← The Home Service Expert Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
You can copy products and services and it's just getting easier. You can buy talent, it's just at what price? But there's something really, really fascinating, Tommy, about culture. There's this thing when you talk about culture because it's intangible, it's abstract, it can put people to sleep. But at the same time it can be the one thing that is impossible to copy, buy or poach. When I see these headlines around like buying talent, you know, I have mixed feelings like wow, good job dude. Another member of the billionaire club. Congratulations. I just, I don't think that that's going to do much long term for these organizations and I think they're just throwing good money away.
- [00:42]
B
All right guys, welcome back. Today I got Jason Wild. He's the co, CEO and co founder of Wise and the author of Genius at Scale. Jason is a strategist, growth executive and innovative innovation leader who influenced more than $6 billion in enterprise deals across IBM, Salesforce and Microsoft over 20 plus years global career spanning nearly 40 countries. He has built and scaled high performance teams that drive C suite transformation. As Salesforce, he co founded and scaled ignite, globally influenced $2 billion plus an enterprise value. At Microsoft, he created the company's first unified global sales methodology, unlocking over $100 billion in opportunity. A pioneer in applying AI for competitive advantage, Jason now advises CEOs on innovation, growth and strategic transformation. He's the co author of Genius at Scale which explores how leaders unlock innovation across large organizations. It's great to have you.
- [01:37]
A
Thanks for having me, Tommy.
- [01:38]
B
And you are in Siberia. What's calling you out to Siberia today?
- [01:44]
A
Yeah, not quite Siberia and not in the Gulag fortunately. But you're in Chicago. Yeah, yeah, outside. Well I grew up in Chicago now outside of New York City, in, in Connecticut, New England and yes, with eight month winters, it's an amazing thing. At least it feels like it's that long.
- [02:04]
B
Yeah, I understand. How about you just talk to us a little bit about your career, get us caught up to speed on what you're passionate about, what you're looking forward to.
- [02:16]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for asking. So I started my career in consulting and actually I guess maybe I should go a step back. My first career was actually acting. I was a child actor. I co starred in movies with Mr. T, Jane Fonda, Kris Kristofferson. Those names will probably date myself. I'm sure there are a few of your listeners will probably have to look up who those people actually are. Although Mr. T has been fairly timeless and did that for A while and then I don't know about sophomore, junior in high school we got close, but not the breakthrough. My mom stage mom felt like that was enough and I finally kind of had control over my own future and destiny and worked with a law firm for a couple years in Chicago to pay my way through college thinking that I wanted to be a lawyer. And law may be great for others, but I'm glad I did that because I realized very quickly that I did not want to be in law and saw the world of business at a very young age of hey, business leads, law follows. And it wasn't much more of a complex thought than that. I had done some foreign exchange programs as a high school student and also played hockey tournaments in Canada, so got a little bit of a taste of international travel. I was like, hey, I want to go and do international business. So as an early, you know, 20 something year old, of course I wanted to work. My dream job was International Business Machines or AKA IBM. So started my career in consulting with energy regulated energy and utility companies at IBM. Some of these places didn't even call them customers. I had to check what year we were in. They were called ratepayers. Spent 13 years at IBM, got out of consulting in utilities, was relocated to corporate to lead innovation globally. Originally it was an opportunity to basically make IBM research more accessible. People working on Watson for Jeopardy or next generation hardware doing laboratory stuff. But how could, could we get them closer to clients and business and market problems? Which led me to around the world working with organizations from NATO to Disney and what's the next killer app to the future of supply chain logistics and left IBM after 13 years to join Salesforce to lead their innovation team. I joined Salesforce in 2013 when Salesforce and Enterprise CRM software company had, believe it or not, Tommy, 6,000 employees and a small little embedded strategy and innovation team which is kind of doing McKinsey like work about trying to invent the future but without charging for it. There's an investment in these relationships with the most strategic customers of Salesforce. So team went from like 10 to 250 people in a few years on the back of success. And then Microsoft joined Microsoft for a couple of years around the OpenAI partnership and to help Microsoft kind of take its consultative selling to the next level. So I've been around the world a few times.
- [05:42]
B
Yeah, sounds like it. When did you realize you weren't just in the business of sales, but strategy?
- [05:51]
A
Yeah, I, I think that's a, that's a really good question. I Kind of learned this later. You know, I mentioned the acting. If you think about it, the best actors don't come across as actors or actresses. The best salespeople don't come across as salespeople. Right. They come across as people who are genuinely motivated to solve your problem with whatever it is that they have. And so for me, I think very early on, I did subscribe to this idea that every moment is an opportunity to sell directly and indirectly. And I've always felt that those things have a closer relationship than a lot of people feel. So, for example, I think my teams grew so much as strategic sales teams at Salesforce and even IBM because we've embraced this philosophy that we call the Zen of selling. Focusing deeply on someone's problems and then identifying the solutions that map to those problems, and voila, you end up selling more than when you try to sell. And a lot of it was like trust building. So, hey, we have this problem, Jason and team, that's a $500,000 problem. Let's see what you can do with that. And if you help them solve that, then you earn the right to a $2 million problem. And if you solve that, then a $5 million problem. And so to me, I think the best salespeople are a little bit of strategists and they really practice and develop empathy of trying to understand, okay, hey, what are the questions that these leaders are asking or should be asking? Where should they be in 18, 24 months and how can we supercharge them to get. So I think I've had a lot of success because kind of blending those two worlds together in the service of customers. And my improv teacher Tommy taught me many, many years ago that you shouldn't be nervous if you're in service of others. So I've always felt that the integration of those disciplines and thinking and problem solving, but then being action oriented, which is really the best of sales, you know, has really combined to be a really magical recipe of many, many situations.
- [08:18]
B
So you've done a long stand at IBM. You did some cool stuff at Salesforce and Microsoft. What are you looking forward to today? Is it mostly the why's what you're working on with the consulting?
- [08:33]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, I, you know, the book is obviously an exciting moment. My co author, Linda Hill, is the chair of the leadership program at Harvard Business School. She and I have known other for over 10 years. When I was leading innovation at IBM, we got introduced and, you know, I've been in innovation for a while, Tommy, and it's Rare that you find an academic professor who really understands kind of the messy side of innovation, that it's non linear, that it's can be glamorous and exciting, the results, but how you get there can, can be soul sucking and lots and lots of scars. So she invited me over 10 years ago to co author this book. I'm a practitioner, she's a professor. And I didn't really like have it on my bingo card. I want to write a book one day. But when she invited me to write the book first, it was kind of like, wow, what am I, a candid camera? A Harvard professor wants to write a book with me? That's cool. Pinch me momentum. And you know, she told me the story about kind of how she really likes writing books with practitioners and kind of what she talks about creative abrasion, like intentionally bringing versatile different perspectives together. And it may not be easy to have these conversations, but the result can be magic. And because of her understanding, it was very inviting to me and resonated very, very quickly. So we began this journey and lo and behold, now eight years later, our book is going to be published by Harvard Business Review as the lead title in, in March. Very excited about that. And so I didn't want to write a book just to write a book. I wrote a book because I wanted to share ideas and ideas specifically around, I think a lot of misconceptions around leadership. And what we kind of discovered, Tommy, was many books on leadership, many books on innovation, but there were like no books on how do you actually lead innovation. And it was kind of really interesting to us that no one had really gone to any depth. And some people may interview a CEO for 45 minutes and turn around a blog post or a chapter of a book and that might be okay. We literally studied these leaders from Google, Pixar, Mastercard, Pfizer, Delta Airlines in different contexts over several years to really understand what do they do to create the conditions in the environment for innovation to thrive time and time again. And when you look at the stock market, BCG, Boston Consulting Group just finished a 20 year study and one of the nuggets in there was what's behind stock premium prices and valuations. Well, it's the perception of the future of innovation coming from these companies. But yet most of the people who get promoted or in the C suite positions tend to be fairly operational. We wrote this book as basically a love letter of how do you actually create environments to lead innovation and use leadership authority, not to be top down and to really kind of Blow up this myth of the lone genius and really what these leaders do to create environments where people are willing and able to innovate time and time again. So that's what got me really excited about Raiden's book.
- [12:09]
B
You know, I've been studying a lot of CEOs, a couple dozen, mostly private equity backed, that have done 10 times MOIC or better. And kind of the core principles, one of the main ones is ruthless prioritization is focus. But it seems like innovation. And I'm more of an innovator. Let's try it, let's fail, let's figure out, let's break it 10 times and obviously listen to the clients as well and try to make a better opportunity for them. But how do you mix ruthless prioritization with innovation?
- [12:47]
A
Yeah, I think it's a great question, but I think, you know, clarity of purpose is one of the most important things to get, you know, value out of any initiatives, especially innovation. So, you know, for me, I've worked with many large companies, enterprises, and what I've seen sometimes is this thing that I call the Swiss army knife syndrome, where these big companies are so big that they try to be good at everything. I have kids and I have debates with my kid that nothing is world class in a Swiss army knife, but everything is good. You could argue the scissors are pretty world class, Tommy. They're very sharp, small, but pack a big punch. So to your point, I think too many organizations try to be that Swiss army knife and don't make the tough decisions around where they want to be world class and therefore execute flawlessly. And not just execute flawlessly, operationally and in continuously redefining the lower cost structure, but also execute flawlessly in their innovation agenda. If you're working on innovation stuff that's not aligned to those priorities and your purpose, it's kind of like, why are you doing it? One of the leaders that we talk about in the book that is really fascinating is the former CEO of Mastercard, Ajay Banga, who joined Mastercard in the early 2000 and tens, did an employee survey. One of the first things he did, innovation, ranked at MasterCard at that time, 26 out of 27. That was alarming to him. He literally lost sleep. So one of the first things that he did was a strategic reframe around the purpose of MasterCard. MasterCard up until that point, for years and years and years and decades, was a credit card services company. And therefore. Right. That's why people are like, innovation's irrelevant. We're in a Mature business, low margin, competing innovation, it's not relevant. And he said, hey, we need to make a big change. And the big change is going to be we're going to pivot and we're going to focus on being a tech company and a tech leader in the payment space instead of competing in these back alley knife fights with our competitors over the same customers time and time again, let's go after the real opportunity, which is the unbanked. And to do that, he had to do many, many things and get the organization to see that purpose. And with that reframe now all of a sudden people understood, okay, hey, for MasterCard to have some place in that, let alone be number one and lead it, lots of things had to change in the culture. And he instituted this thing called the MasterCard way, which was really about a relentless focus on customer centricity and institutionalized a completely different way of funding all of the programs across MasterCard. Going forward, 50% of funding from the CFO focused on core business, 25% on, on changing some of the diversification of their portfolio. But the big thing was 25% of all resources is a Fortune 100 company going forward towards the co creation of the future of MasterCard and innovation. So without that groundwork and the clarity of purpose, it could have continued to be just very chaotic and turbulent and to your point, developing things that were irrelevant or distractions from what they were doing as the core. So Simon Sinek has been well documented his books around the importance of why. Another way of looking at it is we agree, clarity of why is really, really important. But you can't stop there. When you think about innovation, so many people, their minds jump to what the tangible part of innovation. What can I hold, what can I see? What is the tangible things that can create all this value. But from everything that we studied, it's really combining why clarity of purpose with a focus on the infrastructure, the capabilities, the culture, the how. And the result then becomes a steady predictable stream of what to innovate. And it's counterintuitive to many, many leaders. So those are the sorts of things that I start to think about, and I think that's the responsibility of leadership, is to step in and ensure that there's that clarity of purpose so innovation can thrive within that frame.
- [17:27]
B
You know, I've been studying as well a lot of Elon Musk. I mean, it's whether you like him or hate him, you look at Tesla, you look at the robots, $25 trillion market cap, he's probably going to do a reverse merger with SpaceX into Tesla. Then he's got Grok. Then he's got so much going on and he's pretty innovative. He tries to dumb it down, remove all the obstacles, make it simple. What are your thoughts on his systems and way of looking at innovation?
- [17:59]
A
Yeah, he's, you know, even my nine year old has heard of him. Like my nine year old is, only knows Mr. Beast and Elon Musk. And so yeah, I have a couple of personal views, right, as a parent, I've got four kids. One of my sons, you know, adores and admires Elon Musk. And in all honesty, I've had a range of emotions around that. I think, you know, the positive that I see and what I like about him is that he has no limits. I think one of the things, you know, having made my career in innovation, in trying to get people to invent the future, as human beings we have biases, right? We bring baggage, right? Our previous experiences form and shape our beliefs. It's just, it's just the truth. So I think that there are a lot of folks that consciously and subconsciously we bring these constraints and we bring these limitations and I think it's what causes often incremental thinking people to be afraid of risks and all these sorts of things that ultimately make it difficult for people to challenge orthodoxies. And I'm not talking about religious orthodoxies, I'm talking about norms and standards. And you know, Steve Jobs talked about some of this as well and I think Elon subscribes to this. About everything in this physical world was created by someone or some team at some point and they weren't smarter than us and they had less resources whenever they did that some time ago. And the problem is more that people just don't challenge it and they accept it. So that's a part that I like about Elon Musk. The other side, my second and final reaction would be, and part of the reason why we wanted to write this book is because a lot of people are fascinated by the leadership styles and these personalities of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. And they tend to be top down leaders. Jensen Huang is another one where the results are amazing, but they're also fairly transparent about they're not easy to work with and they wear that with a badge of honor. For me, I've been a part of teams that I feel have done great work but I think we can be kind at the same time. So that's where I start to differ around some of the dismissiveness and, and being proud to create an environment where, you know, I want people to burn out. It's like, okay, that's taking it a little too far. I get it around wanting to like literally go on the moon and the Mars and not everybody is ready for that. But I do think that the cultures that really thrive over time, I mean think about ecosystems. We have the CEO of Caring give us a great endorsement quote. And what I loved about his quote, other than the fact that he likes the book, is he talked about our book giving practical advice to have an impact at an ecosystem level. You just don't usually hear those words in the same sentence, practical and ecosystem. And you know, you think about ecosystems usually exist as a result of something. So therefore many people think, oh, it's billionaires and companies create ecosystems. But the reality is it's ecosystems are formed around ideas and movements, right? Like Salesforce. At the beginning of Salesforce, Mark leaving Oracle, where Larry Ellison was his mentor and eventually Salesforce became a direct competitor of Oracle. Right? Salesforce was started on the principles of almost kind of being the anti Oracle, easier to do business with. Cloud computing was really about just having Internet access and a login and not needing to have all this hardware and a data center. And so the movement now of CRM, it's impossible to disassociate Salesforce from it, but it started with a couple of people and some big ideas about how it could be different. And as a result of that now, right, people have different expectations around software and CRM and that's like this, thanks to Salesforce. So it's a long winded way of saying, yeah, there are things that I look up to around Elon Musk, but there are other things that I think, you know, hopefully he starts to embrace. And that includes the importance of not just using leadership authority to be authoritarian, but using leadership authority to enable others and empower others to experiment and remove the barriers and inhibitors for them to get to the value and the mission that we all want to get to.
- [22:58]
B
Let me ask you a personal question. I. I'm starting to realize in my career now not necessarily what I'm great at, but what I'm not good at and what I keep going back to. It's a book, but it's really a phrase for me is who? Not how, how to get the right who's. If you look at what meta's doing in open AI and some of these things, it's like a war of talent. A billion dollar sign on bonus. And one of the things Whether it's Elon Musk or Steve Jobs back in the day, you know, Steve Jobs always talked about a players attract other A players and they buy vision and the dream. What is your take on innovation? When it comes to getting the right people on the bus and, and hiring the innovation team? I'm sure you're gonna, I don't want to cut you off, but like, you want to bring innovation out of people, but you probably need some innovation leaders in the business.
- [23:53]
A
Yeah, you definitely do. And you're right, the talent is important. And I think, you know, I, you know, to be very transparent, you know, leading global innovation teams. You know, when we would post a new job, you know, internally, it was kind of amazing. And I won't say which company I was employed with, but we would get like thousands and thousands of internal applications of people who literally thought that they were qualified to be like the head of Latin America innovation. It was fascinating to me where in reality, out of probably like 3,000 applications, two or three were legitimately like qualified for it. So you're right. I mean, talent, on the one hand, you know, talent is really, really important and you cannot compromise talent. And in the book we talk about leader as an architect, an architect in a very broad sense of creating the environments where people are willing and able to want to innovate and those, we pick those words, you know, intentionally because there's a lot of people with the ability to innovate, but they don't have the will or the motivation, whether it's the incentives or whatever it is on the other side, like my example of the job application, right, there are a lot of people with a will, but not necessarily with the self awareness, the experience around, the ability to do that. So absolutely, talent is very, very important. However, what I would say to this is you can copy products and services and it's just getting easier. You can buy talent, it's just at what price? You can poach it. But there's something really, really fascinating, Tommy, about culture, because I've studied culture. I've been a part of amazing companies with culture. A colleague of mine, Greg Brandow, is the former CTO of Pixar and worked very closely with Steve Jobs. When Steve started next, Greg was one of the first employees. And so he kind of has bottled up a bit of the ethos of Steve and applies that to the projects that we work on and we have these fascinating conversations around. There's this thing when you talk about culture because it's intangible, it's abstract, it can Put people to sleep, Right. But at the same time it can be the one thing that is impossible to copy buy or poach. And so that's to me, I think, you know, whether you're a five person startup or you're Walmart, culture does matter and culture does trump everything. So like look at Salesforce. When I joined, I had a couple of people that were, you know, interested in joining my team and I would look at their resume and it's like, oh my God, you could work anywhere. NASA, Goldman Sachs, right? You could basically like write your own ticket. And I was like, why do you want to work here? And what was interesting at the time was one of the common threads was Salesforce gets it. Salesforce seems like it's trying to be different. Whether we believe that it's authentic or not. Those people were buying into that and otherwise wouldn't have applied to Salesforce unless they really believed in that purpose. Right. So I think if you step back, what these companies are good at is creating a platform, not just a tech platform, but very broadly speaking a platform where people feel that they can bring their individual passions to those platform, meld those together and it becomes a win win. And I think that's what these great organizations are really, really good at. Because you know, we talked about Elon Musk before. You know, I'm sure Elon is also working on longevity and trying to live for 300 years, but the reality is he's not going to be here forever. Right. And the ultimate test of, you know, a great culture is can the leader step away? The leader retires, gets hit by a bus, whatever it is. And not only is that organization, that community able to like go on, but are they able to thrive even more with that leader gone? To me, that's ultimately the task. So when I see these headlines around like buying talent, you know, I have mixed feelings, like, wow, good job dude, another member of the billionaire club. Congratulations. But at the same time I just, I don't think that that's going to do much long term for these organizations. And I think they're just throwing good money away thinking that they're just buying talent when ultimately they should be focused on how do they create the culture for a bunch of different talent to come in and, and co create what they want. So. But I wish them luck on their return on investment.
- [28:51]
B
Yeah, you, you reminded me of Built to Last of a company that you could walk away from and you don't have your ego or pride absorbed into the company and you want it to succeed. Without you.
- [29:01]
A
Exactly, exactly. Right, Yeah. I mean, we talked about Ajay Banga. He, after he left MasterCard, the next job he took, he's now the president of the World Bank. So take this playbook of transforming, right? MasterCard. You like a good challenge, Ajay. Now do that at a planetary level.
- [29:19]
B
Incredible. When you see you've traveled and operated in over 40 countries. What global experience. What did global experience teach you about innovation that the US alone couldn't?
- [29:35]
A
Yeah, tell me a lot. Taught me a lot. I, you know, I think for a while I bought into the marketing, that Silicon Valley was monopolizing innovation. But, you know, what I realized is it's important to get out. Where we live can be an echo chamber and the importance of just broadening your horizons and going to other places. So I've been blown away. I mean, of course I've been to robot factories in Japan where there's no human beings. And I'm not talking last year, 15, 20 years ago, something straight out of Terminator where they were very proud. It's like no human beings working right now. Just push a button, starts and operates on its own. Singapore, China, these places where you would expect. But I think one of the things surprised me is that there's innovation happening all around the world, even in places that you wouldn't expect, like AI. We haven't talked about AI. One of the things that's really interesting to me is largely in the west and the us not all, but most people's reaction is very individual and very negative. Right? Straight to how is this going to take things away from me? It's going to detriment and decrease my quality of life. It's going to take my job. And I think we assume that everyone thinks that way around the world and it's not the case. So in the east, what's very interesting in places like China, it's very different. They think about it like, wow, it's going to be good for all of us. Right? Access to, you know, the best healthcare information is good, Right. It's a good thing, right? Because then, right, health care should improve. So you see just almost black and white, Very, very different views, very optimistic, very pessimistic. And of course we could get into like, societal debates around, you know, these countries and their values. And of course that's a big part of it. But that was one of the things that really shocked me. And I think longer term we, we really have to change, I think a bit of our view around that or we're going to fall behind I think the second thing is, is that, you know, I, my wife is from Spain, I've done a lot of work in Europe, obviously a lot of work in North America and we've talked about Asia. So one of the questions I get a lot is what are the big differences in doing business across those regions? I think what's interesting is generally speaking I find kind of the US in the middle and then East Asia and northern Europe at these extremes. So northern Europe is, even with the arrival of AI, very left brain, very analytical. We're going to be deliberate, take our time and doing research, develop a business plan over six to nine months and then we're going to execute it and not question it for two or three years, which has some strength and weaknesses. The other extreme is China, which when I started doing work in China you'd say, hey, can you share your strategic plan? And they'd like laugh like what? What plan? I have a thousand people trying a thousand different things and when there's a breakthrough I get the whole organization behind it. That's my plan, right? It's like, okay, that makes sense. In the US I find we're kind of in the middle. We're not as deliberate and you know, take three to five year plans like northern Europe, but we're not as experimental as I think we can be. And of course there's industry differences and geographical differences. But I think one of the great things about getting out of your own country is you learn not only more about the place that you're going, but I think even more importantly you learn more about yourself because now you have data to compare to, help look in the mirror and say they do it this way, why did they do it that way? And maybe there is a better way. I've learned a lot just by doing the work around the world. Those are a few things that I think I've found really, really interesting. And in our book Genius of Scale, we've got a good mix. We've got a spin out robotic startup that was spun off from the number one regulated airline in Japan, ANA Airways. We've got a startup in Dubai that was focused on fintech and of course enterprise, large companies, Delta, Pfizer, MasterCard and these others that obviously it takes a lot of work to turn that battleship in a lake. So hopefully we have something for everybody when it comes to, you know, where you are in your context. And what can I do specifically to really start to create a culture of innovation in my own organization?
- [34:34]
B
I love it. I want to get back to AI In a little bit, because how can we not talk about AI, but earlier in your career at IBM, Salesforce and Microsoft, what moment fundamentally shaped how you think about leadership?
- [34:52]
A
Yes, well, there were many moments. I think there was one when I was at Salesforce. So founder CEO Mark Benioff, pretty well known, started in sales when he was in Oracle. So very sales oriented, big on account executives, very customer oriented, but also very strategic. And I think one of the things that I learned from him was he has different mindsets depending on the season of the year that was aligned to his fiscal year. So first month or two after the close of the last year, any idea is a good idea, like zoom way out and reflect deeply. And there's just something about the way that a Zen to which he approaches kind of the timing of the year. Right. So leading an innovation team and over time eventually building his trust, started to get leads and projects directly from him. Like, hey Jason, the team just had this intergalactic conversation with the CEO about the future of this. And of course he was. He knew that if he turned, handed it over immediately to the account executive, there might be a little bit of friction and a thud because we still needed to do some work to figure out what was it that we were going to actually do and talk about. As I got closer to Mark, I really became fascinated because he's just a different sort of leader. One of these moments that you asked was we had a big meeting with one of the big US Banks coming up in a couple of weeks and Mark was maybe going to be involved. We weren't sure. One of those sorts of things around calendars and logistics. And we find out that completely out of the blue he decided to go to a local branch of this bank, show up as a billionaire, not tell anybody who he was, just get in line and just experience it himself. And we learn all of this because we get into the next prep call and his chief of staff gives us a whole debrief that he did this. And to me, I was in shock and impressed me because here was a billionaire who could have been doing many, many things, but what he wanted to do was stand in line and really feel what it was like to just be another customer and, and bring that experience into the meeting that we were having with the CEO. And as you can expect, that story went viral across the organization. I mean, if the CEO billionaire had time, right, to go and stop by the local branch and do some primary research and discovery, everybody else in the company better carve out time and do the same Thing. Now, is he going to be able to do that before every CEO meeting? Of course not. But I think he was modeling behavior. And I think we've all heard it like, words are important, but actions speak louder than words. And from that it cascaded down without anybody else having to tell anyone to do anything. It became an expectation of now do your own homework and do your own primary research, which we joked about. If you were like selling to a telco, are you going to climb some cell towers and good luck, you know, jumping in and parachuting into their business. It's easier when it's a bank branch. But that was a really powerful moment about carving out the time. And nobody is above walking in the shoes of their customer.
- [38:36]
B
I want to dive into three questions I ask on every podcast and then I want to get more into the book. What's a piece of game changing advice that you wish you knew in your twenties?
- [38:49]
A
Game changing advice that I knew, wish I knew in my 20s. One is that you can't make everybody happy. There's no way that you can make everybody happy, that's for sure. And I think that I was trying to take everyone's feedback and input and I felt like I had to take action on every single one versus, hey, they were just giving me advice. And it's my. It's up to me to really decide on what I keep or what I toss. I think that was number one. I think number two, the power of communication. I think the more that I traveled outside of the U.S. i realized that I was talking my English and not other people's English. And this is one of the things that we talk about in the book. Talk about the ABCs of great leadership. A for Architect, B for Bridger, C for Catalyst. The Bridger does many things, but the Bridger is really kind of like a translator within and across the organization. A polyglot, marketing and sales, business and tech, senior people in the field. And interestingly, at the same time, they're also a big target of these layoffs that are going on in corporate America. So I think to me, the other piece of advice that is really work on the power of communication, the power of storytelling. I said I was a child actor. I really didn't embrace that part of my life until I got well into my 40s and I had people younger than me coming up and saying, hey, how do I do what you do and how do I get to where you are? That I actually started to reflect objectively. And you think about it. Great plays, really emotionally connect with people, great stories have gone viral for thousands of years because we're programmed that way. Really work on the power of communication and language. I think we take language for granted a lot. The leader that we studied in the book on Pfizer, where usually it would take seven, eight years to do a clinical vaccine trial, and that team did it in 266 days while they did all of the other clinical trials. It's like, oh, my God, how did you actually do that? And the whole story is in the book. But one of the things was he was an outsider new to Pfizer, and he realized that people were using the same words to mean different things. Like the word innovation is one example. It's kind of a suitcase term. Yes. 100 people. It means 100 different things to those people. So one of the things that he did was institute a new language for his team. It sounds very, very simple, but language is a world model. And so he banned the word change. We're never going to use the word change ever again. It's like, why? People were sick of change. Didn't we go through change last year? 2022 was the year of change management. More change. Oh, my God, I'm going to roll my eyes. I'm going to disconnect. Instead, he focused on evolve and evolution, not only because, you know, think about it, Pfizer and the work that they do, it was right on brand. But who doesn't want to keep up with the Joneses? Who doesn't want to get better at their craft? And if you don't want to get better, then do you want to be a part of this team? And so it's just one word. And you see how many people throw around change and change management and join my change stance seminar. But he was very thoughtful about how people actually responded to that one word. And I think it's a great example. That's the tip of the iceberg of work on communication for me. As a former actor. I was rejected 500 times by the time I was 16. So I almost feel like, how do I put my kids through that? Because it'll be painful. And what doesn't kill them makes them stronger. Right, Tommy?
- [43:16]
B
Yeah.
- [43:16]
A
So those are a couple of things that I would give advice. Work on communication. You can never, ever be perfect at it. And. And, yeah, I think explore the world. You can learn a lot about yourself and the environment around us when you have comparative data.
- [43:38]
B
I love it. You know, Gary Vee was on last week with him, and he said he wished in his 20s, he, he gave kind candor. It's a rule in his company now to give feedback and just speak your mind and not be afraid of what people think. And I thought that was pretty interesting. And it goes along the sides of communication. So it's interesting.
- [43:58]
A
Yes, yes, indeed. No, I think that's great advice. So I think, I think some organizations can be too kind. Also, if you're too nice, then you can't have the necessary conversations, right. And put the emotions aside and say, hey, this is what the data is telling us. We may, you know, have different views about what we think we need to do, but if we're too nice to each other, then bad things are going to happen long term.
- [44:26]
B
If you had to start over with $10 million tomorrow, where are you putting it?
- [44:35]
A
I think I would focus on financial education for kids and because I think for a few reasons, number one, I've got kids and I don't think that public or private schools today do a very good job. And I think, you know, parents would say it's a moral responsibility, but the answers that are out there are just pushing more screen time, more tablet, more games. And to me it's the wrong answer. So I think that there's a huge opportunity to prepare the next generation, not just in like savings and setting up an account, but I think really tied to becoming a good citizen and a good person in this world and the responsibility of how you use those finances. And I think that there's a ton of opportunity around that. I'm actually working with an organization that's called bounce 10 that's been doing this for some time. I'm going to try to help them scale and they're a wonderful organization. And so, yeah, I'm a little biased in that answer, but I think there's a huge opportunity to prepare the next generation of kids to hopefully activate their moral compass and think of the world more as more of just a capitalist playground.
- [46:03]
B
What's your biggest professional dream at the moment?
- [46:08]
A
I think my biggest professional dream at the moment is to have a book where, and I think it's already started. My professional dream is to actually give people hope and a bit of a toolkit for them to find relevance in this fast changing world. I think it's clear that change will never be as slow as it is right now. I mean, the world is shifting literally under our feet every week. It's amazing. So as a teaser article for the book that's coming out, we partnered with the Harvard Business Review and in the upcoming March April magazine We're on the COVID and the article is focused on why do great innovations fail to scale. And really it's about the Bridger, the b of the ABCs. And you know, I bring that up right now because after the article went live, I got like a bunch of dms from strangers, people around the world that I've never met before, thanking us for writing the article, saying it was exactly what they needed at this moment because they were laid off or whatever, and it gives them hope. And the Bridger role is one that the architect is usually senior and someone with a P and L, an authority. So there's visibility that comes with the role. The catalyst is really about leaders building movements and how do you build movements through people that you can't directly control. So there's a lot of visibility around that as well. But the Bridger is the role that is near and dearest to my heart because I think right now it's the one that's the most under attack in many organizations. But at the same time, it's ideally the role that's the most important one when it comes to innovation. One of the big misconceptions about innovation is that it's an idea problem. It's not. Most innovation stalls in the integration phase and that's where Bridgers focus in those boundaries across functions and organizations that also become the kill zone. So my dream professionally is that this book gives hope to people and we really talk about the mindsets and behaviors of these leaders. But the serendipity of it, Tommy, is that as people have started to read the book and we've interacted with some of them, a few have said, wow, this really gets into the world of the future operating model in this AI centric world because you think about it, medium to large companies, on the one hand, you need structure and some predictability and performance management, but on the other side, you need some breathability and the ability to kind of morph your value proposition in this rapid changing world. So the ABCs of how do you build community, how do you build partnership, and how do you build and ignite a movement serendipitously, I think is giving hope to a lot of people around what's the future org design and let alone how can I fit into that future, you know, as a person who's looking for work. And I think what's cool is we didn't even set out to do that and the book hasn't even been launched and we're already hearing this feedback.
- [49:46]
B
I'm excited. I. I want to share the book with a lot of people. I'll buy, I'll buy a case from you.
- [49:52]
A
Thank you, we appreciate that, Tom.
- [49:54]
B
I, I got a few more questions and then I'll just ask a couple closeout ones. So, you know, just talking to pretty big company, about $15 billion market cap to the founder just earlier this afternoon. So not massive, but big software company. And we were just talking about AI, and you mentioned Americans have a pessimistic view. But he's, he said to me, tommy, it's hitting software companies, the innovation crisis. Like, we have to move quickly. And we know that. And it's easier to write lines of code and whatnot. But he goes, wait till this hits teachers, dentists, doctors. It's going to hit surgeons, it's going to hit lawyers, and when it does, they don't have a replacement. And he goes, I'm so. This is what he told me. So you might get mad about this. I just want to hear your perception. But he said, you know, during the Industrial Revolution, we were able to adapt this job, created a lot of new jobs. And he goes, I've talked to so many massive, whether it's VC or, you know, massive companies, you know, there is no replacements and Universal Basic income is going to be a necessity for a lot of people and there's going to be a lot of chaos. And I'm just curious because it is going to eliminate jobs and for some people it eliminates or at least lower their meaning or their purpose because we derive these things. I just read A Man's Search for Meaning Again by Viktor Frankl last week, but it's a pretty pessimistic outlook. But I'm sitting here going, man, I already know people getting laid off. You look at all these Fortune 500 companies laying off, their HR teams, laying off. Amazon's doing it, it's happening. And unemployment will start going up. I don't know the solution. So what's your perspective?
- [51:53]
A
Yeah, there's a lot there, I think. I think number one, you know, and even looking at kind of the, the hit in the stock market on software stock prices, I, I do believe that some of what you said is warranted. Absolutely. You know, it in some ways. You may chuckle, but I do believe that as much hype as there is, I think some of it, it might be under hyped. The amount of change that could be coming, it literally is going to change the way we work and live. That's what industrial revolutions do. I do see, right. I mean, if you go back to the 1950s. And I'm not trying to say that like commercial air travel is the equivalent of AI, but I think that there are similarities, right? It's not politically incorrect to say this, but in the 1950s, who flew on commercial aircraft? Rich people and businessmen. That was it, right? And now you fast forward and it's like millions and millions of people fly every single day. So, you know, when that started to happen, there were a lot of people who were threatened, right, Operating ports and ferries and railroads and, and it was hard to see the high paying jobs that eventually came right of pilots and air traffic controllers and airport managers. So there are going to be high value jobs. I think it's just very hard for us to see it right now. I think the second point is, and part of what makes this, I think really confusing and difficult to start to understand is it's the tests that are going to be automated, right? And obviously, you know, any, any job is a collection, a container of tasks. And some jobs have more tasks that are threatened than others. And so I think that there is going to be some significant unemployment, especially in white collar, you know, jobs. That doesn't surprise me on, you know, the SaaS, stock stock market prices. I think some pundits out there are saying that it's because there's uncertainty. I actually think it's the opposite. I think that there's increased certainty in some of these institutional investors and private equity and that certainty is around. The economics of classic legacy software are definitely changing, right? And like, look at it as an Oreo cookie. The cream is the software company. They have these startups like on the one side applying pressure and then on the other side you have the customers and the clients who are applying pressure. And you know, and what I mean by that is the startups and what they can do in like vibe coding over a weekend, is that threatening to an Enterprise Fortune 100 company? Of course not. But it creates the conditions where all of a sudden, two or three years ago some company would say, oh, I would never try to do this on my own and develop something that's homegrown. But now I can. And If I'm spending 10, 20, $50 million a year on some of these big SaaS companies, now all of a sudden I can get there in 10% in two or three years and I own the IP and I don't have to worry about vendor lock in now all of a sudden that sounds really interesting. So I think the big part is that the, the barriers have gone down in terms of the speed and cost that it takes to get to enterprise quality code. Now on the other side, I think the clients are becoming more sophisticated because there's more transparency and they're pushing for a lot more innovation that they've been asking for from years and years and years from these enterprise SaaS companies. And I think Wall street is basically saying, hey, when the dust settles, they just don't think that the winners are going to be in enterprise SaaS. And I think that's what's driving a lot of what's happening right now. So you know, for me, I think, you know, if you are a leading software company, I go back to a couple of key questions, right? And the first question is what are you selling? You mentioned Amazon, like what is Amazon selling? Literally millions of SKUs of products. But what I would argue that they're selling is convenience. Yes, I never went to real estate school but you probably learn in Real Estate 101 location, location, location. Amazon said no, that doesn't matter. It's hey, I want to order whatever, I want to be delivered in 12 hours in my pajamas. So when there's a focus on the automation of the warehouses and the Amazon layoffs, yeah, it's the right thing to report them. But I think that oftentimes the media gets it wrong and they look at it as, oh, AI is replacing it. But what's really happening is Amazon is just taking the next step and it's system level experience of trying to be world class and convenience and they can automate some of these tasks. I think the other part of this is a ethical, moral question around could we and should we? So I talked about this startup in Japan, Avatar N. So one of the things that they do is they've partnered with a ALS community that enables people through avatars to have jobs in restaurants in Japan. Now Avatar in could have automated that to make it a robotic waiter that takes your order. But instead they said we want to design a human into this so that they have some relevance in society and can make a wage. So I think that's where you have, absent government, a purpose centric organization saying we could automate all of this and make a little bit more money, but instead we're going to involve some humans in this because it's the right thing to do and in the end they're actually more successful because of that value proposition. So there's a lot here, there's big change that's coming. I think the advice that I give people, whether it's I'm at my local Kids, school or meeting with the CEO is the world will always have problems. Get great at problem solving. We may not see what the problems are right now, but get great at problem solving and say, okay, well, how do I do that? Well, the discipline of design thinking, if you strip away the jargon and all the fancy language at the core of design thinking is get great at problem solving. First identifying the right problems and then being very open and efficient and effective at solving those problems. And I really do believe that. So my spare time, that's what I focus on in different ways, is trying to develop some agent that's focused on some aspect of secondary research and, and finding new ways to get focus groups and customer input into the process of what I do. If you get good at problem solving, I'm optimistic that you'll have a role in this future.
- [59:18]
B
If someone reads Genius at scale, what's one behavior they should immediately change?
- [59:25]
A
I think one behavior they should immediately change is stop trying to be the smartest person in the world. I think that's, it's not only a turn off, but it's just, it's, it's, it's not how you create lasting value. I think instead focus on creating an environment where the room is smarter than anyone that's in it.
- [59:53]
B
I love that. Now you're preaching. Tell us a couple more things about the book and then we'll. Well, first of all, where's the best spot to get the book?
- [60:06]
A
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for asking. It's available on Amazon, Harvard Business Reviews website, hopefully lots of places. We actually have a book website that we launched to give a little bit of more information out there and some endorsements. It's geniuscale.com we have it in multiple languages for the, you know, the, the overachiever, fluent people that are out there. But yeah, hope that people check that out. I think we've talked about a bunch of things already. I think number one is that we, we don't live in an ideal problem world. We live in a world where there's lots and lots of good ideas. But the real challenge is how do you go from whiteboard to reality? And you know, we, we've really been privileged and honored to spend lots and lots of time with some amazing leaders. And I think the thing that surprised me about these leaders is how low ego they have. And as successful as they've been leading these organizations, they really do espouse and believe in always learning and always being curious and that every day is an opportunity to get a little bit better. And as Much as they've been successful and they deserve to retire and do whatever they want to do, I think the fact that many of them are using their. Their power and their authority to do things that they don't necessarily have to do is just so inspiring. I think it's. It's incredibly inspiring to. To carry on some of their work. So I think the last thing I'd say is, is that in. In the book, hopefully it's got stories for everybody, but really like asking and reframing around your purpose. Procter and Gamble is one of those chapters where we study the chief R D officer. Procter and Gamble is obviously a very successful company that's also been through multiple transformations. And when Kathy Fish, the head of research and development, said that it's time for Procter and Gamble to innovate how it innovates, what does that mean for the rest of the world? Right. And for Kathy, the reframe was from being world class and functionally superior and winning it like left brain stuff, a better razor or a better laundry detergent to winning on being irresistibly superior. Behind that was this recognition that people make decisions based on emotion more than reason. How can P and G really institutionalize that in the culture that they're trying to create? Lots of stories that we think hopefully will inspire, but also be concrete examples that people can implement in all sorts of different situations.
- [63:14]
B
Well, Jason, I don't think after this podcast, anybody's not gonna go by the book. Genius at scale. Looking forward to reading it. Can't wait. And I really appreciate you took the opportunity to jump on the podcast today.
- [63:28]
A
I really enjoyed the conversation, Tommy, and look forward to the next one.
- [63:32]
B
You know what? I want to meet you. I want to read the book and somehow get in the same room as you. So hopefully we can figure that out.
- [63:38]
A
Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm sorry about the sun. It's like the one day the sun actually comes out here.
- [63:44]
B
Well, thank you so much and look forward to the next time, my friend.
- [63:49]
A
All right, good luck with the speech.