they're going to start to believe that if they have a problem with the VP of sales, that's okay. They can go to the CEO and they'll get what they need or what they want. So making sure that you leave the old playbook behind is really mission critical.
Speaker 3And Johnny, in our world, we see technical founders that have brilliant capability and technology. I mean, truly brilliant tech capability. I think they know how to sell. And they think they know how to sell or they have limited background in go to market. What has been, what is your advice, John, to those leaders that, along with Bob is saying, and how to step into that role and how to, when you're really trying to scale and go to market, because we call it the crazy technical founder syndrome. It's not a knock, but that's just a moniker that we put on where we have a technical founder or a founder that is, is using an old playbook, either a technology playbook, a product playbook, or what have you to, to further go to market. And I know you've advised a ton of CEOs on this. What, what are some of the big things that come out?
Speaker 4Some of them take to it and some of them don't. I mean, I think the issue these days with a lot of these tech founders is some of them like, you said, are just brilliant. You know, they're off the charts, brain power. So they were, everybody told them they were gifted in college. They went to some bigger company and they were 24, 25 years old. And everybody told them, Oh, you know, what are you doing here? You're so smart. They go get an idea and start developing some product and they get 50 or a hundred million dollars from the venture capitalists who are fawning all over them and tell them how great they are. John: And if everybody, everybody around you is constantly told you how smart and how brilliant you are, then you think, well, then I must know how to do sales. And I must know how to do client success. And I must know how to do every marketing. And that's what they think until they get beat around the head and shoulders. Now, what happens is as CEO early on, they have the title, they know the product and they can go out there and it's because they know the product and they know the title, they have the title, they can raise money and they can sell one or two deals. So then they think, well, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do that. And they're like, well, this is pretty easy. They don't understand to scale a company and hire salespeople and train them and develop them. So they have the knowledge that you have in your head. That's a pretty difficult task.
Speaker 3And Bob, you started in driving the trucks. Who understood the company better than you? And what challenges did you have letting go? Like you understood for over a decade or more, the nuances of how the company works and how it worked in the past. And what were some of the challenges that you had letting go as you took the top seat, as you kept going up inside the company? Yeah,
Speaker 1I'm not sure I had that type of difficulty because I never considered myself to be overly smart. I always figured that if I've been given a new role, there's a lot to learn. And, you know, whatever may have worked last year may not work in this new role. So I think I benefited from having multiple roles over the, you know, I had like five or six different assignments over the first 10 or 12 years. They were substantially different. There was virtually nothing that I could or very little that I could carry from one to the other in terms of expertise. I mean, there might be basics like, you know, how do you relate to people? How do you assess performance? How do you plan? But in terms of the specific knowledge required of the role, I was landing in new territory almost every time. So there was a lot to learn.
Speaker 4How did you handle like giant shifts? Like these days, we've seen giant shifts in technology that can just really set a company back if they don't respond in the right way. So you had the cloud, which is a big shift around, you know, 20 years ago. Then you have all the cyber issues. Now you get the AI issues. Did you rely on if you didn't have because some people in your organization may not understand any of that. So did you rely on third party consultants to try to help you figure out how we can respond to this? Number one and number two, how it might affect our brand and what we need to do to continue to keep our brand, you know, with all these, you know, different changes in technology?
Speaker 1Yeah, well, so technology was not my long suit. That wasn't an area that I, you know, there were others where I felt more comfortable in technology. But I, was of the view that as the CEO, my first obligation was to make sure that I either am or become reasonably conversant in the subject matter. That means I need to reach out to the right people to get briefed, I need to know what are the right questions to ask, I need to have a basic, I don't need to be able to write code. But I need to have a basic understanding of what is the potential of this new technology? How could it benefit us? What might be the risk? Associated with pursuing it, and so on. So I needed to level up my knowledge of that area. Second, I needed to make sure that we had the smartest people we could find and afford in that space, reporting to me and guiding our efforts. So hiring the right talent in terms of technology, if we're talking technology. And then the third thing that I thought was really important was, they're going to be running into a lot of ops, these experts that we hire or bring in or promote, they're going to be fighting a lot of battles, they're going to be running into a lot of obstacles. And one of my roles as CEO is to bulldoze the terrain, so that they can actually do what they need to do with minimal amount of interference.
Speaker 4Things like that can cut across the entire organization, not just one silo.
Speaker 1Exactly. And then the fourth thing that I always thought was my responsibility was to create a culture where we're willing to innovate, where we're willing to take risk, where these experts that we've hired and who are coming forward with new ideas or proposals for implementing new technology are operating in a culture where we embrace the possibility that we need to make a radical change. And that's really a function of the culture of the enterprise and how you tolerate risk, how you reward risk takers, and how you avoid punishing people who were diligent in their efforts, but made a mistake.
Speaker 4Yeah. And Bob, talk a little bit about brands. I mean, AAA, really, it's got a great brand. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about maybe the pillars of trying to protect and grow the brand?
Speaker 1Yeah. Well, part of the AAA brand strength comes from road service. We used to think of road service as being sort of the halo that sits on top of the entire organization, because road service is a business of rescuing people in a time of need. And because the AAA model is a prepaid model, people are paying for membership at the beginning of the year. When you come out to rescue them, you don't need them to pay you to do that. That's a benefit that they're entitled to. So not only are you rescuing people in a time of need, but you're not asking them to pay you at that point in time for your services. And I think that creates an entirely different dynamic, both for the member and actually for the employee. The employee who's interacting with a member at the roadside, rescuing them and not asking them to pay, has a much more gratifying experience with the member than would be the case if they show up with their handout. So the brand promise really originates with and is powered by the promise of the rescue at the roadside if you need it. And then it expands into other areas like insurance and travel and financial services. But the driver of the brand was, and as far as I know, still is road service. Something like 90% of the people who join, join for road service. Something like 90% of the people who renew, renew first and foremost for that.
Speaker 4Well, you've done a great, I mean, a great job. You go to these AAA offices and you found a way to continually increase revenues because you have all these other services in the AAA offices. And they, at least the ones I've experienced, they're very well run. Well, thank you.
Speaker 3You were my first GPS, Bob. The triptychs that you used to do. I had those when I was trying to get someplace in an early sales, early sales career, when we didn't have the, God forbid, I couldn't, you know, I could open the map, but I couldn't refold it. It was my problem.
Speaker 4So Bob, talk a little bit about how you decided to expand into these offices, into these different, you know, revenue streams.
Speaker 1You know, part of that predates me. Most of it predates me. You know, by the time I became the CEO, we already were active in most of those areas, certainly travel and insurance. So I wouldn't take credit for that. But I think those who preceded me, and I guess I saw it too, was that we want to keep the membership as affordable as possible. So we need to have collateral sources of revenue that allow us to maintain a high profile, run road service in a very efficient manner, and still pay the rent and the benefits that we need. to pay to make the business work. So collateral revenue was important and offering it in a manner which fosters trust in the brand was also important. And we would never, at least not knowingly, engage in a commercial activity that put the brand at risk. It wasn't worth it. There was too much riding on the loyalty of the membership to decide, well, let's offer some, you know, less than desirable product just because it's profitable. It has to stand on its own in terms of value. Otherwise, we don't want to offer it. And I think that contributed the strength of the brand at the
Speaker 4same time. Yeah, very strong brand, very strong brand recognition.
Speaker 3Yeah. You have done something really cool here. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is you put your book in a format that's free. And I think it's, and how you explained it to me was just like, you wrote it to help people. One of the ways that, you know, people can find you is you're putting a chapter, well, I'll let you talk about like, why did you decide to do it? Why did you, we know why you wrote it. Why did you decide to put it in the format that you're putting it in? And how can people get access to it?
Speaker 1Yeah, well, so there's not a lesson in that book that I didn't learn from somebody else. And there's not an opportunity I got that wasn't the result of a mentor, you know, creating an opportunity for me. So I owe a lot to a lot of people. And once I'd finished writing the book, I figured, well, you know, sure, if somebody wants to buy the book to have it all in, you know, one piece, that's fine. But I'm going to post a chapter a week on LinkedIn, and let people get it without having to pay for it if they want to, because that's the way the content of that book came to me. And I think that's a great way to get people to buy the book. It was given to me by other people who either, you know, showed me the right way or helped me get out of trouble when I was in trouble, or gave me an opportunity. So my thought was, I'm not doing this to get speaking engagements. I'm not writing the book to, you know, build a consulting business. I wanted just to give it back. So that's why it's free for the taking on LinkedIn. And there are still people buying it because some people don't want to wait. It's going to take me two years to put the whole book out at a chapter a week. So there are people who don't want to wait two years and they're buying the book, but they want it all in one place.
Speaker 3Where can we get it? CEO Playbook leading from the boardroom to the break room. Where can we get it? We want to get it now. Where can we get it?
Speaker 1The easiest place is probably Amazon because I published it with Amazon. But it's also in bookstores or available through booksellers because it also got published via IngramSparks.
Speaker 3And then how can we find it? How can we find you on LinkedIn?
Speaker 1I just look for either the CEO's Playbook or Bob Darbledy and I'll show up and all the content that I posted should be available there if you land on my profile.
Speaker 3Amazing. Amazing. Thank you for being with us, buddy. I really, really commend you for the effort. I found it fascinating. You provided me a copy of it and there wasn't a chapter that I, what you said is it's, short enough to be able to keep my attention on a, attention on a topic. But then because of the way that it was presented, I can also go into the glossary. I can go, I can find situational learning that I need and go right to that without missing anything. So I really, really commend the way you did it. And I found it, I found it really, really fantastic.
Speaker 1Well done. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. And this has been a pleasure. I've enjoyed this.
Speaker 3Same here, buddy.
Speaker 4Thank you, Bob Darbledy. I hope I pronunciated that right, Bob.
Speaker 1You did. Absolutely. And it's not an easy one to pronounce.
Speaker 4Thank you, John Kaplan. And thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.
Speaker 2Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Manager. Where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out ForceManagement.com for more information.
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