← How Leaders Lead with David Novak
How Leaders Lead with David Novak
3 More Questions (Tim Schurrer) with David Novak and Koula Callahan
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- [00:05]
A
Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm Kula Callahan here to bring you another edition of Three More Questions with David Novak. David, we have such a fun conversation to talk about today. I'm so excited about this one.
- [00:16]
B
I am, too, because today we're debriefing my conversation that I had with Tim Schur, the CEO of David Novak Leadership. And Tim's an absolutely sensational guy, so it was fun having the conversation. And I think he had a lot of really good insights in the. In the podcast. I was surprised. I didn't know that he was that smart.
- [00:37]
A
Well, I've had the privilege and the pleasure of working with Tim for a number of years now, even before we both worked at David Novak Leadership. And I'm thrilled that the whole world gets to hear his hard earned wisdom about what it means to lead really well. With that, let's get into today's questions.
- [00:54]
B
All right, fire away.
- [00:59]
A
Question number one. And David, you knew I had to ask this. You've worked with Tim for a few years now. What made you hire him in the first place?
- [01:07]
B
You know, I found Tim at a very fortunate time in his life, and I think even more so in mine. He had just left storybrand, where he was the chief operating officer and helped build that company into a marketing powerhouse. And he had wanted to write a book, the Secret Society Success, and he knew he needed to really focus on that. And he had just completed that, and I read that book, and I absolutely loved the book. And then I asked him if he'd be interested to do some freelance work with me and basically help me take the How Leaders Lead podcast to the next level, give me some real good feedback on how to make it better, figure out what we could do. And he had some really good ideas. Like, one of the ideas was, hey, listen, David, tell people what you're going to tell them, what they're going to learn right up front. So in every one of our introductions, we say, hey, this is what you're going to learn by listening to this episode. And then he said, make this a real active learning podcast. Once you're done with the podcast, give people something they can do that week to make them better leaders. And it made the podcast, I think, much more focused, much more interesting, and much more action oriented for our listeners. So I realized that this guy was very, very smart. And then we talked about a number of other things, and I could tell he had really great strategic vision. And the thing that I really loved the most was he just embraced our mission, which is to make the world a better place by developing better leaders. And he's a very other directed person. You know, the happiest people in the world, I say this all the time, is they're other directed. And Tim is like this. You will never, ever meet a guy who has a bigger smile on his face the majority of the time than Tim Shearer. I mean, this guy has so much positive energy. He makes me look like I'm a little tired and run down. And I always thought I had a lot of positive energy, so we hit it off. The other thing that I like is I like people who have a tremendous sense of urgency and don't wait around. And this guy has a great sense of urgency. And you know, the other thing he does that I love, he does stuff that you don't ask him to do. It's really nice when people come in and do things for you that you just weren't expecting. And he always gives me a big surprise in the work that he does. And I think that Tim has done a fabulous job leading our efforts to grow leaders at every phase of life. And, you know, I really look forward to working with Tim. I always say this, you know what? If somebody walks into your office, you better want to see him, you know, because work is really hard. Why work with someone that makes it a pain in the ass? And the great thing about Tim is whenever I have a zoom conversation with him or we meet up at the office, can't wait to see the guy. And I got to tone his energy down a little bit just so that we can be semi reasonable. But he's fantastic.
- [04:06]
A
I say this a lot, but I truly couldn't agree more. It's really hard to dread taking a phone call or a meeting with him. He's always smiling. He always brings positive energy. And what I love about what he's done for our team at David Novak Leadership is like you mentioned David in your answer, he has this really compelling strategic vision that we can all find ourselves in. So whether we're working on the podcast or developing new products or writing curriculum for our middle and high school age programs, everyone kind of understands how the work they do contributes to this really compelling vision that Tim has set for all of us. And I'm certainly grateful for that.
- [04:46]
B
Me too. So what's question number two? That's enough on him. I'm afraid he might want to raise.
- [04:52]
A
Question number two. In the episode, you and Tim discuss this breakthrough new app that we've just developed at How Leaders Lead. It's called How Leaders Lead. It's a really exciting new endeavor for our team. David, I want to hear your perspective. What is your vision for this app and why do you believe it'll be so powerful for leaders today?
- [05:13]
B
Well, Kula, we really want to disrupt the leadership development category. And the best way to do that, I have always believed, is to do a problem detection study and talk to your customers or the people that you're really trying to attract. And in this case, we're trying to make the world a better place by developing better leaders, and we're targeting aspiring leaders. So we do this problem detection study. And what we found is that the single biggest problem that occurs most frequently in leadership development is people don't have the time to develop themselves. So you can give them away a free leadership program, and they won't even take it because they don't have the time to take it. So we had to really solve that problem. And that's what we did is we came up with the How Leaders Lead app, where we give big insights, small sound bites, and we do it in under two minutes. And people can develop a daily habit by going to this app, which we believe is happening as we speak. And I got to give Tim the credit for this. He came to me and he said, david, we have so much content. What if we curate this content a little bit differently? And he said, david, I know you do a Bible devotional every day. What if we had the leadership devotional where you could every day go get a two minute or under clip with a really great insight on leadership from the guests that you've been interviewing in your podcast. And I said, well, you know, Tim, that's a great idea. But one of the things I don't want to do is I don't want to detract from the podcast. I want to stay focused on building our listeners with the podcast. And Tim goes, well, I think we'll get more listeners in the podcast because we'll use the How Leaders Lead app, which will also be free, to not only give people great insights on leadership from, you know, the people that you interviewed, people like Condoleezza Rice, Tom Brady leaders, Lynn Swan, just this past super bowl weekend, you know, all these great leaders that you have, you'll be able to give them great insights and they can get it in under two minutes and it'll solve the big problem. And then they will also learn about your podcast. Now, that got me very, very interested because I said, okay, we will basically do what we had learned. You know, we've learned by studying other podcasts that the best podcasters learn how to amplify what they do. They have their core podcast, and then they look for other ways to bring attention to their podcast. And this free app could basically do just that. And I have to tell you, the feedback we're getting from this is spectacular. I mean, people love it when they can, you know, listen to Ken Chenault from American Express or indra Nui from PepsiCo, Lauren Hobart from Dick's and hear the insights that they have to that have helped them become such great leaders and get it in under two minutes. And what we're finding is, is that we read a book on habits, and if people do something three times, just three times in a row, you've got a habit that can get them, you know, tuning in. And I couldn't be more excited about it. But I have to tell you, I really give Tim the credit for doing this. He brought the idea to me. He had to sell me on the idea because I didn't want it to get in the way of the podcast that we're building. But you know what, I don't care if people get a leadership insight in two minutes or if it takes them 60 minutes. The main thing is, is they get insights that they can use every single day. And that's what we're all about.
- [08:50]
A
It certainly is what we're all about. One thing that I love about the app we're developing is the fact that you can listen to a curated playlist on a specific leadership topic. So if you are trying to get better at communication, if you want to train your people team on what to look for when they're hiring talent, you can go into the app and listen to a playlist of 15 to 20 under two minute clips on that specific topic. So you're getting all of this wisdom from the best leaders in the world on specific topics to help you grow.
- [09:25]
B
And you know, what I love about this new app is we're practicing what we preach. You know where we got this idea for a curated playlist is we got it from Spotify. And see, we're always talking about how you need to learn and then be active learners in applying it. And I think that's terrific as well. So, you know, we did a couple of things that I think are great. We talk about the importance of understanding the most important problem that occurs most frequently and then solving it for your customers. We always bring that up and we reinforce it and our guests have reinforced it time and time again. And we also say, hey, learn from the best out There. And we learned from Spotify, and, you know, we learned from a lot of other companies as we were putting this thing together. Wasn't easy, but I have to tell you, the hard work is really going to lead to, I think, a huge audience, and we're just about ready to start marketing it.
- [10:19]
A
Question number three. Tim's book, the Secret Society of Success, encourages people to redefine what success looks like. He argues that success is in the assist and that helping others win is actually what makes you true, truly successful. David, what's a story from your career about a time when someone helped you win? And how did that impact you as a leader?
- [10:42]
B
You know, I have to tell you, Kula, one of the great blessings I have in my life is I have only worked for great people, and I've had every one of them teach me something that I would not have learned if I didn't have the opportunity to work for them. You know, starting out with Tom James, who, when I was in the advertising agency business, he was a marketing guru and he took me from soup to nuts. He taught me how to be an excellent marketer, and he also taught me how to write. He made sure that every one of my memos was only one page long. And I had the key points, you know, really synthesized. And he taught me how to really think and put it down on paper. Then I went to another advertising agency and I worked for this guy named Howard Davis. Howard Davis was as tough as they get. You know, he always had these Gucci's on and he had a glass table desk, and he loved it. So he looked down at those Gucci's, but He was about 6 foot 5 and he was an intimidating guy. But he taught me how to be tough minded. He taught me how to be tougher than I was, a little bit soft back in those days, but he taught me that I had to get tough and I had to make really tough decisions. And yeah, you can be really great with people, but you got to still make the hard calls. And he taught me that. And then I worked with Steve Reinemann at Pizza Hut, who later became the head of PepsiCo. And Steve taught me just the importance of always casting a tremendous shadow of integrity in your organization. You know, I knew that was important, but man, does that guy live it. Former Naval Academy leader. You know, I mean, this guy's like, he is the poster child for integrity and he just taught me so much. But I also worked with Roger Enrico at Pepsi Cola company and he taught me about the tyranny of Incrementalism. You know, that if you just keep doing incremental all the time, you won't get that big idea. And he was a big and he always challenged people to look for things that were really big and important. And then, you know, I worked in the PepsiCola bottling operations, and I learned so much from Craig Weatherup, who was the head of the company at that time. And Craig knew the business from the bottom up. He knew every job and he knew, you know, how the business worked. And he was very frontline oriented. And that's where I learned how important it was, was to really get out there and talk to the front line because they really know what's going on.
- [13:04]
A
Well, that's really great, David. You know, I'm glad somebody taught you something over the course of your career.
- [13:09]
B
That's why I love working with you. Kula. You are a truth teller.
- [13:18]
A
That does it for our episode of three more questions today. Thank you so much for tuning in to how leaders lead. We're on a mission to make the world a better place by developing better leaders. And if you carve out a little time with us each and every week and will help you build the confidence you need to lead well.
- [13:33]
B
And coming up next on halleaders lead is Joe Scarlett, the former CEO of tractor supply. And this guy is a real gem of a leader.