← Impact with Eddie Wilson
Impact with Eddie Wilson
28 - The Rise and Fall of Control | Leadership Lessons from Napoleon’s Empire
00:44:51
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A
Welcome to the Impact Podcast. I'm Eddie Wilson, here to help you visualize what others cannot see, create opportunities where others have failed, and push you to build empires where once there was empty space. Let's embark on this journey together and make a difference in this world. On a previous episode, we actually dissected down the Roman Empire. Today, we dissect down the French Empire, the empire of Napoleon. It's an amazing feat, what Napoleon did, because he came in outside of the normal means and made a massive, massive revolutionary change to the French Empire. And there's some lessons there that we can glean from that are applicable in our own personal lives. They're applicable in our business lives. And for me, I've used them for many, many years in my business. So I'm going to go over the actual principles that I want to teach you. I'm going to show you some examples as to how I use it in my business, how other people have used it in their businesses. Because Napoleon did something that no one else had done at that time. And the craziest part about what he did, it now lives on in a lot of the documents that you see governing many of the nations around the world, many of the businesses around the world. What if I told you that our very own Constitution of the United States has roots in. In what we call the Napoleonic Code? So it is a very applicable lesson today. I want you to use it, write it down, take some notes, and see where this applies in your life. So let's go back just for a second. Napoleon Bonaparte, he reshaped France, and he actually reshaped all of Europe with bold ideas and iron control. He was a dictator by nature in that he wanted control. He was a control freak. And so when, while he had these crazy, bold ideas, it was his control that actually allowed them to come to life. And so we're gonna go through these principles that defined his empire, and we're gonna talk a lot about topics like meritocracy and various other things. The Napoleonic Code. And so let's jump in. So the very first principle I want you to understand is that Napoleon, you used and implemented what he called a meritocracy. He believed that it was important to reward talent over birth. This is so vitally important because if you look at the nations that surrounded him, the rise and the fall, it was tied to genealogical lineage, like they were if you were the son of a king and you were the prince, then therefore you became the king. And so what happened is, as you had two or three kings in A row. And it was. It was mercurial. It was up and down. It was whatever the, the winds were blowing of that day. That's how the nation was ruled. And oftentimes they were ruled to prove a point to their previous, to the previous generation. They were trying to prove something to, to their father, their mother. You had queens that begat queens, you had kings that begat kings. You had literally this mess of positional authority that was given based on their lineage. And so Napoleon put a stop to it. And what he said was, is, hey, I don't care who you are, I don't care what rank you are, I don't care what position you are. I don't care what you know. It very much was a society that had a society of elites. And he didn't care. It didn't matter to him. What he believed it was is that if you deserved it based on your talent, then you would get the position. And he made a way for a lot of people that were not in the wealth class to find their way into positions of leadership underneath of his totalitarian leadership. And the principle to learn here is this, is that we should be rewarding the people around us who, who are putting in effort and who have talent. I love the concept that Patrick Lencioni teaches. And when he says that he hires people that are hungry, humble, and smart. I've used that for years and years and years. Those are the three things that we should be rewarding. People that are hungry, they've got a tenacious desire for moving forward, for growth, for learning. We should be rewarding that. Number two, people that are humble. People that understand that they have not arrived yet, that they have more to learn. Hungry, they have a passion and desire for more. Humble, they have the ability to gain more because they're not putting up walls of ego and position. And then third, smart. You cannot replace someone who is smart. It's not something you can just teach. And so we have to look for people with exceptional talent and exceptional ability. And this is really important because in the Napoleonic Empire, um, he said, I'm going to elevate this. I'm going to make sure that we are putting people in positions of leadership who deserve it. Think about your organization, think about your family, think about all the areas of leadership or control that you have, and would that be said about you? Or are you just giving people positions of leadership because of their positionality? Or are you doing that based on who they are and what they have to. To give to the organization? This is so vitally important because I've seen so many companies ruined based on this expectation of giving the role to somebody who is in line for it. Everything should be up for grabs. Everything should have to be proven, and every positional increase should have to be earned. This is important. You know, one of the big things that I've lived by in my life was I very rarely hire family. As a matter of fact, I used to have a rule. And it was. The rule was, is I don't hire family. And you know, if you look at it, I've had two sons that have worked for me in various companies that I've had. But if you talk to those sons, you very much would understand that even though they are by birth, my sons, when they walk into that job or that role, there is no family. Right? Like, you do not hold your position based on family. You don't hold your place based on who you are, what your last name is. You walk in and you're held accountable and responsible just like everyone else. And that's important because no one should ever be given a role because of their last name. Number two, this is so vitally important to the next one, which is something that he actually created, which is he had this model of centralized power. Centralized power. What he did was he said, I'm going to elevate talent over birth. Next he said, I'm going to create efficiencies where we are bloated in our government. And so he created what we call the very first shared service model. Now in business, if you're to read a lot of business books, you'll find that job. Jack Welch studied this at length and in his books. In the 1980s, he was one of the very first organizations to truly institute in General Electric the shared service model that allowed him to scale globally with finding the same efficiencies. So he centralized his human resources department, he centralized his marketing department. IT back then he centralized procurement finances. He really took into consideration that he could have a centralized hub that did very specific tasks that allowed the other people to focus on things that were. That were their area of expertise. Most companies up until that point were autonomous in that even if you were tied together by the same ownership, you would have your own human resources department, your own legal department, your own finance department. And he centralized that across all of ge. And when Jack Welch proved that model, it became the standard of excellence for business. It was then taken on by companies like Apple and other companies that we see today. Samsung, various other companies use this on a consistent basis. Procter and Gamble is probably the, one of the biggest. And I did a stint in helping lead an asset for Procter and Gamble. And it was very much tied to this concept. And Jack Welch essentially took the concepts of Napoleon, which was Napoleon centralized his government. If you thought of, think about France as a nation, each area of France had a government that essentially was autonomous, that then would report back to the centralized government. And Napoleon did away with it. He pulled it all into, into Paris and other places. And he centralized that government, made it very, very efficient, so that when he was sending out troops to conquer and to do conquest, they reported back, had a centralized understanding of how much wealth they had, what resources they had. And it became a model for so many people. So many businesses now use this shared service model. I use the shared service model here. If you think about collective influence, our private equity Firm, we've got 23, 24 companies right now underneath of the firm. And each one of those move into a centralized finance department, centralized marketing department, centralized media department, centralized human resources department, a centralized operations department. And so all of it kind of feeds in so that it gives me the ability to scale while allowing them, these asset leaders or leaders of these companies to focus on what they are good at. If they're good at taxes, then they get to go out and be the best at taxes. If they're good at, you know, our tax free crypto platform, if they're good at trading crypto or you know, essentially the platform itself, servicing the platform, you know, they don't need to necessarily hold all of these positions to be successful. Next principle is what we call the Napoleonic Code. The Napoleonic Code. This is this concept of he wanted to make sure that he could replicate every level of government and the next person up could step in and do the job. So what he believed was, is that everything should have order, everything should have what we today call process maps. He had a system of process mapping and he would begin to write everything down and expect for the person doing the job to train someone that could do it as well. The Napoleonic Code had a system of unification by making sure that all laws, all justice, all property rights across all of France came into what he called the Napoleonic Code. It was a system for doing business, a system for doing what he did in governing France. And if you look at it today, so much of the business world revolves around this concept of the Napoleonic Code. If you look at Six Sigma or Kaizen or these other kind of governing systems, operating systems, you'll find that the very essence of these systems are tied to The Napoleonic Code. So much of this concept of process mapping what we do, teaching the next person, making sure that these systems and processes are pervasive across all of our organization, are so vitally important. If you look at your company today, could you step out of your position and could someone else step into it? Because there's a manual, there's a process map for what you do. You are not complete in your role unless you have systemized it enough that someone else could step in and do it. Oftentimes we believe that creativity drives the success of a business. And I'll say creativity stokes the opportunities of a business, but it's the processes help us capture the actual value and essence of the business. If you think about it, we call these single points of failure in a business. I say there's five phases of business. And when you're going from phase number two, perseverance to pre profit phase into viability, phase number three, we say that the way that you get from perseverance, pre profit into viability is you have to erase the single points of failure. What's a single point of failure? Single point of failure is when you have someone that's so important to your organization that if they, if they walk away and their task is not done, the entire organization fails. These single points of failure prevent us from scaling any business or any opportunity. What Napoleon did was he said, I'm going to eradicate these single points of failure. I'm going to systemize what we do, and I'm going to have a manual for everything so that everyone knows exactly how to operate within this kingdom. This code's legacy and modern legal systems is legendary. And you know, like I said, it's in our very own constitution today. My Empire operating system, the system that I use to operate all my companies, the system that over 3,000 businesses globally use, is based on this very concept of the Napoleonic Code. When I wrote the Empire operating system, I had already read most of the concepts of the Napoleonic Code and used and gleaned a ton of principles from what he wrote, what he instituted to use in my very own Empire operating system. The very process for the operating system is based on the Napoleonic Code. Next, the next principle is the concept of nationalism. Nationalism, you say, well, what does that have to do with any of my organization? What does it have to do with my organization? Your people will always find a common enemy. What you find is that your people oftentimes will gather up and they'll find a common enemy if you don't give them the common enemy. Or the common rally cry. They. They'll create it themselves. They'll oftentimes fight you as the organizational leader. They'll find everything. They'll rally together around changing the organization itself. And so it's important that we give our people a rally cry. The rally cry of nationalism was what Napoleon used, and he called it French pride. If you go back to that day, all of a sudden, French flags were being flown everywhere. Why did he fly that flag? Because he wanted people to be proud of it. He built what's called the Arc de Triomphe, and he would have this massive arch that he would ride back in, and he would do these huge parades that when they would have a success in battle, they would ride back through the Arc de Triomphe. There was massive fanfare, and they would celebrate their wins. Why do they celebrate their wins? Because he was creating a common enemy. But more important, he was creating a common rally cry. And that rally cry was tied to the pride of being French. It was tied to the flag. It was tied to the nostalgia. We've seen this in our own country over the past, let's say, four or five elections. We've gone back and forth between, are we proud to be Americans, or are we scared to announce or tell the world that we're Americans? And it's important that you have a rally cry and your business can have a rally cry. One quick thing that I have done in my own family is I want my children to be proud that their last name is Wilson. Not in a way that gives them a sense of entitlement, but in a way that they feel like it carries a sense of obligation. You know, one thing that my dad would say that was very, very important is he would say, eddie, you carry the last name Wilson. Make sure you live up to it. What he was saying is, is that there is a standard with the name. So when you go out, live up to that standard, it's important to do that as a family. I actually had a guy that worked for me all the time, and he would say that his last name was cursed. What was interesting is he would say everything bad happens to. And I won't say his last name, but he would say his last name. And what he would do is. Then what you saw is it trickled down into the children. And the children were like, well, we just have bad luck because we are a. And they would say their last name. And what he did was he created a common enemy in themselves. And think about how detrimental that is to children that are developing to Think like, man, I have this curse. Like, everything negative just happens to me. Everything bad or poor happens to us as a family. We need to build or institute the exact opposite. And that is everything good happens to us. You know, I think that equally people go through problems in life, right? Like, none of us are absent from problems. Maybe some people have more issues than others, but the fact of the matter is, is people that focus on their issues tend to have more issues. People that focus on their successes tend to have more successes. And so what I'm saying here is, is that what Napoleon did was he put the successes in front of them, created an opportunity for them to, to celebrate them, and then by default, they just had more successes or seemingly they had more successes because that's where they put their focus on. And that's the conclusion of the principles that I want you to take away from what Napoleon did. So, number one, it was the meritocracy. It was making sure that we don't create entitlement in our organizations or in our families, that it is talented over birth. It's making sure that we reward people that work hard versus people who feel entitled. Number two, it was centralized power, meaning that we give our. We tip our hat to efficiency and make sure that we're centralizing things and using people for their skill sets versus making them hold responsibility that they're not great at. He centralized that. That was the concept of shared services. Next, number three was the Napoleonic Code. You using a system of processes and process mapping to make sure that we pass on what we're good at and we can replicate it over and over again. And the last piece is nationalism or the rally cry, creating something that people can get behind. If you do these four things, I guarantee it will revolutionize your organization. It revolutionizes relationships, it revolutionizes your organization. These are principles for life. What I find is that principles are principles. Principles, they work no matter where you apply them. So the question is, where are you going to apply them today? What are you going to find that you can do to apply them? Now, last piece I want to tackle is. This is, I said, a lesson from a very small dictatorial leader, right? He was short in stature. You've heard of the Napoleonic Napoleon complex. And they said he was a short, angry, control freak type of person. And one last lesson here. I gave you the four principles of the Napoleonic Empire, but I want to actually give you one last one specific to Napoleon himself. Napoleon was a control freak. And I will say this, that when you are in these early phases of business, when you go from startup into perseverance and then moving into viability. A dictatorial approach can work. Control centric leadership can work, but there is a tipping point that once you get to a certain level and once you have a certain type of person in the organization, you have people that are elevating, your control will then also become the greatest ceiling. That's really hard to remove. When you have to control someone to get out of them. Greatness, oftentimes their greatness will be stifled and the ceiling will be created by the control that you have. We have to, if we're going to exert some sort of control centric leadership, we have to move towards empowerment centric leadership sooner rather than later. The rise of Napoleon's empire was based on his control. The fall of the Napoleon empire was based on his control. You can get something by sheer will to get to success, but you will be limited if you are control centric. If you move into what we call empowerment centric, then you can allow them to succeed and allow them to grow and flourish. Your people will grow past you. And if you don't allow that, if you don't have a system for it, then you are going to stifle that growth. The same catalyst that caused the growth can be the same catalyst that causes its demise. Napoleon had meteoric growth and he also the French Empire you see almost nearly as fast as it rose, began to decline based on the fact that it was too controlling. And if you go back over time, there's so many dictatorial leaders like Mussolini and others that you see huge meteoric rises and then you see very, very catastrophic quick fails and falls because they don't move into empowerment. So one last piece here is in order to move into empowerment leaders and centric leadership, to relinquish control is you have to have a belief in the system you've created, not the people that run it. If you get to a place, think about the American, the American success story, the American Empire. What is the catalyst for the American Empire's success? And I will tell you, it is this. It, it is that. We actually took the Napoleonic Code, we built a system of laws and processes to follow the Constitution. The three areas of government, right, the three divisions of power. And in that, it doesn't matter who sits there, we still find similar successes. So what you have to do is in control. You have to create the systems and processes and, and then in empowerment, you have to allow people to fall into it and allow the systems and processes to govern and rule. That's the Lessons today from the Napoleonic Empire. I hope that helped and I hope that you'll find application for that today.
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B
Zooming out for a second, this whole idea, to me, I see entrepreneur versus enterprise mentality because so much of those in my mind are contradictory or they contradict. Whereas the entrepreneur seems to be pro self, enterprise requires pro collective. Can you talk about that balance? Or any thoughts or insights?
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A
And that's why most people struggle. You know, less than 1% of small businesses get past that $5 million revenue mark. And that's because most entrepreneurs do not know how to put the collective first or govern the collective or empower the collective. So what they do is I say this when people ask me all the time, what should be my first hire? And I say, well, as an entrepreneur, your first hire should be someone who doubles your capacity. It produces more from you, from your standpoint, because as an entrepreneur, you're typically the catalyst for the growth. So go hire allows you to have double the output. Then I say the second hire is always the complimentary hire. So then what you do is you take everything you're not good at, you and go hire somebody that's really good at those things. So your first two hires is typically somebody who maximizes your output and complements everything you're not good at. Well, what, what then happens is, is then you get stuck. Because then it's like, well, then how, how do I divide power? And this is where the entrepreneur begins to fail, is they get to 1 million, $2 million in revenue, and it's based on this idea of mass output for themselves. And, and what happens is now you have to go from a level of, let's say, production into a level of governance. Production and governance are two completely different things. I was talking to a big hotel real estate group yesterday on a podcast. And what was interesting was, is the leader of the group who was buying hotels, she said, it's so much easier, she said, when, whenever there's, she said, space of unknown, I go to what's easiest. And she said, so instead of me going to look for more hotels to buy, I go to look for a wall inside of a hotel we're renovating to paint. She said, I grew up renovating single family houses, then buying a couple multifamily. Now I'm in hotels. And she said, and it's big and it's scary. I'm buying hotels. And she said, and so it's easier for me to go in and spend my time painting a wall because it's what I know it's the easiest thing than for me to continue to negotiate and try to buy hotels. And I find that that's the curse of an entrepreneur is it's so easy to just fall back into what has always been. Which becomes the greatest roadblock for growth is because you can't get out of the way. Marshall Goldsmith says it well, and he said, the people that got me here most likely won't get me there. And that's because in order to get to certain levels of growth, you have to change the actual modality of what we do when we come to work.
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B
That rings so true. As someone who used to be on the front line of production and is now moving into the governance, it's really.
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A
Easy to jump in and grab a camera or grab a microphone, and I got this.
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B
So I think that's one pitfall of being stuck into practice. The other pitfall is swinging way too hard into governance. Yeah. Where you might be perceived as not pulling your weight.
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A
Sure.
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B
Is there other pitfalls and how do you kind of.
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A
Yeah, there's very various levels. Right. And so you think about it, I had a company that we had about 13 developers and software developers, and the guy that was leading it for me was probably one of the best developers, and which made him uniquely qualified to help guide these 13 developers. What I found is he would dive in and he would start doing things with them, and I would lose the benefit of his knowledge. And so he would get sucked into. And I would have to say to him often, do you want me to pay you to be a developer or to pay you to lead all the developers? Because that's two different paychecks. So you have to choose. And I would let him think through that process a lot. Like, do you mean to pay you to go pick up a camera? Or you may pay you to lead everybody that has a camera, and it's that concept. But then there's the next level. The next level is. Is once you get to, let's say, a level of governance, like, let's say inside of this organization, let's say we have a group of developers. Well, I'm technically the leader, the CEO, but I don't know I don't know as much as any of those people, especially the person that's leading it all. And so, like, I was his boss, I was the owner of the company. But there's another level of empowering the people who actually have that base of knowledge. So there's really two things you have to lean on. And number one is, do we have the systems and processes in place that I can trust, that I can lean on that. And number two, do I have somebody that has. That's where the hungry, humble smart comes in. Do I have people smart enough that actually know what they're doing that I can rely on their ability? And because intelligence, what we need in intelligence in the business world is not just, let's say, data and information. It's not like they just possess all this data information, it's their ability to problem solve with the data and information. Smart is not I retain knowledge. Smart is I have a base of knowledge, but I can solve the problems with the knowledge I have. That's what uniquely qualifies people for leadership.
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B
That was one of my next questions was I would, I wanted you to define smart because you mentioned that it stood out to me. It's not your current knowledge, it's your ability to get the answer to solve the problem.
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A
Absolutely. Smart people either a have the information and know what to do with it, they know how to wield it, or number two, they know where to get it. And you know, I, you know, don't want to go deep into this. Maybe we'll do another episode but I think there's a dumbing down of our culture because all the information is so readily available. I can go to ChatGPT and ask it anything. So therefore do I need to retain it? I was Talking to my 11 year old who is in school and he said he's 11. And he said I think it's pointless for me to have to go through these higher level math classes because all I really have to know is add, subtract, multiply, divide. He said because if it's an equation, he was like chatgpt can do it better and faster than I can. Why would I try to do it myself? And it's like, but what's happening is, is the dumbing down of our culture, they begin to not they don't. And the problem is, is it's not. Calculus isn't do you know the equations? Calculus is do I know the complex formulas that get me to the answer? And that's what, that's what this high, these higher level math classes do is it gives them the ability to problem solve and, and we have a dumbing down of our culture because it's so readily available. If you think about it, I would say that our grandparents were probably much better spellers than we are because they didn't have something to check. Everything they do, we have spell check on every text, we have spell check on everything we say, you know, oftentimes I don't even have to think about how to spell something. If the thought enters my mind, how do I spell it? I just hit the voice button and say it and it spells it for me without ever thinking about it. What that does is it stops that process of repetition that is the greatest process for learning. Repetition is the greatest teacher for learning. What's happening is, is oftentimes we're not adhering to this constant repetition of doing something because we, we're so reliant on it being done for us.
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B
Can I push back a tiny bit on that?
- [30:44]
A
Yes, please.
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B
Not to push you further down this rabbit hole or side, side tangent, but you could argue if you zoom out. The dumbing down of our society has always happened because at one point it was life or death to know how to build a fire. It was life and death to know how to hunt. Sure. And I, I would imagine most of us don't know that anymore. So that's true. You do have to synthesize and, and sort of like reject information that might not be pertinent. And yes, everyone now has a PhD level consultant in their pocket with. And I don't think we fully understand what that means yet. No, but I already, if I see a paragraph, if I'm like, oh, chatgpt, summarize this.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Like I'm not going to put the effort. And I'm, I'm trying to block myself from. Yeah. Speeding that up. It's like wearing a cast. If you wear it too long, your arm gets weaker and weaker.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And we're all wearing.
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A
The argument would be right, will we ever go back to a place right. My, my 18 year old, we were having this discussion the other day and, and I said, it's really. He was like, you know, these college classes, blah, blah. He was complaining about it. He said, I literally knew he was talking about chat and it's like it's on everyone's mind. He's like, I can literally just do this through ChatGPT, just put it in there and it tells you. And I said, but what if you don't have a phone? And he said to me, which to your point is. He said, in what place, in what scenario would I not have access to a phone the rest of my life? And I said, well, you know, if you're maybe on some foreign. He was like, you have bigger problems.
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B
I think at that point.
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A
Yeah, that's. He was like, he was like, if, if I don't have access to data Or a cell phone. He was like, we're, we're having a different conversation right now. Not, can I actually come up with this ability to do this equation? And I. That is a great point. It's like, to say, it's like, to your point, it's like when we were struggling like man's, you know, creating fire with a stick. It's like, when's the last time I actually had to create fire with a stick? Or whenever in my entire lifetime will I ever have to create fire with a stick? It's probably not likely. Right?
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B
But fire is fundamental.
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A
Yeah, it's it. And it goes back to that. It's like. So I think that overall there's a point to be had. I think the thing though is that the point that I want to make is that it's not, I don't think using the tool is bad. I think it's the cognitive learning and understanding how to get to decision making appropriately. What I notice is, is that we are okay, especially in these rudimentary days of ChatGPT and AI is whenever they give us an answer, we begin to just adhere to it as truth without looking at, to say, does it actually solve my problem? It's not the dumbing down of like data and information. It's the ability to solve problems.
- [33:27]
B
That's a good point. Earlier you talked about meritocracy being so important to Napoleon. Every position should be earned. It reminds me of the warrior culture you had in your, in your advertising agency. How do you mitigate or plan against the risk of like instability of that fear that sets in?
- [33:46]
A
You know, you have to adhere to whatever culture you create. I had in that agency, which it's a tough culture because you can't grow past a certain point. I called it the warrior culture, but we never really grew past about 35 employees. We were a band of, you know, essentially I would say they were the mercenaries. Right. Like they were the people that were all in. They didn't care. Right. Like, and if you didn't fit in, you, it was a self weeding garden. You saw your way out. And that culture was very strong, very structured, very stringent. However, most people that came into it was not built for it. So if you want to build an organization that needs 100 or 200 or 300, right now we're, you know, over a hundred people in our organization here. It's like that warrior culture does not fit well. So there are elements of it that I want, but I couldn't overlay it in totality. The Other thing too is like that ad agency had one goal, one vision that we didn't. We weren't spread out among like, you know, we were spread out among our clients, but not spread out among our functionalities. Right. And so you think about it like here we have a tax firm. Well, that's a very different functionality from our events company, from our tax free crypto platform, from, you know, whatever, whatever it is. And so it's like making sure that the culture fits and then we adhere to that culture. Now when it comes to the I still believe in that. There are elements of that warrior culture I had that was stringent, that still ad that I still want to adhere to today. And part of that was, is your organization should be to some degree a self weeding garden. If people don't fit, they should feel awkward about it and they should almost see themselves out or they should be identifying it, coming to you to say, hey, there's something off here. I think that we should hold people accountable. And that goes on to the later point. But they have to be held accountable to something. Not to a feeling, not to an ideal, but to a process and a system. There should be KPIs for everyone. There should be someone, you know, there should be something that we're holding everyone accountable to. And when they can't cut it, if they can't do what they're intended to do, they either have to be moved into something that has a level of productivity that has value to the organization or. Or they have to be moved on from. And that's really, really important because if not, what happens is, is you begin to set a standard in your organization that it's okay to not perform.
- [36:16]
B
With that. Napoleon was adamant about processes. Process mapping is very important. Do you want to talk about the balance between like intellectual property? If I have always said to you I feel like if I do my job well, I become somewhat irrelevant.
- [36:32]
A
Yes.
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B
Is that all tied back into e ego or can you speak on that?
- [36:36]
A
Not all tied into ego. I mean there are things of, you know, I don't want to be relevant here, but I want to. I say oftentimes like I should be striving for irrelevance in my organization, but I should have the ability to impact the organization. Right? Like I should be able to still have value. So as I step in and I give back to the organization, it should create an uptick, it should create value, but if I pull out, it shouldn't diminish the organization. And that's how you determine if you're truly relevant. And so when it comes to Napoleonic Code, he basically wrote a system, a set of systems, processes, process maps, and he created a universal language essentially that all of them essentially were bound to their laws. You know, one of the big things that he did was they had landowner rights that were based on their region. He said, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna create a federal or a national landowner. Right. And he essentially created the system by which all land was governed in France. So that one guy over here didn't operate separate from a guy over here because then that's when equality, infighting, all of that, you know, now all of a sudden you have to have a judge at the top to rule over these situations. And I see that in organizations all the time. It's like, where do we put our, where do we put our resources and our money? Well, when you don't have clear systems and processes, clear KPIs, what happens is somebody at the top has to sit there and say, well, let's put it here, let's put it there. I'm feeling like we should do this today versus that today. That's what happens. You have creative leadership at the top, you know, and not necessarily a bad thing. It's just an inefficient thing.
- [38:28]
B
I think of chaos versus order.
- [38:29]
A
Absolutely.
- [38:30]
B
If everyone's making their own rules, it's like, well, I kill people in my land. It's like, okay, well, I don't. Yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. How important? Step number four, having a strong story, a family story, a credo.
- [38:43]
A
It was the nationalism.
- [38:45]
B
There you go.
- [38:45]
A
It was this concept of making sure that we have, you know, a rally cry.
- [38:51]
B
Would you say you need a universal one, a department wide one, a family one, a self.
- [38:58]
A
I think that it, your. Let's say your organization should have a rally cry that ladders down into everything you do. Now, can each department, every division have their own. Yes, as long as it coincides with the greater. I would say if you look at collective influence today, our, our private equity firm, our rally cry is feeding children. You know, like, it is the purpose by what we, why we operate, why we are organized. You know, it's like if you look at our, if you are to read our mission statement, it ends with we are, you know, essentially empowering 100,000 entrepreneurs to find wealth and freedom for the purpose of being able to feed and impact 100,000 orphans a day with feeding, education, so on and so forth. It is the rally cry. And, you know, and what's what's interesting is, is when we do it well, you feel this massive camaraderie. When we had our big gala, you know, one big thing, you know, I was, I'll give you a quick for instance. We have our gala. We do a gala twice a year. We just had our big one in Orlando, and it was $133 a plate for the food. $133 a plate, which is silly, right? Like, it's chicken and vegetables, and it's ridiculous, but it's 133 bucks a plate. And the non profit team were like, should we have all these employees? You know, they were like, we're gonna have 30 employees sitting in there, 40 employees sitting in there. Should we spend four or five thousand dollars on feeding our employees that night? And I was like. And to me, I was. I was almost irate. I was frustrated that someone would ever even ask that question. They were like, what? It's expensive? And I'm like, do you know why we do what we do? Like, this is my impact. Others call, you know, I'm like, do you know why we do what we do? You know, like, do you want me to tell the people that literally give their time and their effort and they sit there and they hear about these stories? You want me to tell them they have to go out and I'm going to order them. Papa John's in the hallway over here. Like, you know, like, no, I would rather have our employees sitting in the gala than all the donors in the gala. Because our organization, our entire existence is tied to this very thing. And it's like, I think oftentimes somebody has to be that voice. And so to me, it was like, no, I will gladly spend $133 a plate for every employee that's at that place, because I want them to feel what it is that we're doing. And so every employee after that, I mean, like, the amount of hugs and text messages and DMS and stuff like that from our employees, like, this was the greatest night I've ever seen. I get why we do what we do. I love being a part of this organization. It's the rally cry. It's nationalism.
- [41:45]
B
That makes a lot of sense. I told you. There was a monumental shift in my desire to push harder, do more. When I went down to Mexico with you. I get it now.
- [41:57]
A
Yeah.
- [41:57]
B
So I think sometimes you can hear it, but once you see it, experience it, live it, it's different.
- [42:01]
A
Absolutely.
- [42:02]
B
To kind of go to the last question in the last point, you Brought up your fifth point. You talked a lot about. You have to have a belief in the system is how you sort of get out of that. And we've talked about this before, even with your personal brand, it's like if you can find truth, truth applied, remains truth. It doesn't change regardless of.
- [42:22]
A
A principle's a principle.
- [42:23]
B
Yeah. And that's not really a question. I guess it's just a thought.
- [42:26]
A
But I'd love to hear a statement that that is rooted in truth and that is if it is true today, it'll be true tomorrow. It doesn't mean it doesn't matter who holds the truth. The truth is still the truth. And so we have to get to a place where if we're going to step aside and be empowerment centric in our leadership, we have to have a belief in the system, not the person. You know, the person can be changed. The person should be changed if they don't adhere to the system. We have to have a belief in the system. I think that, you know, these elements are as different deep as you want to go. It can be shallow. You can be like, hey, these four things, five things apply to me, my business, or you could make it a lifetime pursuit to institute these things. These are deep. When you think about what I just said on creating a rally cry, does your people like, does your family know why your family exists? My family knows why they exist. My family knows. We have what's called our brick that's inside of our family and we talk about how much money we as a family generate to make impact around the world. We have that conversation. My 11 year old, my 24 year old is out of the house and living his life. He still knows that's the purpose by which we exist. It's a rally cry. My organizations know these rally cries. You can go as deep and as long on these as you want, but then the systems and processes are never done. And so you can't just say, okay, I wrote a manual. I've got my employee handbook. I've got, you know, like, I'm good now. No, no, it's, it's a constant process. There's a great system out there called Six Sigma and they have the process of, it's called leaning. So what you do is you build your processes and your systems and then you go back to oftentimes on a quarterly basis. You go back and you say, what part of this system or process isn't serving me? And they lean it out. They look at everything and say, well, what could we tweak so it's a system of. This is Jack Welsh in the 80s, right? Like, he built these systems and processes and then he constantly refined them, right? Like, refining the system and process is never done. If you think about it. We have a Supreme Court today that refines our understanding of our Constitution on a daily basis. We have a document that was written hundreds of years ago that governs this nation. And the Supreme Court is the vehicle, by leaning right, by essentially helping us understand that document more and more and ruling on it specific to its application. And that's what we have to do. They can take it as deep or shallow as they want to, but this is so applicable. That's why I want to do these two series, this two position, like these two podcasts on the Roman Empire, because there's so much to learn and the Napoleonic Empire. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. Love to connect with you further. And you can connect with me on social media at Eddie WilsonOfficial on any of the social media channels.